November 17, 2037
Dear D̶i̶a̶r̶y̶ Journal,
I must say today has been anything but normal.
That's probably the understatement of the century, but I'm trying to maintain some semblance of composure here. It's difficult when reality keeps fracturing like cheap glass and reassembling itself into increasingly absurd configurations.
Where do I even start?
First, idiots, definitely not me, started destroying everything. The city, I mean. What was left of it after yesterday's light show. Apparently, gaining godlike powers makes some people think they're entitled to redecorate the entire urban landscape with fire and rubble.
I think they went drunk on power or something.
Actually, "drunk" doesn't quite cover it. It was more like they'd mainlined pure chaos directly into their brainstems. Buildings exploded for no reason. Streets turned to molten glass. Some guy, who couldn't have been older than twenty, was laughing hysterically as he disintegrated cars with beams of concentrated light from his eyes, tears streaming down his face the entire time.
Power does strange things to people.
Or maybe it just reveals who they always were underneath.
W̶e̶ I have decided to call them V̶i̶l̶l̶a̶i̶n̶s̶ the Fallen... yeah, that sounds really cool, better than boring old Villains.
It fits, doesn't it? They fell from whatever grace humanity pretended to have. Fell into madness, into cruelty, into the honest brutality that civilization had been masking for millennia. The Awakened who couldn't handle the weight of what they'd become.
The Fallen.
I came up with that. Just so we're clear. If it catches on—and it will, because I'm brilliant—everyone should know it originated with Claymore Blackcastle. I'd trademark it, but I'm not sure the patent office is still operational.
Pretty sure I saw it on fire yesterday.
The morning started with screaming. That's becoming a pattern, I've noticed. Used to be my alarm clock woke me up. Now it's the sound of someone discovering they can shoot acid from their hands and accidentally melting their roommate.
Progress.
I was in my newly acquired penthouse—did I mention the view? Spectacular, really—when the sky turned red. Not metaphorically red. Actually, literally, physically red. The kind of red you see when you close your eyes too tight, except it was everywhere, staining the air itself.
Then came the first attack.
It started off with blood and fire raining from the sky.
I'm not being poetic. Blood. And fire. Falling like precipitation. The blood sizzled when it hit the pavement, evaporating into crimson steam. The fire burned upward, defying gravity, reaching back toward whatever hell had spawned it. The combination created this hellish mist that clung to everything, making the air thick and hot and metallic.
Everyone thought it was the beginning of the apocalypse.
People were running through the streets, screaming about the End Times, Judgment Day, Revelations made manifest. Some were praying. Others were looting. A few were just standing there, staring up at the bleeding sky with expressions of perfect acceptance, like they'd been waiting for this their entire lives.
I wonder who gave them that dumb idea.
Actually, I know exactly who. There was this street preacher—scraggly beard, wild eyes, the works—standing on an overturned car shrieking about divine retribution. Really committed to the bit. Got a bit less committed when a chunk of flaming debris crushed him mid-sermon.
Timing is everything in comedy.
After all, with my clearly superior intelligence, I could easily tell we were being taken over by demonic aliens from an alternate dimension.
Hmph!!
It was obvious, really. The blood was too thick, too dark. Human blood doesn't burn with green flames. And the sky wasn't just red—it was wrong. Geometrically impossible. If you looked at it too long, your eyes started to water and your head ached, like your brain was trying to process shapes that shouldn't exist in three-dimensional space.
Interdimensional invasion. Elementary deduction.
The portal opened around noon. Tore itself into existence above the city center with a sound like reality screaming. It was a wound in space, ragged and pulsing, bleeding that same thick darkness that had filled the air. And from it, they came.
Demons.
Not the metaphorical kind. Not some poetic description of human evil. Actual, literal, honest-to-god demons.
They poured through the rift like a flood of living shadow. Their forms were... inconsistent. Shifting. Some had too many limbs. Others had none, just masses of writhing darkness that moved with terrible purpose. They burned with that same green-black fire, and where they touched the ground, the pavement cracked and bled.
The Awakened fought back, of course. Those who weren't Fallen, at least. Fire met darkness. Lightning struck the shadow. It was chaos incarnate, beautiful and terrible in equal measure.
I watched from my window. Strategic observation, you understand. Someone needed to document this for posterity.
Also, I wasn't entirely sure I wouldn't die if I went outside.
