1 Minute Before the Sun Vanishes — 11:59 AMWilliam's boots crunched through the melting snow, each step sinking into the damp earth like the forest was trying to swallow him whole. He huffed up a hill, wheezing with every step, his breath curling into the cold air like cigarette smoke. Sweat clung to his skin despite the frigid weather, soaking through the fnnel shirt stretched over his belly.

  The man was a wreck — overweight, unshaven, and hunched like the weight of the world rested on his back. His beard, once a proud bush of chestnut and silver, tangled down his chest like gnarled roots. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket, cursing under his breath as he trudged through the woods.

  He wasn’t supposed to be here anymore. Not in these mountains. Not after everything that happened.

  A half-burned cigarette dangled from his chapped lips, and he lit another before the first one had fully died. Smoke curled around his face like a ghost that refused to leave him alone. The forest loomed in every direction, the bare branches like skeletal fingers scraping at the sky.

  The silence was heavy. No wind. No rustling of leaves. Just the faint chirp of birds too stubborn or stupid to migrate south.

  William's radio crackled in his coat pocket, the voice from the ranger station trying to reach him.

  "William? Come in. You missed your st three check-ins. If you don’t answer, we’re sending someone out."

  He snorted, taking another swig from his dented fsk. The whiskey scorched his throat, but the burn barely touched him. He drank anyway — out of habit, out of spite, out of the hope that enough alcohol might finally quiet the memories.

  He hadn’t checked in for weeks. The st time he did, the new supervisor tried to "gently" suggest therapy. Like talking about the past would do anything but drag him back into the fire.

  He couldn’t save anyone.He couldn’t even save himself.

  12:00 PM — A Normal, Miserable DayWilliam stopped at the edge of a cliff overlooking the town below. The small cluster of buildings huddled together in the valley, smoke curling from chimneys as the townsfolk went about their lives.

  He wondered if they remembered the fire.

  The fire that scorched the forest, devoured half the town, and turned dozens of people to ash.

  He did.

  He relived it every time he shut his eyes — the bze devouring the trees, people screaming for help, and the smell of burning flesh hanging in the air long after the fmes died out.

  William squinted at the sun, a bright, hateful orb hanging in the sky.

  “I should’ve burned with them,” he muttered.

  Then the sun disappeared.

  12:01 PM — Instant DarknessOne second, daylight.The next, complete bckness.

  The sun didn’t set. It didn’t dim. It just... vanished.

  Stars exploded into view, dazzling and infinite, more vibrant than William had ever seen. The sky transformed into a cosmic void, and a massive white streak — the Milky Way — sshed across the heavens like a fresh wound.

  William blinked.He rubbed his eyes.

  The darkness remained.

  “Finally lost my damn mind,” he muttered.

  Then the cold hit.

  A sudden, brutal freeze that gnawed into his flesh. The temperature plummeted like a lead weight, the warmth bleeding from the Earth in an instant. His breath thickened into heavy clouds, and frost crept over his clothes, stiffening the fabric.

  He fumbled for his lighter, flicking the fme to life with trembling fingers. But the tiny spark barely pushed back the cold. He crouched, trying to light a bundle of twigs.

  His hands started to shake uncontrolbly.His skin went numb.

  Then he started to glow.

  12:10 PM — The Blessing of Immotion ActivatesA fiery heat bloomed beneath his skin.

  The warmth wasn’t gentle — it was violent, searing through his body like molten va. Fmes erupted from his flesh, wreathing him in a living inferno. The snow around him melted in seconds, steam billowing into the night air.

  The cold couldn’t touch him.The fire wouldn’t let it.

  But with the fire came the memories.

  Images smmed into his mind like a hammer — his wife’s frail body in a hospital bed, his father being attacked by the bear, the child he failed to save from drowning, the bckened corpses pulled from the ashes.

  Each fshback burned hotter than the st.

  William screamed, cwing at his skin, trying to snuff out the fmes. But they wouldn’t go away. The blessing wouldn’t let him die.

  Not yet.

  1:00 PM — The Town Below ColpsesFrom his cliffside perch with his fme wreathed hands clutching at either side of his head, William watched the town dissolve into chaos.

  Streetlights flickered, struggling to hold back the encroaching dark. People poured into the streets, screaming, colliding with each other in blind panic. Cars skidded off the roads. Fires broke out as buildings overheated from malfunctioning generators.

  Animals panicked — birds smashed into windows, deer barreled through storefronts, and wolves slunk down from the mountains, driven mad by the cosmic shift.

  William just watched.

  The fmes licking up his arms illuminated the mountainside, casting an eerie glow that made him the only visible figure in the forest.

  “What’s the point?” he muttered, gripping his skull as the memories gnawed at him like vultures.

  12:00 AM — Total Bckout WorldwideBy midnight, Earth was dying.

  The temperature dropped to -40°F. The oceans began freezing over, waves solidifying mid-crest. Without sunlight, photosynthesis stopped, and pnt life withered. Even worse, without the sun’s gravitational pull, Earth’s atmosphere began bleeding into space, particle by particle.

  William kept walking, his body a beacon of light in the endless night.

  He tried drowning himself in a frozen river.The water evaporated around him.

  He tried burying himself in snow.The fmes only burned hotter.

  He couldn’t die.He couldn’t even freeze.

  And then, somewhere in the cosmos, a god panicked.

  2:00 AM — Zephar’s Cosmic PanicZephar, a celestial gambler with far too much power and far too little sense, stared at the once again glowing dice in horror.

  “A global extinction event? I am trying to be helpful, not homicidal!”

  He rolled the Infinity Dice again, praying for a miracle. It didn’t come, but three new catastrophes did.

  He got bees.And pizza.And an invisible treadmill.

  Zephar could only stare at the dice with a dead and ft look.

  3:00 AM — The Spiral of Madness BeginsThe bees came first — massive, golden-striped monstrosities the size of basketballs. Unhindered by the increasing cold, their wings buzzed like helicopter bdes, and their stings didn’t kill — they just hurt. Horribly. To add insult to an incredibly painful injury, the bees sprayed a sticky honey that burned the skin, but attracted more bees.

  Then the pizza tornadoes hit.Cyclones packed with sentient, screaming pizzas that hurled themselves at survivors, pepperoni shrapnel tearing through flesh. Even worse, while the absurd ft round things nded, they grew legs and sparing up to start chasing and consuming any survivors.

  Finally, the Infinite Treadmill activated.Anyone still alive found their legs moving against their will, sprinting across the frozen wastend without rest. Some into the path of surviving wild animals or the bees and pizza, or just into the range of an erupting volcano.

  And William?William ran.

  His body, bzing like a human torch, sprinted through the forest as the bees swarmed behind him. To make things worse, a pack of anchovy, pineapple, and jelly bean pizza’s was closing in.

  “The world turns bck, giant bees, and walking monster pizzas are chasing me, and I am on fire. While this might be a fitting joke, it still feels like I should wake up to my normal crap life any time now!” Wilm compined as he ran, but he suddenly stopped moving but not running.