There was no sound anymore.
Not even the wind dared pass through the scorched canyons where skyscrapers once kissed the sky. The oceans had dried to obsidian trenches. The cities had become graveyards of iron bones and frozen fire. A world once teeming with noise, faces, and breath had fallen silent—extinguished by the very hands that built it.
He walked alone.
Boots cracked over shattered glass and melted concrete. The air tasted like iron and ash. His suit, once part of a global defense network, now hung tattered over a half-burned uniform. The visor no longer displayed alerts. The world had run out of things to warn him about.
He had no name left.
He'd discarded it after the tenth funeral. Buried it beside his younger brother's mangled remains. The name hadn't saved his parents. It hadn't saved his squad. It hadn't saved the children he'd failed to evacuate when the last orbital station came crashing down in flames.
He was just a man now—breathing on a planet that no longer had any.
And somehow, that was worse than death.
He sat down on the edge of a cliff—a broken fragment of what used to be a coastal city, now hanging above a cracked wasteland. Clouds of nuclear snow drifted in slow spirals beneath the sunset-colored sky. He rested his back against a bent streetlamp and tilted his head up.
His eyes, sunken from weeks without proper sleep, still searched the heavens.
He wasn't praying. The gods of Earth had died long before the people.
He simply... looked. Waiting for the light to leave his body.
And then—the sky tore open.
Not like a crack. Not like thunder. Like something unfolding from the inside out.Twelve pillars of golden light pierced the horizon, each one humming with a presence that twisted the rules of reality. The air hummed. Time slowed. The ground beneath him—dead and hardened—suddenly softened with warmth.
He tried to stand, but his limbs refused. His mind screamed against the hallucination.
"Are you afraid?""Are you angry?""Do you still wish to live?"
The voices echoed—not from above, but from within. A chorus, ancient and knowing. They spoke not in language, but in meaning.
"You are the last flicker of a world extinguished.But the multiverse still burns.And there are others… many others… who are about to be snuffed out too soon."
He blinked. The world slowed to a crawl. The wind halted mid-motion.
Twelve figures emerged within the pillars—each towering, unbound by physical shape. Some wore armor of starlight. Others shimmered like constellations or beasts of light and shadow. They stood not as deities demanding worship, but as watchers offering choice.
"We are the Twelve Thrones," said the voice again. "And we ask you to become the one who watches in our place. The one who steps where we cannot."
"Why me?" he whispered, voice raw. "Why not someone pure? Someone whole?"
The answer came not in words, but in warmth.
Because only someone broken can recognize what should never be broken again.
The light engulfed him.
His body, his scars, his emptiness—all stripped away. Not healed. Not erased. Just… carried.He felt himself dissolve, not into death, but into purpose.
And the last light of Earth faded behind him.
[Prologue Complete – Transitioning to Sanctuary Zone: Pokémon Timeline ∞Ω][System Genesis Installed][All Twelve Blessings Active][Designation Assigned: "The Watcher"]