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A pillar of black light punched down from above the firmament, asserting itself into the planet like a divine stamp.
Wherever it touched, everything vaporized.
Ancient runes surfaced inside the pillar-vast and deliberate, rotating with slow malice.
These were not symbols placed on reality - they were symbols carved out of it.
Across the globe, the chorus of the damned began.
A village woman clutched her child, in disbelief of how many horrors she had witnessed in one day.
“Don’t look up, Don’t look up. Those words are worlds watching us.”
A farmer clutched his nose, blood leaking from it:
“That thing is letting the heavens exist on its mercy.”
A mother whispered to her infant, voice slowly becoming inaudible to herself:
“Close your eyes, love. The gods will help us.”
A teenager screamed, clutching his chest:
“Why does the air burn when I breathe!”
An old man collapsed into the dirt:
“This is what they warned us about. This is what happens after prayers stop working.”
Inside a bunker, a sergeant yelled for his men to hold the line, then stopped mid-sentence as a rune touched his body slowly disintegrating and ending his life.
Frontline radio cackled:
“Command! Sky anomaly rewriting visual spectrum. I can’t see right.”
Another soldier vomited blood, dragging himself towards the General:
“Sir… the runes touched some of our men.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Hold the line then. Don’t touch anything.” The General barked.
“They all disintegrated, Sir,” - the soldier held up his hands filled with the ashes of his fallen brothers.
“Command!” another radio crackled with a soldier’s dying breath.
“I’m blind. It’s all black.”
A private whispered to himself:
“We won’t survive if this keeps going.”
Zayn’s mother pressed a hand to her chest, feeling her racing heart:
“Why does it feel like the world is stepping away from my boy?”
When the black light receded, the battlefield was a scorched, wailing voices calling something-like everything had become possessed.
Standing where distance used to exist was The Devourer. A mass of void-black flesh and dimensional distortion, thirty feet tall in form but infinitely larger in presence.
Black liquid spreading from his feet towards the planet and skies.
Space bent around him, folding inward and fizzing, like weak metal inside acid.
He moved, and miles felt like inches. Hills flattened beneath his feet while the horizon slid backward.
“Why is the earth being suppressed?” a woman screamed as the ground beneath her sank in rhythm.
“Physics doesn't apply to him,” The General whispered, his hands frozen on his binoculars.
“He just crossed a state... with just one step.”
An artillery officer spoke beside him:
“Sir… maybe physics doesn’t apply anymore.”
An elite operative unit leader gasped for breath, ribs compressing inch by inch:
“This pressure is stacking my bones wrong.”
A sniper talked himself into lowering his weapon:
“There’s no angle on something that ain't hiding."
The pressure peaked and weak structures flattened and merged with the black light spreading, strong ones crumbled into dust.
Human bodies reacted unevenly, eyes burst vessels, blood seeping from their corners, ears rang with phantom tones.
But Zayn did not move back. He did not brace, instead he stepped forward.
And the ground beneath him stabilized instantly, as the planet lost its orbit and the continents groaned under the black light, the small circle of stone under Zayn’s feet remained solid.
Like the planet was steadying itself through him.
Zayn and Devourer came face to face, their size having a massive disparity.
Zayn’s mother spoke but sound didn't escape like it was a distant memory:
“That thing is looking down on my boy.”
Aditi's voice trying to break the bubble to speak:
“He looks small. I’ve never seen him look this small. And yet he is standing fearlessly.”
Bhumi’s hands choked herself, trying to force words out:
“You used to stay awake begging me to love you, when Aditi betrayed you.”
“I promised that I would stay, fight the world beside you.”
“But I played you the most and here you stand like life itself has no meaning without the fight.”
“I know you love us Zayn, you don't want us dead, but please just stop, you can't fight against all of them forever.”
Zayn raised his talons scraping the stone, and in a world where the Devourer had consumed the light, sparks danced.
It was the only sound and light allowed to exist.
Zayn’s tectonic voice issued a titanic demand against the silence:
“Give... your... life!”
An old woman's jaw dropped open:
“This is where our stories end.”
A veteran murmured: “I trained for every war. This madness ain't one of them.”
Zayn’s mother screamed without sound: “Please stop him!… someone bring him back.”
The sky dimmed further like something had leaned in closer to listen.
A farmer whispered: “He’s gone mad.”
A woman shook violently:
“This animal will get us all butchered worse than before. We should beg.”
A man beside the farmer tried to scream at him but no voice came out:
“What the hell is wrong with him?”
The General slammed his fist into the console:
“DAMN IT!..DOES HE FEAR ANYTHING?”
An elite soldier moved his mouth but nothing came out. He looked down, then pulled a marker and paper from his vest and wrote standing beside the general:
“He didn’t just say that… Did he?”
The General looked but answered nothing.
A tech shouted: “Sir! Temperature’s below five degrees across the planet!”
Zayn’s mother sobbed silently:
“Don't son…Don’t go somewhere you can’t come back from. We failed you.”
“You had to protect me from your father attacking me with a burning iron while you were a kid, but don't go so far away.”
Aditi realizing with dawning horror:
“He’s not asking to survive. He’s asking that thing to die.”
Bhumi: “You will never come back, give us all another chance, to let me love you the way you wanted.”
“Is your rage really infinite?”
…………………………..
The Devourer had descended.
The Gods were getting restless.
