The End starts the same way most things that don't make sense always do. With a man screaming in the middle of a crowded city like the world is supposed to stop just because he decided it should.
Times Square never really sleeps. It doesn't pause either. Screens flash above buildings, ads loop endlessly, tourists take photos of everything and nothing, and street performers try to compete with the noise of a thousand overlapping lives.
And in the middle of all that, a man stands on a makeshift platform, veins visible on his neck, voice breaking as he shouts at the sky.
"The End is coming!!! REPENT!! REPENT NOW!!"
At first, nobody reacts the way he wants them to. People don't panic. They don't look scared.
They look… mildly annoyed.
A few slow down, not because they believe him, but because it's New York and someone yelling about the apocalypse is barely a Tuesday here. A couple tourists raise phones, thinking it's a performance or some kind of street content. A vendor keeps selling food like nothing is happening. Someone even laughs in the distance. The man keeps shouting anyway.
His voice gets sharper. Rougher. Like he's forcing something through his throat that doesn't want to come out naturally.
"The signs are already here! You're all blind!! You're all already judged!!"
Aurora happened to be standing a short distance away from the growing crowd, quietly enjoying an ice cream cone she had picked up during her free time. Her next class at Lunarium would not begin for another hour, leaving her with little else to do besides wander around the city before returning through the portal hidden inside Aster's apartment, where she often spent her breaks whenever she wasn't attending lectures. Living under the same roof as Aster and Emilia had long since become normal for her, though nothing about it had changed how she viewed him. To Aurora, he was still Charlotte, her headmaster, her teacher, and one of the people she respected the most. Aster, for his part, had never treated her as anything more or less than one of his students. Their relationship had always remained exactly that. So, completely unconcerned by the shouting nearby, Aurora simply licked her ice cream and watched the strange man preach as if it were another form of street entertainment.
"…He's loud," she says quietly, mostly to herself. She takes another bite, the ice cream melting faster than she's eating it, but she doesn't care. Her attention is half on the man, half on the fact she might need another cone later.
The fanatic suddenly stops mid-sentence. The words die in his throat as he stands perfectly still, his eyes slowly scanning the crowd until they lock onto something. It was as though whatever had been speaking through conviction had suddenly become fixated on a single person.
His head turned with an unnaturally slow motion until his gaze locked onto Aurora. For a single heartbeat, everything seemed to pause. Then his face contorted, his veins swelling beneath his skin as though his body could no longer contain whatever had taken hold of him. His pupils quivered, and a scream tore from his throat.
"A WITCH!!!"
The voice cut through the chaos of Times Square so sharply that, for the briefest moment, the city itself seemed to fall silent. Heads turned, conversations died mid-sentence, and countless phones were raised toward the scene. With a trembling hand, the fanatic pointed straight at Aurora.
"A DEMON MADE FLESH!!!"
The crowd finally reacted, not because they believed the fanatic's words, but because he had singled someone out. Curious eyes turned toward Aurora, phones shifted in her direction, and whispers quietly spread through the people gathered around. Aurora simply blinked, glanced at the fanatic, then at the crowd surrounding him before looking down at the ice cream in her hand. After taking one last bite, she let out a quiet sigh as if deciding whether the situation deserved any more of her attention.
It didn't. Without the slightest hint of panic or irritation, she turned around and walked away as though nothing had happened. The people watching exchanged confused looks, some believing the man had finally lost his mind while others questioned why the girl he accused seemed completely unfazed. Behind her, the fanatic continued shouting until his voice gradually disappeared beneath the familiar noise of the city. By the time Aurora reached the edge of Times Square, the encounter had already faded from her thoughts, dismissed as nothing more than another strange person she happened to pass by.
A few blocks away, she entered Aster's apartment building like nothing had happened. The elevator ride to his floor was quiet, almost unnervingly so, not because anything was wrong, but because the entire building felt detached from the chaos outside, as if the world beyond its walls didn't fully matter here. Inside, reality felt different, softer, like it followed its own set of rules.
She stepped out, moved through the hallway, and headed toward the hidden Lunarium portal embedded within the apartment structure. It was a casual motion, the same way someone might head to class or work, as if she hadn't just passed a man screaming about the end of existence in the middle of the city.
Far above the city, inside the Lumen Enterprise tower, Charlotte Sweeiz was already watching. Not in person, she didn't need to be. A projection hovered in front of her desk, cycling through live feeds from different parts of the city, each one showing a world that never really stayed still.
She leaned back in her chair, one hand resting against her cheek while the other tapped lightly against the armrest. When Aurora's image appeared on the feed, Charlotte let out a quiet sigh. Not out of frustration, but something closer to mild amusement.
Fanatics again. The same pattern, the same paranoia, the same certainty dressed up in different faces. Different people, same story.
With a small flick of her fingers, she closed the feed. "They always think they're early," she muttered under her breath. "They're usually just loud."
Then she turned back to her desk as if the entire incident had already been filed away as unimportant.
Back in Times Square, the fanatic is still standing on the platform. But now his breathing is uneven. Not from exhaustion but from frustration. Like the reaction he expected never arrived. He lowers his hand slowly. The crowd is already dispersing. A few people are still recording, but most have already moved on. To them, it's just another weird moment in a city full of them.
The fanatic's shoulders slowly dropped as the noise around him faded into background chaos.
A voice spoke behind him.
"You did good out there."
A man in a suit stood nearby, middle-aged, with tired eyes that didn't look like they belonged to exhaustion alone, but something deeper, something closer to belief worn down over time.
Ideological fatigue.
The fanatic turned slightly as the man continued, hands resting casually in his pockets. "But it seems… the masses still don't believe us."
A short laugh escaped the fanatic, hollow and empty, lacking any real amusement. "I wonder if we're too late," he said under his breath.
The suit man didn't respond right away. Because the question wasn't really a question anymore. It was something they had been avoiding for a long time, simply waiting for the world to answer for them.
Later that day, they arrive at a church. It doesn't stand out at first glance, just old stone, stained glass, and quiet surroundings, yet something about it feels heavier than it should, like the place has been waiting for something for a very long time. Inside, the air feels colder, not in temperature but in presence, as if even sound behaves differently here and every step carries more weight than it should.
At the center hall, a priest sits, or rather, floats slightly above the ground. His eyes glow white, not like light shining outward, but like something trapped behind them is struggling to escape. Another priest stands nearby holding a glass of water with both hands as if even the slightest movement might break the moment. The suit man steps forward, asking if everything is alright, and the answer comes slowly, almost carefully, that this is what happens when he receives revelation. When asked what he receives, the only response is that it is coming. The floating priest speaks again, not through effort but through presence alone, and the words linger in the air longer than they should, unavoidable, repeating themselves in the silence. The glow fades, and he lowers back to the ground as if something has finally released him, but when his eyes open, they no longer carry the same clarity. He repeats it once more, quieter this time, like a final certainty rather than a warning.
Outside, life continues as if nothing has changed, cars move, people talk, screens flash, and the world keeps pretending it is normal. But somewhere beneath all of it, something has already begun to move, and the first signal of it was never meant to be ignored.