That's when she appeared.
And oh my, the demon general lady who was leading the invasion—let's just say she was the sexiest woman I'd ever seen.
I know, I know. Middle of an apocalyptic demonic invasion, humanity on the brink, probably shouldn't be focusing on physical attractiveness. But you have to understand—this wasn't a normal attraction. This was something primal, something that bypassed rational thought entirely and went straight for the reptilian hindbrain.
Her long black hair fell like the night sky, not metaphorically but literally—it seemed to contain actual darkness, depth beyond depth, like you could fall into it forever. Her beautiful red eyes glowed with an inner fire that should have been terrifying but was instead mesmerizing. Her skin was perfect, smooth, pink, and absolutely flawless in a way that human skin never achieved.
And that body.
Curves in all the right places. All of them. Every single one. It was geometrically perfect, proportions that would make mathematicians weep. She wore armor that looked like it was made from crystallized shadow, form-fitting in ways that armor had no business being.
She was a goddess.
I think they called her Ishcar... or was it Ishtar?
Ah, that doesn't really matter. All I know is she's totally banging.
She walked through the battlefield like she was strolling through a garden, completely unbothered by the carnage around her. Demons parted before her. Awakened attacks dissipated against some invisible barrier. She was untouchable, unreachable, perfect in her terrible beauty.
And she passed right by my building.
Yeah, when she was walking by, I actually managed to get a whiff of her scent through my open window.
Wait, that sounds totally weird.
Let me rephrase: her presence carried a scent that permeated the area. I didn't go sniffing after her like some kind of creep. The aroma just... arrived. Invaded my space. Completely non-consensually.
But I must say, she smelled wonderful.
Like burning roses and dark chocolate and something else, something sweet and dangerous that I couldn't identify. It was intoxicating. Made my head spin. Made my body react in ways that were entirely inappropriate given the circumstances.
I think I got bricked up from her scent alone.
There. I said it. Journal, you're the only one who needs to know this, and you can't judge me because you're paper.
My vision got hazy after that. Everything went sort of soft-focus and dreamlike. I remember stumbling away from the window, my legs unsteady. The room seemed to tilt. Or maybe I was tilting, and the room stayed still. Hard to say.
I know I don't quite remember everything that happened next.
There are gaps. Missing time. One moment I was at the window, the next I was... somewhere else? The memories are fragmented, confused, like trying to remember a dream after waking.
I do remember one thing: I totally did it with her.
Yeah. The demon general. Ishtar. Ishcar. Whatever.
The memory is vivid. Crystal clear. Her skin against mine, hot like fever. Those red eyes staring into me, seeing through me, seeing parts of me I didn't know existed. The way she smiled, sharp teeth glinting. The sensation of falling and flying simultaneously.
It was transcendent.
It was perfect.
It was—
Well, I think I did.
The certainty wavers when I focus on it too hard. Like trying to hold water in your fists. The harder I grasp, the more it slips away.
Then again, I also remember some nerd calling her a succubus afterward.
Wait.
Wait.
Don't tell me that was some type of dream.
Succubus. Demon of lust and desire. Feeds on life energy through sexual encounters. Creates incredibly vivid illusions in the minds of their victims. The encounter isn't real—it's a psychic projection, a fantasy crafted from the victim's own desires while the succubus drains them dry.
No.
No, it was real. I'm certain. The memory is too detailed, too specific. I can remember the texture of her hair, the sound of her laugh, and the way she whispered my name.
It felt so realistic t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶a̶g̶a̶i̶n̶,̶ ̶I̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶ ̶c̶u̶m̶ ̶a̶l̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶t̶a̶n̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶f̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶—nope, that was definitely fake, definitely!
Moving on.
Let's talk about something else. Anything else.
The other cool thing that happened that day, because apparently, demonic invasions weren't enough excitement, was the birth of the first Deity.
Or as I like to call them, the Divinity.
Capital D. They deserve it.
Basically, they're Awakened who are especially blessed by Ether, which is what we refer to as the energy that engulfed the world yesterday. The translucent light that changed everything. Scientists are calling it Ether because it sounds mystical, and they're all pretentious like that.
Anyway, Divinities are Awakened who got an extra helping of cosmic power. They have their own unique ability that we regular Awakened cannot utilize. Singular, absolute abilities that bend reality itself.
The first Divinity materialized in the middle of the battle.
