The world ended with a sentence.
Not a bomb.Not a virus.Not a nuclear button pressed by a sweaty politician.
Just… a sentence.
[The world has ended.]
The words glowed midair, stark white against the dim light of my crappy one-room apartment.
I blinked once. Twice. The text didn't disappear.
"…Really?" I muttered. "That's the opener? If you're going to kill me off, at least use better prose."
My name is Ishaan Reed twenty-four years old, failed novelist, part-time English tutor, and full-time disappointment. Until thirty seconds ago, my biggest concern was whether my landlord would accept late rent again.
Now? Apparently, I had front row tickets to the apocalypse.
✦
Another line appeared:
[Scenario 1: The Prologue of Survival begins.] [Condition: Outlast the first hour.]
"…One hour? That's it?" My laugh was hollow. "Who wrote this tutorial, a lazy dungeon master?"
But the city outside answered me with a scream.
I froze. Then came another scream, louder, followed by something wet.
My hand trembled as I pushed the curtain aside.
The familiar skyline was gone. Flames curled along highways. Cars lay overturned like toys. And in the middle of the chaos, a monster shaped like a wolf except the size of a truck sank its jaws into a bus, peeling it open like a sardine can.
My mouth went dry.
I wasn't hallucinating. This was real.
And then came another notification:
[Participants registered: 7,214,552,189] [Survivors remaining: 7,214,430,331]
The number was plummeting in real time. Thousands. Tens of thousands.
I whispered, "Oh, f*ck."
That's when another line flickered across the floating screen.
[You are not supposed to exist here.]
✦
The words weren't the same clean system font as before. They were jagged, imperfect, like scrawled handwriting forced into the code.
"…Excuse me?" I muttered. "Not supposed to exist? What's that supposed to mean?"
But the sentence blinked out before I got an answer.
✦
I staggered into the hallway. Neighbors screamed. A man from 304 swung a cricket bat at something crawling out of the stairwell a spider-like thing with too many legs and eyes like wet marbles.
The bat connected with a crunch. The thing shrieked, then lunged again, tearing half his arm off in a spray of blood.
I slammed my door shut, chest heaving. My mind scrambled: Do something. Run. Hide. Anything.
And then another screen unfurled in front of me.
[Rewrite available.]
"…Rewrite?" I whispered.
Words scrolled down like a script editor opening a document.
[Sentence: The monster broke through the door and devoured Ishaan Reed.]
> [Rewrite? (Y/N)]
My blood turned to ice. That sentence my death, written like a line in a story.
Hands shaking, I jabbed at Y.
The words glitched, then reformed:
[Sentence: The monster clawed at the door, but the hinges held.]
On cue, the pounding outside ceased. The shadow under the door vanished.
My knees buckled.
"…No way."
I wasn't hallucinating. I had just… edited reality.
✦
Screams from outside grew sharper, closer. The world was burning, survivors dropping by the thousands, and I a failed writer with unfinished manuscripts rotting on my laptop was suddenly holding the pen to rewrite existence.
It should have felt empowering. Instead, it felt… wrong.
Like scribbling corrections in a book that wasn't mine.
And then came the kicker:
[Warning: You are not the only one who can Rewrite.]
The text lingered, glowing faintly.
I stared, mouth dry.
Somewhere in the chaos, someone or something else had the same power.
And if they could rewrite reality too…
My survival had just become the worst kind of competition.