Earth,
As the scene shattered, Silas woke from his dreams. That night he had met his counterpart from the other world. He was confused, even questioning if it had only been a dream. But then the words echoed in his mind.
"Kill a person."
The moment he remembered, annoyance surged through him.
"What the hell? First he says not all psychopaths are serial killers, and then he asks me to kill someone. Isn't that contradicting himself? What a crazy fellow," Silas muttered in frustration.
At least one thing is clear, my body is alive. I just have to find a way to re-trigger the transmigration and we will be fine. Also, when does this dream world encounter happen? Does it happen when I sleep? I'll have to try today...
No, I've slept quite a lot of times, so does that mean it happens when certain conditions are met?
It was a dream space... space... Umbrosine? Goddess Umbraethis? Can it be that the space manifests itself using the special characteristics of a Sunday? Sundays are dedicated to Goddess Umbraethis and are known as the days of evil, when mysterious unexplained phenomena occur... I'll have to wait and verify this.
After brainstorming for a while, Silas jumped off his bed and walked over to the window. He had the urge to cool off his head with the cold morning breeze.
He slid open the curtains and pushed the windows wide. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head out and took a deep breath of cool, fresh air… fresh air?
All he could smell was smoke and dust. When he opened his eyes, he saw something he hadn't expected. As soon as his vision cleared, a massive burning meteorite came hurtling toward the ground at terrifying speed.
Before Silas could even react, it had already crashed into a house far away, reducing it to rubble. Even from that distance, he felt the heat wave and saw debris flying through the air.
A small stone struck his window, cracking it. By then, Silas was already moving. He rushed downstairs and bolted outside. Once out, he saw people running chaotically in all directions. Instinctively, he checked his phone, which he had grabbed on the way—there was a warning message from the government, though there was no signal.
"WARNING: MASS EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT: Find shelter underground"
What the f**k?
Just then, another meteorite crashed nearby. The impact was terrifyingly close, and the collision of the massive object sent out a shockwave that cracked buildings and uprooted trees.
The meteorite was moving at incredible speed, creating a supersonic air pressure wave. Unfortunately, Silas was caught in its path. In mere moments, he felt it—his lungs collapsing, sound vanishing as he slammed against a nearby wall. With the last bit of energy he had left, he used Regeneration.
The Regeneration spell harnesses Verdanite, Lustralis, Solvion, Aetherion, and Umbrosine in that specific order.
His body healed quickly, and he could hear sounds again. As soon as he regained a little strength, he coughed up blood and began panting heavily.
One more second, and I would have been dead, he thought.
Around him, everyone was dead—all the people who had been running for their lives. The houses were destroyed, with massive chunks of rock and rubble scattered everywhere.
Silas got up. By then, the Regeneration spell had completely healed his injuries. He started moving forward. Though he had no sense of direction and no clear place to take shelter, he knew it was better than staying in one spot.
The air was thick with dust. The meteorite strikes had unleashed massive bursts of heat, causing destruction and fire everywhere. Clouds of debris began forming, slowly swallowing the entire sky.
Silas had been walking for over twenty minutes. Everywhere he looked, there was nothing but destruction. He saw no people—only inanimate corpses, some dismembered, some burning.
All the while, meteorites continued to fall, each impact was heavy and thunderous. Every time a massive meteorite struck, the ground shook as if struck by a mini earthquake. Silas relied on his spells to stay alive; Regeneration and Advanced Regeneration had kept him safe so far.
He had covered half of his face with a piece of cloth torn from his shirt. It wasn't very effective, but it was better than breathing the unfiltered air, thick with dust particles.
Every gust of wind stirred the dust into violent, storm-like clouds. Silas walked for an hour, searching desperately for anything, a safe place, an underground shelter but such refuges were rare. His mana force was running dangerously low; if it depleted, he would lose consciousness and die on the next impact.
Is this the end? Is this how I die? Silas was losing hope.
Just when he thought moving forward was meaningless, he saw something—something moving. A human figure.
Silas hurried after it and soon saw that multiple people had gathered around what appeared to be a metal plate. It was a steel trapdoor. The people were entering one by one. Silas quickly joined the crowd and safely descended into the underground basement of what looked like the ruins of a large building.
Have I survived?
After entering the trapdoor, the group of people followed a narrow passage and descended a flight of stairs, finally arriving at the basement room. It was a large, empty space normally used for storage, but at the moment it was packed with people.
There were people of all ages gathered together—children, adults, and the elderly. Each face bore the same expression of fear and dread, as if they had already given up hope.
Silas, who had just been saved, was in better shape than the others. He could rest for the time being and let his mana force regenerate. Without speaking, Silas found a corner and sat down, leaning against the wall.
This place isn't safe; it might collapse under a direct impact. But I have no choice except to stay for now. May the goddess bless me with luck, he thought, closing his eyes to rest for the moment.
...
Outside the world was in chaos. Meteorite strikes weren't localized to a particular area; instead, the entire world was under similar conditions. Within minutes, the world's population was reduced to half.
It was a very normal day, a day like any other. But millions woke up to a sky that glowed as if the sun itself had shattered. They rushed out into the streets only to be met by impacts that ruptured their eardrums, and blasts that followed one after another.
No one could do anything. Millions died before even realizing the cause of their death. There was no one humanity could call, and years of advancements in science and technology couldn't save them from the disaster that had struck.
The skyscrapers humanity once took pride in became torches within seconds, and the vast golden fields of crops that fed the ever-growing population were reduced to black dust.
The wildlife wasn't spared; entire ecosystems were overturned. Herds fled in panic only to be consumed by destructive fire, and marine life suffocated as shockwaves tore through the seas.
Bigger buildings had fallen to their demise, crushing countless people to death. The meteorites had left the world covered in dust and smoke.
Debris clouds rose high into the air, covering the skies and blocking sunlight. Within hours of the first meteorite strike, the entire planet was shrouded in darkness.
A fraction of the smoke that covered the atmosphere came from the burning forests around the world. Meteorite impacts had caused massive forest fires. The Amazon forest fire, so vast that humanity wasn't prepared for it, had ignited.
Impacts in the oceans caused massive tsunamis. Many coastal areas were submerged due to rapidly rising sea levels. The Maldives, Tuvalu, and Marshall Islands disappeared from the world map, taking with them thousands of lives.
The Bahamas, Fiji, and many other small, low-lying islands submerged within the first few tsunami impacts, while cities like Shanghai were flooded within hours.
The world's governments could not do anything about the sudden, unannounced event. There were no responses from authorities because, in such a disaster, survival became instantaneous or impossible. Everything came down to luck.
The population continued to dwindle. The survivors were those who had found refuge in military or strategic bunkers, the corporate elites who owned private shelters, deep miners isolated far beneath the surface, active submariners traversing the ocean depths, and those who were simply blessed with luck.
...
Eight hours after impact, the world outside was completely dark. Sunlight was blocked by the aerosol layer covering the skies. Breathing was impossible because of dust, ash, and particulate matter.
The meteorite impacts hadn't stopped. The ground was scarred with massive craters at the points of impact. The once blue planet, where life had flourished, had become a barren wasteland in mere hours.
What was happening? No one knew… was Mother Nature finally taking her revenge on humanity? Who could say…
One thing was clear—this was the beginning of the Apocalypse.