The world ended at 3:17 p.m.
I knew the exact second because that was when the Rank-S Behemoth closed its jaws around my torso.
The lights never went out all at once.
They dimmed.
That was the detail I remembered most clearly from the end of the world. Not the screams. Not the gates tearing open the sky. Not even the monsters pouring through like spilled ink.
The city beneath us burned in layers. Towers split open. Gates yawned wide. Monsters spilled out like an infection that had finally found its host. I had survived twelve years of it. Twelve years of contracts, raids, betrayals, and desperate retreats. Twelve years of learning the rules too late.
I was twenty-two when it started.
I was thirty-four when it ended.
The Behemoth's shadow swallowed me whole. Pain flared once.
Then silence.
A sound cut through the dark.
Not an explosion.
A notification.
—
Ding.
[Temporal Regression Detected]
—
I inhaled.
Air.
Clean. Warm. Wrong.
My eyes snapped open.
A white ceiling. Fluorescent lights. The low hum of an air conditioner that had never been stripped for parts. The scent of lavender cleaner mixed with burnt office coffee.
An office.
My office.
I jerked upright. The chair rolled back and struck a cubicle wall. My hands were clean. No scars. No hardened knuckles. No missing fingers.
A calendar sat on my desk.
June 11.
My phone buzzed.
2:41 p.m.
Almost a month before the Apocalypse truly began.
My breathing steadied.
In the last timeline, these weeks had been meaningless. Budget reviews. Printer errors. Complaints about overtime. When the sky turned red, I laughed with everyone else. Thought it was a stunt. A projection.
Most people did.
The first gate opened inside a subway station.
Most people died in the first hour.
Office towers collapsed when gravity stopped agreeing with reality. People awakened powers too late, too weak, or not at all.
And the System.
The Archivist.
Not the one everyone knew.
The other one.
Shadow Archivist.
A class I had only discovered near the end, inside a collapsed gate buried beneath an abandoned museum. By then, I had been too broken, too hunted, too far behind.
This time was different.
I looked around the office.
My coworkers kept typing. Someone laughed quietly. Someone argued over a printer.
None of them knew.
I stood, grabbed my jacket, and walked toward the restroom. My reflection stopped me.
Kay Blackwell.
Just over six feet tall. Lean from long commutes and skipped meals, not training. Warm brown skin that caught the light easily. Narrow face. Straight nose. Sharp eyes that always seemed half a second ahead of conversations. Hair short on the sides, longer on top, usually unstyled because I never cared.
"Okay," I said softly to the mirror.
"No mistakes."
—
I quit my job that afternoon.
No speeches. No explanations. Just a short email and an empty desk.
Money meant nothing now. Status meant nothing. In weeks, currencies would crash and titles would burn.
I needed three things.
A place.
Supplies.
And silence.
I visited several banks the same day and applied for loans. The world was ending, but credit systems hadn't caught up yet. My record was clean. Approvals came quickly.
By the second night, I had rented a small concrete warehouse on the edge of the city. No windows. Thick walls. Easy to defend. Close to major transit routes.
In the last timeline, a gate opened not far from here.
I paid in cash.
The clerk didn't ask questions.
Over the next few days, I moved supplies in quiet loads.
Bottled water. Canned food. Medical kits. Flashlights. Batteries. Rope. A crowbar. A cheap tactical vest. A knife that fit my hand better than it should have.
Nothing fancy.
Nothing that would draw attention.
Four days later, sitting alone in my new base, I opened a blank document on my laptop.
It looked like meeting notes.
It wasn't.
It was a map.
Not of streets.
Of pressure.
Before the Apocalypse, reality thinned in specific places. Not enough to see. Enough to feel.
Basements where sound carried wrong. Elevators that dropped too fast. Alleyways where shadows bent against the sun.
I had felt them before without understanding.
Now I did.
Gates didn't appear randomly.
They formed where the world was already tired.
Local news had brushed past these incidents. Strange electrical failures. Structural anomalies. Environmental pressure fluctuations. In an age numb to crisis, no one looked twice.
At night, I walked or took the bus. I followed my map from memory, visiting every location I could reach.
Places where the air felt thin. Where streetlights flickered without reason. Where pigeons refused to land.
Future gates.
I stood there. Waited. Counted seconds. Let my body absorb the pressure slowly.
The System was watching.
The first timeline had taught me one thing clearly.
