[-The Final Draft-]
Volume XV - Apocalypse
-LdrQll
Several panting figures stumbled into the broken street, boots clattering against rubble, the rattle of armor ringing hollow in the silence. Their breaths came heavy and ragged, each exhale a sharp reminder of the hour-long run that had nearly emptied their lungs.
They halted amid the ruins of collapsed buildings.
"Did we lose it?" one hunter gasped, dropping to his knees, sweat streaking through the grime on his face.
"I think... hahh... we outran it, Captain," another wheezed, leaning against a fractured wall.
"Oh! I never signed up for this... how can such beasts exist?" a third muttered between frantic gulps of air, voice breaking beneath his exhaustion.
The captain thrust his sword into the cracked asphalt, letting the metal's ring bite into the silence. He straightened, chest still heaving, and swept his eyes across his men.
"This is how a hunter lives," he said, steadying his voice despite the fatigue. "This is our calling... the calling the deities gave us."
"...Let's not stay here any longer," the captain said, his gaze narrowing toward the distance. Something stirred far off, unseen yet undeniable.
Danger.
"I barely had a moment to rest—hahh..." one of his men groaned, nearly collapsing as his knees buckled.
"We can't," the captain snapped, sharp but weary. "If we stay, they'll track us by our scent... and hunt us the same way we hunt them."
With a frustrated snarl, the stumbling hunter slammed his fist against a slab of fallen debris, the impact dull and hollow. He forced himself upright, swaying but determined, before staggering after the captain.
One by one, they fell in line. Their boots scraped the shattered ground as they pressed forward along the Upper bank street, every step hurried, every glance cast over the shoulder, as though shadows themselves were stalking at their heels.
But even then...
As the hunters tried to keep quiet, luck seemed to turn its back. Not far ahead, a massive clawed hand tore through the wall of a leaning building, stone and steel shrieking as it was crushed to rubble.
The group froze. Their breaths caught as the beast's monstrous head pushed through the broken masonry, peering down the crossing.
Immediately, all six men raised their weapons. Halberds gleamed, swords caught the pale light, but their grips trembled.
The creature stepped further out, revealing a towering bulk—easily the size of a three-storey building. Its presence alone was enough to make C-tier hunters quake; their knees bent, their chests tightened, but none dared initiate.
They held. Waiting. Dreading.
But the beast didn't move—not yet.
Before it could act, a new sound shattered the tense stillness.
A howl, not of a beast, but a person. A growing, rushing cry that tore through the air above them.
The hunters looked up. Their eyes widened as they caught sight of a figure plummeting headfirst from the sky.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHH—!" The scream should have been panicked, but something in its tone felt wrong. Too calm. Too controlled.
A thunderous crash split the ground in front of them. Dust and shards of asphalt exploded outward as the body struck headfirst. Half the torso buried itself into the broken street, leaving only legs and part of a waist jutting upward, twitching faintly.
The hunters recoiled, shifting between the unmoving beast and the corpse impaled into the earth.
Until...
"AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!" a muffled voice roared from below. "I think my skull cracked!"
The buried figure was laughing—his words warped and broken by the ground pressing against his upside-down mouth.
"What in the..." the captain muttered, eyes narrowing as he watched the stranger's legs sway playfully in the air.
"Oh... is there someone there? Might give me a hand, mate?..." Ivan's muffled voice carried strangely from the ground.
The hunters exchanged uneasy glances. His tone was casual, far too casual for someone who had just plummeted from the heavens.
"A GrizzlyBack tossed me out of Westferry Circus... to... wherever this is," the buried man added, voice still half-strangled by dirt and stone.
"C... captain," one of the hunters stammered, his knuckles white on his halberd. His eyes darted between the massive beast—still looming, still watching—and the man stuck headfirst in the cracked street.
For some reason, the monster hadn't moved. It only tilted its colossal head, as though observing with curious, almost human intent.
The captain grit his teeth, then moved forward. Every step was deliberate, slow. He gripped the swaying legs, braced himself, and with a hard pull managed to wrench the stranger free from the earth.
The body slid out with a grind of gravel and soil. The captain stumbled backward, nearly losing his footing.
"Ahh... that made me dizzy," Ivan said with a chuckle, brushing at the dust that clung to him. His movements were loose, almost playful, like none of this concerned him at all.
