The sky had always been a backdrop, a giant curtain for Death to look mysterious.Now the curtain ripped apart, revealing the backstage machinery: a bottomless black abyss.As if someone yanked down the world's trousers, exposing the moldy Void underneath.
The realm collapsed.Cracks staggered like a drunk's footsteps.The ground groaned like creaky wood floors, not eternal ironstone.One reaper muttered, "So it really was cardboard."Then the floor swallowed him whole, silencing the punchline.
Buildings, scythes, archives, even office desks spiraled upward, sucked into the abyss.One reaper clung to his chair, screaming, "My timesheet! I didn't clock out yet!"The chair obligingly dumped him into the pit.
Ethan watched and almost laughed.Once, he thought Death's realm was the final courthouse: eternal, untouchable.Now it looked like a leaky office building hit by a black typhoon, its filing cabinets raining down like confetti.
"Should we find an exit?" someone asked."Exit? Sky's gone. We're cockroaches in a black hole now.""At least cockroaches will open nightclubs after the apocalypse," Ethan added.
Above, the abyss roared. The Void's tendrils snatched up stray souls like waiters hustling for tips.Some survivors wept. Others cackled. One sat cross-legged, as if watching the season finale of a bad play.
A few reapers resisted.Their scythes slashed the sky, but every cut just peeled another layer of darkness."Like peeling onions," Ethan muttered. "Only it stings worse."The reaper glared—then plummeted into the abyss, another onion skin discarded.
The horizon folded. Mountains bent like cardboard props.Rivers flowed upward, wrung dry like dirty rags, then vanished with a pathetic splat.The realm wasn't collapsing—it was being packed up, like a broke theater company canceling its show.
"The world's ending," someone whispered."So what?" Ethan shrugged. "It was always a temp dorm. Bound to cave in."Yet his eyes locked on the abyss.That was the source. The Void's real heart.
His friend's puppet shell lingered on the edge, tethered by black strings.Their clash still reverberated, cracks spreading like spiderwebs.
Then—an eerie chorus rose.Not the reapers. Not hymns.The voices of swallowed souls, chanting off-key like a cursed jingle:
——"Buy a life from Death, half-price if you're late…"
The survivors shuddered and chuckled at once."Is the Void… joking?" one muttered."It doesn't want to end us. It just wants to make us its playlist.""Playlist?" Ethan sneered. "Then let me be the last out-of-tune track."
The abyss yawned wider. Only a few floating shards remained.Ethan stood on one, feet over cracks, head under nothing.He knew this wasn't an ending. Just the opening scene of the next absurd act.
The abyss closed in, curtain falling.And with it, the world pressed "delete."