In a sunlit garden, a game of hide and seek had devolved into an absolute shouting match.
"Rama! You... you cheater!" Momu barked, stomping his foot hard enough to kick up a small cloud of dirt.
Rama puffed out her chest, looking utterly offended. "Me not cheater!"
"Yeeess... you cheater!" he yelled back, pointing a accusatory finger at her face. "You peeked while you were counting! I saw your eye!"
Rama stuck her tongue out, her pigtails bouncing as she shook her head back and forth. "Nu-uh! My eye was just... itchy!"
As the two of them kept bickering, Ram walked over with a broad grin. Being the oldest, he casually patted Momu's messy hair. "It's okay, you two. Don't cry, Momu," he teased.
"Me not crying!" Momu huffed, swatting Ram's hand away and puffing his cheeks out until he looked like a blowfish.
Before the argument could spin out of control, another kid in the grass suddenly pointed up, eyes wide. "Woah... guys, look at that!"
"What?" All three of them turned at once.
"Look! A shooting star!"
"Chooting star?!"
Momu's mood flipped in a microsecond. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and craned his neck toward the sky. "Where? Where is it?"
"Woah! Brother, look! The chooting star! Look!" Rama grabbed Ram's sleeve, jumping up and down in the grass.
Momu clapped his hands together, squeezing his eyes shut so hard his face pinched up. "Pleeease, God! Pleeease! I don't have too many wishes... just make me Superman, Spiderman, and Ironman!"
"Idiot," Rama said, rolling her eyes. "They aren't even real—"
Ram tapped her shoulder, giving her a quiet look that said just let him pray.
"Woah, look! There are so many!" the first kid shouted again, his voice cracking. "One, two... three... four..." He ran out of fingers almost immediately.
Ram squinted at the sky, his forehead wrinkling. He was only in fifth grade, but something felt wrong. "I've never seen this many before. Mom said you usually only see one or two."
"Maybe it's a rare phenomenon," Rama offered, her voice quiet with awe.
The garden had gone strangely hushed. The usual afternoon sounds of birds and distant traffic seemed to fade under the strange streaks cutting through the blue sky.
"Wait," Ram muttered, his voice trailing off as the streaks refused to fade. They weren't disappearing. They were getting thicker. Brighter.
"I'm going to make a wish too," Rama said, clasping her hands.
"Wait, Rama!" Ram grabbed her arm.
"What?"
"Why does it look like..." He swallowed hard, his eyes widening as the streaks grew visibly larger. "...like it's coming right at us?"
The air above them suddenly roared, a deep, bone-rattling rumble that shook the ground beneath their bare feet.
"HOLY SHIT!" Ram shrieked, his voice breaking into a terrified scream. "THAT'S NOT A SHOOTING STAR! RUN! GET INSIDE!"
A few miles away, in a quiet high-rise apartment, a little girl pressed her nose against the cool living room window.
"Papa! Mama! Look at the sky! Shining fireballs!"
Her parents walked over from the kitchen, smiles on their faces, expecting to see a plane or a meteorological weather balloon. But the moment their eyes reached the glass, they stopped dead.
The little girl turned back to them, showing off a huge, gap-toothed smile. To her, the sky was putting on a private show just for their family. "Look how pretty they are," she whispered, turning back to the view, completely entranced by the glowing orange trails.
Her father's hand trembled as he placed it gently on her shoulder.
"Yeah... they're... they're beautiful, sweetheart," he choked out, his chest tight with a sudden, suffocating terror. He looked at his wife, whose face had drained of all color. "Come here. Give Dad and Mom a hug. Real tight, okay?"
He gently pulled her away from the glass, turning her head toward his chest. He didn't want her looking anymore.
Outside, it wasn't a single fireball. It was hundreds. A descending wall of white-hot iron and rock tearing through the atmosphere, dragging a sheet of flame across the heavens as it hurtled straight toward the city.
Down on the crowded sidewalk below, a man staggered forward, clutching his sweat-drenched collar.
"God damn it... why is it so hot today?" he spat, leaning against a lamp post.
He had nowhere to be. No job, no family, and not a single person in the city who cared whether he breathed or choked. He was just another piece of trash drifting across the concrete.
He glared up at the cloudless sky and spat onto the asphalt. "Why don't you just strike me dead instead of roasting me alive?" he muttered bitterly. "I swear... one day a meteorite's gonna drop right on this fucking city."
He kept walking, but the heat only intensified. It felt like standing in front of an open oven. His shirt clung to his back, wet and heavy.
"What the hell..."
He squinted up toward the sun, ready to hurl another curse at the sky, but the words died in his throat.
Right beside the sun, the blue horizon was ripping open. A cluster of blinding lights was expanding, growing larger by the second, trailing massive tails of smoke and fire.
He stared. Slowly, a jagged grin spread across his cracked lips. A low chuckle bubbled up in his chest, rising into a full, hysterical laugh that echoed over the noise of the traffic.
"Ha... ha... HAHAHAHA!" He threw his head back, howling at the sky. "You actually did it! You actually fucking listened to me!"
He started spinning in circles right in the middle of the crosswalk, raising his arms like a conductor leading an orchestra while the buildings around him reflected a blinding, hellish orange glow.
"Finally! We're all going down together! Hahaha!"
He stood there with his arms wide open, welcoming the descending heat while around him, car doors slammed and the first screams began to rise.
Inside the bustling cafeteria at Ashford University, Rix sat motionless at his table.