The squad of hunters stood frozen. Their blank expressions betrayed their confusion, their unease.
Their eyes fell on his face—or rather, the thing covering his eyes.
A blindfold.
Stained, ragged, yet bound tightly enough to hide his eyes completely.
An uncommon sight. Almost unnatural.
Slowly, Ivan pushed himself upright, brushing clumps of dirt and rubble from his tattered clothes. His hands moved lazily, swatting at the dust as though none of this—the fall, the beast, the hunters—was worth his concern.
Who is this man...? the captain thought, his jaw tightening. He shrugged off the impact as though it were nothing. He laughed. He laughed as if death itself were a joke to him. His mind worked quickly, weighing the stranger's presence.
"Oh! You're in trouble, I see!" Ivan announced suddenly, voice light, almost gleeful. He had turned to face the monstrous shape ahead, tilting his head, hands held atop of his blindfold as though he were admiring some oddity at a fair.
"That's a Category III beast," the captain barked without hesitation, his voice taut. "Icebreaker."
Murmurs rippled through the squad, their nerves rattling.
"How... how can he see when his eyes are covered?" one hunter whispered sharply, his voice trembling.
The man beside him only shook his head, confused and pale.
Ivan leaned forward slightly, tilting his head the same way the beast had earlier, mimicking its posture like a child studying an animal in a cage. "Hmmm... I wonder why it hasn't attack—"
He didn't finish.
The Icebreaker's massive frame lurched into motion, the ground quaking beneath each stride. Clawed hands tore chunks of stone from the street as it lunged, its maw splitting open with a guttural roar.
"...I shouldn't have said that," Ivan muttered with a crooked grin, as though amused by his own misfortune.
The squad didn't wait.
"MOVE!" the captain roared, his men already bolting in the opposite direction. Armor clattered, boots scraped against broken stone as they fled.
But when the captain glanced back, his blood ran cold.
Ivan hadn't moved.
He stood there in the path of the charging beast, dust still clinging to him, his blindfolded face turned toward death itself... as though he wanted to meet it head-on.
"Is it corrupted?... I don't think it is... hmmm..." Ivan muttered, fingers brushing his chin in thought, voice strangely calm even as the ground trembled.
He lowered himself slowly, one knee pressing to the dirt, palm spreading flat against the cracked cobblestones.
The instant his skin met stone, his hidden sight twisted—warping into flashes of what was yet to come.
The world before his blindfold shivered into fragments.
He saw the Icebreaker's rampage tearing through the street, brick and mortar pulverized beneath its steps. He saw the six hunters sprinting desperately, weaving between falling debris as the beast stalked after them—not rushing, not straining, simply hunting at its own measured pace. In the vision, they escaped. Bruised, battered, terrified, but alive.
It was normal. Fated. Uncorrupted.
Ivan rose slowly, brushing his hand against his trousers, voice almost disappointed. "...Just the way it was supposed to be."
But reality did not hold.
Instead of fleeing with his men, the captain had turned back, lunging toward Ivan. He seized his arm, dragging him with surprising strength. "Move, damn you!" the captain barked, desperate.
The beast's shadow swallowed them.
The Icebreaker barreled forward, its hulking frame scraping against the crumbling walls, each motion splitting the air with cracks and groans of stone. Its breath rolled over them, cold and damp, stinking of iron and old flesh.
The others had already reached the mouth of the Upper Bank street, spilling into the wider, open grounds where escape was possible. But here—in the narrow chokehold of stone and ruin—there was no room to maneuver.
The captain pulled harder, boots skidding. "Run!"
But Ivan only tilted his head. For a moment, he almost looked amused.
"...This isn't what I saw."
The Icebreaker's arm swung down, a slab of pale muscle lined with jagged claws, tearing the air toward them.
Its arm did not hit them, but the airburst from the swing cracked against their bodies, nearly throwing them off their feet. Dust and splinters stung their skin as the ground quivered beneath the force.
"You are supposed to be with your men," Ivan said, his voice unnervingly steady even as the captain dragged him along.
"I don't know what you mean by that... but this is not the time to talk!" the captain snarled, half-hauling him through the street's mouth, cutting sharp to the right.