The System did not reward caution.
It rewarded awareness.
And it punished recklessness with interest.
Back then, we thought it rewarded speed. We were wrong. We learned too late.
I visited over a dozen unstable zones. Closed malls. Data centers. Museums. Sealed subway tunnels hidden behind false walls.
Sometimes the air felt thin. Sometimes sound flattened. Sometimes shadows stretched where they shouldn't.
I marked every location.
I wasn't hunting gates.
I was qualifying.
The System noticed on the seventh night.
I stood beneath an unfinished overpass as traffic roared above like distant surf. Concrete pillars cast long shadows across gravel and weeds. City lights flickered in patterns no one else seemed to notice.
My phone buzzed.
Time seemed to pause.
Ding.
A translucent blue box unfolded before me.
[Pre-Awakening Phase Detected]
[Legacy Points Allocated: 3]
[Initial Power Selection Available]
[Options: Strength Boost, Mana Sensitivity, Physical Reinforcement]
I stared at the list.
This screen wasn't supposed to appear yet. In the last timeline, only a handful of people saw it early. They'd been close to gates when the mana surge began. They gained a head start.
Most paid for it later.
I ignored it.
This was the trap.
Immediate power. Permanent limitation.
My finger hovered in the air.
In the last timeline, skipping this screen felt wrong. Like refusing armor before a war.
I didn't move.
This wasn't the system I was waiting for.
Ding.
The screen darkened.
Light seemed to drain from it.
[Hidden Origin Traits Detected]
[Observer Type: Unregistered]
[Pre-Awakening Tasks Available]
Text scrolled.
Clear. Explicit. Unforgiving.
[Task 1: Identify three future gate convergence zones before initial manifestation]
[Progress: 3/3]
I exhaled slowly.
So that was it.
[Task 2: Maintain cognitive stability during prolonged proximity to unstable zones]
[Status: Stable]
No panic. No denial.
[Task 3: Reject premature power acquisition]
[Condition: No system contracts accepted]
[Status: Met]
I smiled.
The blue box pulsed once.
[Trial Condition Met]
[System Role Candidate: Archivist-Variant]
Several options flickered. Incomplete. Grayed out.
Only one remained.
[Shadow Archivist]
[Rank: ???]
[Description: Records anomalies beyond standard System parameters]
This time, the words mattered.
I reached out and selected it.
The lights flickered.
[Selection Confirmed]
[Shadow Archivist Initialized]
[Archive Access: Locked]
Pain flared behind my eyes. Information pressed against my skull, then settled.
Not power.
A framework.
The Apocalypse hadn't begun. Full access was locked.
That was fine.
A timer appeared in the corner of my vision.
[Time Until Great Awakening: 20 Days, 23 Hours, 11 Minutes]
The System faded.
I stayed under the overpass long after it vanished.
"Good," I said quietly.
"Now we do it right."
—
Once qualification was secured, I began preparing others.
Carefully.
Marcus Addai. Logistics. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Calm under pressure. Late twenties. Clean-shaven. Always watched exits. Died in a hospital stairwell last time.
Lena Ashford. Compliance. Pale skin. Dark eyes. Hair always pulled tight. Average height. Sharp memory.
Fiifi Cole. Freelance IT. Lean. Restless. Fingers always moving. Trusted the wrong people. Died in the third year.
Salasi Reed. Night security. Solid build. Quiet. Missed nothing. Survived longer than most.
I also sent one message to a distant cousin. A warning. Nothing more.
I didn't tell them the world would end.
I told them to meet.
To pay attention.
Where to stand when the air felt wrong. When to leave instead of pushing forward. How to notice prompts without touching them.
"These aren't upgrades," I told them once, in a closed conference room.
"They're contracts."
They laughed.
Uneasy.
But they listened.
The System allowed it.
Information wasn't ownership.
And nothing in the Archive was owned.
The Awakening came at midnight.
I stood alone in my base as the city glowed like a circuit board.
The blue box returned.
Bigger.
[Awakening Approved]
[Class Identified: Shadow Archivist]
[Core Rule Initialized]
Nothing is owned.
Everything is borrowed.
All knowledge demands balance.
Shadows in the room shifted.
Not moving.
Listening.
Somewhere far below, something answered.
And in a place not meant to exist yet, a gate began to form.
I smiled.
This time, I would arrive first.