Just... appeared. No warning, no buildup. Reality sort of hiccuped, and suddenly there was a man standing in the center of the street where nothing had been a moment before.
He had white hair that seemed to shimmer with its own light and golden eyes that held actual, visible clocks in place of pupils.
It was crazy.
Not "ha-ha" crazy. Not "oh, that's weird" crazy. Crazy crazy. The kind of crazy that makes you question whether your brain is processing reality correctly. His eyes—they weren't just gold-colored. They contained actual functioning timepieces, gears turning, hands moving, ticking away seconds that may or may not have corresponded to real time.
Looking at them made my head hurt.
And as soon as he was born—if "born" is even the right word—he aged instantly into adulthood.
One moment, he was shimmering into existence, the next, he was a full-grown man, maybe mid-twenties in appearance, wearing clothes that seemed to form from solidified light. The transformation took perhaps three seconds.
Time manipulation. Obviously. His domain.
He stood there, surveying the chaos with an expression of mild disappointment, as he'd arrived at a party that wasn't living up to expectations. Then he spoke, his voice carrying across the battlefield with unnatural clarity:
"How tiresome. This timeline is already corrupted."
Someone—an Awakened with lightning powers—attacked him. Understandable reaction, really. A strange man appears from nowhere during a demonic invasion, you blast first and ask questions later.
The lightning froze mid-air.
Just... stopped. Hung there like a photograph, crackling bolts suspended impossibly in space. The Time Divinity—because that's obviously what he was—walked past it like it was a sculpture, not even sparing it a glance.
He turned his attention to the demons, those clock-eyes spinning faster. "The Nether incursion. Predictable. The timeline follows its corrupted course."
Then he looked directly at me.
Through my window. Through the walls. Through everything.
"And you. The variable that doesn't belong."
My blood went cold.
He vanished from the street and reappeared in my penthouse, the transition so smooth it was like editing a film. There was no travel time. Just the street, then the living room.
"You're the anomaly," he said, those clock-eyes focusing on me with terrible intensity. "You shouldn't exist. Your presence destabilizes the timeline."
"I—what?" My voice came out strangled.
"Every timeline where you exist ends in catastrophe. Forty-seven possible futures. Forty-seven extinctions. The variable must be eliminated."
He raised his hand, and I felt time itself begin to slow around me. My heartbeat stretched, each thump taking years. My breath caught, trapped in my throat. The world dimmed, color draining away.
He tried to kill me.
Actually tried to murder me, right there in my own penthouse. No trial, no explanation beyond "timeline corruption." Just instant execution because apparently, I was a threat to reality itself.
"If I kill you," he said, his voice distant and dreamlike through the temporal distortion, "then maybe I can change the future. Maybe this timeline can be salvaged."
Like I said, a whole load of crap.
As if anything to do with me would be anything but heroic.
I'm the protagonist of this story, obviously. The hero. The good guy. Me, Claymore Blackcastle, a threat to reality? Ridiculous. More likely, his time-vision was malfunctioning. Too much temporal radiation or something.
I tried to move, to fight back, but time had turned to molasses around me. Each millimeter of motion took eons. I was going to die, killed by a newborn god who'd decided I was inconvenient.
Then she appeared.
The child.
One moment, the Time Divinity was alone, hand outstretched to erase me from existence, the next, there was a little girl standing between us.
She was tiny, couldn't have been older than eight or nine. She had abyss-black hair that seemed to drink in light rather than reflect it, snow-white pale skin that made her look like a porcelain doll, and her eyes were completely black, no whites, no irises, just endless darkness. But her aura was the most unsettling; it made my body feel like it was decaying and rotting away.
She didn't say anything. Didn't move. Just stood there, looking at the Time Divinity with those horrible, empty eyes.
And instantly, the guy backed off.
The temporal distortion snapped away like a rubber band. Time resumed its normal flow. My lungs filled with air in a gasping rush. The Time Divinity stumbled backward, those clock-eyes spinning wildly, panic clear on his face.
"You," he whispered. "You're not supposed to be here—"
The child tilted her head. Still didn't speak.
The Time Divinity vanished, blinking out of existence faster than he'd arrived. Fleeing. From a little girl.
I mean, seriously, some "God" he is, am I right?
Like, imagine being afraid of a kid... a little girl at that.