Behind them, the beast's massive claw slammed into the wall, pulverizing stone and mortar into shards. The Icebreaker's head tilted low, almost curious, its breath seeping like frost through the broken gap as it followed their movement.
The others had vanished into the distance—shadows against the wider road, gone to safety. Only the captain and Ivan remained.
Ivan glanced back once.
The beast's chest heaved, its ribcage expanding, throat bulging unnaturally as its maw split wider than any earthly jaw. The pale outer layer of its trachea glowed, swelling with an eerie azure hue, veins of light crawling up its neck like molten cracks.
A sound built from deep within it—a low, thunderous rumble, vibrating in their bones. The air grew colder, prickling their skin, every breath turning to mist.
The captain's eyes widened. He shoved Ivan forward with all the strength in his arms. "Move! It's going to—"
The Icebreaker roared, a sound that split the world open.
The blue radiance flared brighter.
It was about to unleash something catastrophic.
Ivan's boots scraped against the cracked stone as the captain dragged him down the road. For a heartbeat, Ivan's gaze lingered on the luminous throat of the beast. The glow was not part of the vision he had glimpsed before.
"Oh damn..." his lips curled into a faint grin, though his eyes narrowed with thought. "I think it's because of my actions."
The captain shot him a brief, bewildered glance, but Ivan wasn't speaking to him. He was piecing it together.
The captain would never have been here—would never have doubled back to pull him from the ground—if not for his presence. His decision had tugged at the threads of what was supposed to be. Now the future was changing before his eyes.
"Is this how I rewrite the actual fate?" Ivan whispered, almost in wonder, his voice lost beneath the beast's gathering roar.
He turned his head, studying the man hauling him forward. The captain's jaw was tight, his breath ragged. Beneath that stern mask, Ivan could feel it—fear, sharp and raw. Of course he was afraid. Anyone would be. To be pursued by a Category III... to die frozen, crushed in ice... it was a nightmare no hunter ever wanted to meet.
Ivan's blindfold shifted slightly as he tilted his head, a strange calm overtaking him. Where the others saw only death, he was seeing something else—a test, perhaps even a lesson.
The Icebreaker's chest expanded again, the blue glow swelling brighter.
The vision had been broken. Fate itself was bending.
And Ivan was the reason.
Ivan's chest rose and fell in uneven rhythm, his thoughts colliding in chaos. He didn't have time to map it all out. He was still new to this power, fumbling in the dark with rules he hadn't written.
If he let the captain die here, something in the future would unravel. If he destroyed the Icebreaker outright, there would be consequences too—ripples in the story he couldn't yet predict.
Being an all-being wasn't glorious. It was suffocating.
And Ivan hated suffocation. Hated the weight of decisions when the clock was ticking down his neck.
The Icebreaker's jaws snapped shut, its maw glowing like a forge, light spilling from the cracks of its throat.
Ivan swallowed hard. Once it opened again, they'd be encased in ice.
And then—it did.
The world lit up in blue. The air split with the howl of frost. A torrent of ice surged toward them.
Ivan didn't think. He couldn't.
His fingers twitched—then snapped.
Silence.
The beam froze mid-flight, an immaculate shard of death hovering just inches from them. The world around him stood still, robbed of motion. Dust hung in the air like suspended stars. The captain's desperate pull was locked halfway, his boot barely kissing the ground.
Everything was quiet.
Ivan lowered his hand, staring at the frozen moment, his breath echoing like thunder in his ears.
"...shit," he muttered to himself, eyes narrowing behind the blindfold. "I really... froze it."
But the real dread wasn't the Icebreaker. It was the knowledge that time, fate, and consequence would come crashing down the moment he decided what to do next.
"Now... let's see what we're dealing with." Ivan muttered, letting go of the captain's arm. His hand pressed against the man's back.
A surge of vision warped before his eyes. The future fractured and spilled open, showing him what he intended to find. The captain survived—he escaped this street. None of this frozen moment was supposed to exist. He returned with his men, reported the attack to their guild Supervisor, and the story continued as written.
Ivan pulled his hand away, his expression taut.
He drifted off the ground, levitating toward the towering Icebreaker. Its claws hung mid-swipe, its throat glowing in frozen blue. Hovering before it, Ivan extended his palm and pressed it gently against the beast's jagged hide.