He wasn't watching the crowd, nor was he paying attention to the fight that had just wrapped up between Seraphine and Bryan. His attention was locked entirely on the glass of water sitting beside his tray.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
His face remained completely blank, but the hair on the back of his neck stood up.
It was that instinctual, animalistic signal that tells a creature a predator is nearby. Very slowly, he turned his head toward the floor-to-ceiling glass windows that overlooked the campus grounds.
He squinted.
Far out over the tree line, black dots were gathering against the clouds. Dozens. Hundreds.
"Birds?" he muttered under his breath. "Why are there so many birds..."
He paused. Their flight path was strange. They weren't migrating or circling. They were moving in a straight line.
Faster than any bird could fly.
Much faster.
They weren't flying at all. They were falling.
As he watched, the black specks began to friction-burn against the upper atmosphere, igniting into a cluster of harsh, incandescent orange sparks.
The half-eaten burger in Rix's hand slipped from his fingers, hitting the tray with a quiet thud. He didn't notice. The strength simply vanished from his hands.
When he tried to stand, his knees buckled, cracking hard against the underside of the table. He didn't feel the pain. His mind had completely disconnected from his body's sensory inputs, overwhelmed by sheer, primitive terror.
Humans like to think of themselves as complex, civilized beings. But stripped of routine and safety, a human is just soft meat wrapped in skin, held together by electricity and pumping blood.
Yet beneath the fear, beneath the logic and the paralysis, lies an ancient evolutionary code. A mechanism designed for one thing only: when there is no escape, when logic fails, survive.
Adrenaline dumped into Rix's bloodstream like a gallon of racing fuel.
His pupils dilated. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. The numbness in his legs vanished, replaced by an agonizing, hyper-focused surge of raw energy.
He didn't think. He didn't plan. He didn't weigh his options.
He just moved.
Rix launched himself out of his chair with so much violent force that the heavy wooden table flipped entirely onto its side.
THUD!
The heavy impact reverberated off the cafeteria walls, cutting through the chatter like a gunshot.
The students who had been laughing and discussing Seraphine's victory went dead silent. Heads turned toward the back of the room, every eye fixing on Rix—including Seraphine and Rina.
Rix didn't see any of them. He didn't have time to process their stares.
He shoved a row of chairs out of his path, sending them clattering across the floor as he sprinted full-tilt toward the main double doors.
"What's his problem?" someone near the counter muttered, breaking into a faint laugh.
Seraphine watched him, her brows furrowed. She caught the sheen of cold sweat on his neck, but the complete panic in his movement made no sense to her.
Rix didn't slow down to explain. He drove his feet into the tile floor, moving with a terrifying, desperate speed. The distance between him and the doorway vanished in a heartbeat. He brushed past Seraphine and Rina so fast the draft swept their hair across their faces.
"Huh?" Seraphine blinked, turning around just in time to see him reach the threshold.
A male student standing near the exit casually stepped into his path, raising his hands like a traffic cop. "Hey! Hold on, man, what's the rush—"
"GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!"
Driven by pure survival instinct, Rix didn't even try to dodge. He grabbed the guy by the shoulder and the back of his neck, using his forward momentum to hurl him sideways. The student slammed hard against the brick wall, gasped for breath, and slid down to the floor.
Rix didn't look back. He sprinted out into the main corridor, his shoes squeaking violently against the polished floor as he tore toward the emergency exits.
"SHIT! FUCK! DAMN IT! MOVE!" his voice echoed down the hallway, raw and frantic, fading into the distance.
Back in the cafeteria, a few people burst out laughing.
"Is he having a breakdown or something?"
"What's wrong with that guy?" Rina frowned, staring at the empty doorway.
Seraphine kept her eyes on the corridor. "I don't know," she murmured, a strange, unpleasant knot tightening in her stomach.
"Maybe he got scared looking at you, Sera!" a guy from the back joked.
"Probably just needed the bathroom!"
The laughter rippled through the room again, easy and light, as people went back to their food and their conversations.
A heavy quiet settled over the room as Rix's shouting finally died away.
Near the flipped table, a girl sighed and stepped forward. "What a mess..." she grumbled, reaching down to grab the wooden frame.
She pulled it upright, the metal legs scraping against the floor tiles, and brushed off her hands. "Seriously, what is wrong with him..."
As she straightened up, her eyes happened to drift toward the massive exterior windows.
She stopped.
The air left her lungs all at once. Her face drained of color, her skin turning a sickly, waxy white.
She took a staggering step backward, her foot catching on a chair leg, and collapsed onto her back. A scream tore out of her throat—a thin, ragged sound of pure, unadulterated terror.
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The cafeteria fell silent instantly. Dozens of students turned to look at her in confusion.
"Hey—what's wrong with you?"
"Why are you screaming?!"
She lay on the floor, pointing a wildly trembling finger toward the glass. Her jaw worked up and down, but no coherent words came out, only dry, desperate gasps.
"T-the... the sky... look..."
"What are you talking about?" a guy near her frowned, turning around. "There's nothing—"
"LOOK AT IT!" someone else shrieked, dropping their phone onto the floor.
At that exact instant, the light coming through the windows changed. The warm afternoon sun vanished, replaced by an unnatural, bruised orange that rapidly deepened into a blinding, blood-red glare.
"What is that...?" Seraphine started, her voice immediately drowned out.
There was no further warning. No time to run. No time to think.
Just a single, world-ending—
BOOM..