The child turned to look at me, and I felt that gaze like a physical weight. Looking into her eyes was like looking into the space between stars, the nothing that existed before existence. It was terrifying and fascinating in equal measure.
Then she smiled—small, innocent, completely at odds with everything about her—and vanished just as suddenly as she'd appeared.
I stood there for a long moment, trying to process what had just happened. Failed completely. Gave up. Decided to file it under "problems for future Claymore" and moved on.
When I looked out the window again, the battle was over.
The demons were gone. The portal had closed. The sky was returning to its normal color, the blood and fire dissipating like morning fog.
Also, it turns out the whole demon situation was solved while I was unconscious.
Because apparently, I passed out at some point during all the excitement. Maybe the temporal distortion. Maybe the succubus dream. Maybe just the stress of nearly being erased from reality. Who can say?
When I woke up, on my floor, very undignified—the city was quiet. Too quiet. The aftermath was kind of quiet.
I dragged myself to the window and looked out at the devastation. Buildings reduced to rubble. Streets cratered. Fires are still burning in the distance. But no more demons. No more blood rain. Just destruction and silence.
I asked someone later what happened. One of the Awakened who'd been in the thick of it, nursing burns and a shattered arm.
"Some beautiful woman with astral space-like hair and eyes came to save the day," he said, staring at nothing with the expression of someone who'd seen something beyond comprehension. "She just... appeared. Rose up into the sky like gravity didn't exist. Her hair was moving—not like wind, but like it was alive, swirling with stars and galaxies and depths that hurt to look at."
He swallowed hard.
"She raised one hand. Just one. And this... void opened up above the demon army. A black hole that pulled everything toward it. The demons tried to run, tried to fight, but it didn't matter. She pulled them all in, the entire army, thousands of them, just... gone. Compressed into nothing. The portal sealed itself. And then she just... left. Walked away like it was nothing."
They say she one-shotted the entire demon army with some kind of black hole.
But let's be serious.
You expect me to believe that?
I mean, no one's hair looks like a swirling galaxy. Hair is hair—keratin fibers, follicles, basic biology. It doesn't contain actual celestial bodies. That's not how reality works, even in this new Ether-soaked world.
I might have believed the black hole part. That sounds plausible enough—spatial manipulation, gravity control, theoretical physics made manifest. Fine.
But when they tried to say her hair was moving, that it was literally swirling with galaxies, that you could see nebulae and star clusters in the strands?
That's when it became obvious bullshit.
People embellish when they're traumatized. They exaggerate. Turn a powerful Awakened into a goddess, make the supernatural even more supernatural, and add dramatic flourishes to make the story more impressive.
I get it.
But I'm a realist. I deal in facts, evidence, and observable phenomena. And space-hair isn't real.
It's not.
...Though I suppose, if we're being technical, I did maybe-possibly have sex with a demon general who may or may not have existed outside my head, and I did get threatened by a time god and saved by what might have been the literal manifestation of the death, so perhaps my grasp on what's "real" has become somewhat... flexible.
But space-hair is where I draw the line.
A man has to have standards.
The sun's setting now. Second sunset in this new world. The sky's doing that thing again where it flickers between colors that shouldn't exist, like reality's still trying to remember how physics works.
Tomorrow I'll need to explore more. Map out the new power structures forming among the Awakened. Figure out what the Divinities mean for the rest of us. Locate more survivors, both Awakened and baseline.
Maybe look into this whole "anomaly that destabilizes timelines" thing the Time Divinity mentioned. Though honestly, that sounds like a him problem, not a me problem.
I'm just trying to survive in this brave new world.
And maybe, just maybe, figure out if that encounter with the demon general was real.
For purely scientific reasons.
Obviously.
My hand's starting to cramp again. Need to invest in a better pen. Do stores still exist? Does currency still exist? Questions for tomorrow.
I can hear screaming in the distance. The Fallen, probably, continuing their rampage. Or maybe just someone who found out their power is something useless like changing the color of their fingernails.
Either way, not my problem tonight.
Until Next,
Claymore Blackcastle
P.S. — If anyone ever reads this and tracks down that Time Divinity, tell him Claymore Blackcastle says he's a coward who runs from children. Also, his fashion sense is terrible. Clothes made of light? What is this, a rave?
P.P.S. — The demon general's name was definitely Ishtar. I'm sure of it. Absolutely sure. Mostly sure. Probably.
P.P.P.S. — Space-hair still isn't real.