The vision tore through him again.
The Icebreaker wasn't fated to die here. It would keep roaming the ruined city, scattering destruction, until finally being slain by a high-ranked hunter. This moment too... should never have existed.
Ivan slid his hand down his face, dragging his palm over his jaw as if to stretch it, exhaling sharply. His other hand rested on his hip, his body tilting in levitation, disappointed, annoyed.
"Bloody hell..." was all he managed, the words flat and bitter.
He pivoted in the frozen silence, floating back toward the captain, the weight of consequence heavy in his chest.
He glanced at the beast, then at the captain's tense face once again. The seed of an idea slid into his mind.
If I can stop time... then why not rewind it?
The thought pulsed sharp, dangerous. Reversing everything would strain the continuum of the story itself. But... what if he could confine it? What if only a chosen place bent to his will?
His lips curled into a grin, widening into something bright and reckless.
"That's it!" he whispered, then laughed under his breath.
Ivan knew he could warp the entire scenario with a single thought. Being an author gave him that. But this wasn't just about power—it was about presentation.
He spread his arms wide, his clothes shifting with the frozen air. Then he clapped his hands together with a deep crack. At once, the fabric of the street buckled inward, a shimmering dome sealing over the scene like glass.
The frozen scenario trembled within his grasp.
Slowly, deliberately, Ivan rotated his hand in a counterclockwise swirl. The dome pulsed, its light bleeding backward. Buildings uncracked. Dust unshattered. The beast's maw unlit. The captain's desperate drag of Ivan reversed step by step.
The world was winding back—rewound to the heartbeat before the Icebreaker even considered exhaling its frost.
Ivan snapped reality back into motion. The frozen world lurched forward, but in that instant he shifted—his body flickering from the captain's grasp to a step behind him. The captain never even realized he'd let go.
Then, with a twist of intent, the street itself folded. As if the ground had turned liquid, both Ivan and the captain sank into it like ink on water. A heartbeat later, they burst back out of the air in front of the captain's comrades, who were sprinting desperately toward safety.
"What in the—!" one of them shouted, stumbling back in shock.
Ivan rose slowly from the warped ripple in reality, brushing the dust from his shoulder with exaggerated calm. "There... all safe and sound."
The others stared, breathless and wide-eyed. Around them stretched only ruin—collapsed walls, jagged stone, and gouges of giant footprints stamped deep into the earth. The city street had become unrecognizable, a wasteland scarred by the passage of something far greater than human.
Ivan's gaze swept across it, unreadable, though a trace of satisfaction lingered in the curl of his mouth.
"What... just happened?" the captain gasped, still dizzy from the sudden shift. His hand tightened on his weapon as if it were the only anchor he had left in reality.
"We uhh... travelled Eight hundred miles in a blink of an eye," Ivan replied, his tone almost playful, not a single shred of doubt or hesitation in his voice.
The words hung heavy. Eight hundred miles—impossible, absurd. Yet here they stood, in front of the captain's comrades, with the distant city walls just beyond.
But plausibility was never meant to matter. Not for Ivan.
The moment he chose to move, the world bent. The ground, the sky, the air—none of it had weight against him. His placement was his own decision, not ruled by distance, not ruled by time. The captain, dragged along in his grip, was carried outside the rules as well. No shattering backlash, no cosmic correction, no consequence—because Ivan did not allow it.
He was the author, and so the breakage of reason was nothing more than a choice.
The captain staggered, breath unsteady, trying to piece together what he had just lived through. His eyes darted to Ivan, but the man's calm, almost bored expression only made the miracle more unnerving.
"Anyway... how did you five reach here so fast?" Ivan asked, tilting his head toward the hunters.
Some of them staggered, still too dazed to form words, their eyes flicking between their captain and the stranger who had just bent the world like paper.
"I am... I'm an incarnation of Hermes," one finally muttered, raising his hand as though confessing before a judge.
Although, for some reason, Ivan had already known. The words played out in his mind before the man's lips moved. He wasn't corrupted, still intact in the narrative—still his character.
As Ivan turned to ask another, the response again unfolded in his thoughts seconds ahead. Each answer revealed itself to him, like a book he had already read too many times.
His shoulders sank. His interest waned. What fun was dialogue when he already knew every line?
"Ahh... an incarnation of Olympus. I see," he replied flatly, already weary of the cycle.
The hunters exchanged uneasy glances, unsettled by his detached tone.
Inwardly, Ivan sighed. If all was revealed too soon, if every thread was visible at once, there was no tension, no story.
And so, in the privacy of his mind, he built a cage. A limiter. A deliberate wall within himself, severing the constant flood of omniscience. He wove the concept of limit into the very essence of the blindfold, heavy and firm, leaving him to stumble in the dark once more.
Only when his hidden gaze unwrapped—when he allowed himself to peer again into the narrative's veins—would that limiter dissolve. Until then, he chose ignorance, if only to feel alive. More human.
Yet one question lingered in his mind: why had he not known what to do when they were attacked by the Icebreaker? Was it because it was a new fate he had just written, and not the one the Elderquill had written before him? He struggled to comprehend.
"How about you...?" the captain asked at last, his voice still unsteady. His eyes narrowed on Ivan, suspicion wrestling with awe. "I don't know who else could... teleport us that far in an instant."
"My benefactor is solitary, that was... an innate skill" Ivan answered without pause. His words carried a rehearsed calm, though in truth he himself was the benefactor.
The captain studied him, brows furrowed. "A solitary deity... I suppose. That explains..." He trailed off, still wrestling with the thought.
Solitary deities were not like the Olympians or the fractured pantheons men so often prayed to. They stood alone—absolute, unchallenged, their power undivided. No council to share the burden, no siblings to temper their reach. Every prayer, every responsibility, every punishment fell upon them alone. To mortals, they were gods beyond measure—maddening in scope, terrifying in solitude.
The captain swallowed, trying to reconcile the boy before him with that weight of legend.
Ivan only smiled faintly, letting the misunderstanding linger.
"Come on... let's get movin' before another roamer eats us," Ivan muttered as he stepped ahead of the group, his boots crunching against the fractured asphalt. He followed the jagged line of the broken road, his eyes fixed on the horizon.
The others hesitated only a moment before trailing after him, their silence weighed down by exhaustion and unease.
Hours passed beneath the choking gray sky. Their march carried them through hollow streets, where skeletal buildings leaned against one another like drunks, ready to collapse. The air was thick with dust and the stench of rust and decay. From somewhere deep in the ruins came the guttural screams of beasts—echoes that crawled across the shattered stone and made every footstep heavier.
The road stretched endlessly forward, but their goal remained distant. Seven kilometers yet lay between them and the fortified heart of the city—Buckingham Palace, long since converted into the central stronghold of survivors.
The hunters trudged on in silence, their boots dragging across rubble. At last, one of them groaned, "Can't you just teleport us straight to the city already?"
Ivan turned his head, locking eyes with the incarnation of Hermes. For a heartbeat, he wore an unreadable expression—then suddenly burst into loud, theatrical laughter.
"HAHAHAHAHAH!" His voice echoed through the ruined street, unsettlingly cheerful against the backdrop of distant beastly cries. "If only it were that simple. I can only use it... twice a day."
He drifted backward, levitating just above the cracked pavement while the others continued walking. His arms spread lazily as though carried by an invisible breeze.
"The first time was when I was tossed right in front of you lot," he said smoothly. "The second was when I pulled us from that little frosty predicament a while ago."
Every word was a lie, but not a tremor of doubt touched his voice.
Several hours dragged by, the night settling in like a suffocating cloak. At last, the ruined skyline gave way to the looming gates of the city complex.
Torches and flickering lamps lined the battlements, their glow glinting off steel. Six guards stood at ground level, rifles slung across their shoulders—old relics scavenged from the world before the apocalypse. Each bore a sheathed blade at their side, gleaming faintly under the lamplight.
Above, six more waited atop the wall, silhouettes haloed in light. The dull shine of scopes caught Ivan's eyes. His vision sharpened—zooming in unnaturally, like a camera lens adjusting—catching the polished barrels of sniper rifles trained outward into the night.
"Halt!!!" a voice barked. One of the ground guards stepped forward, rifle angled casually toward the group, though his eyes carried the suspicion of a man who had seen too many strange wanderers at his gate.