May 15th.
The rain didn't stop, it poured day and night until highways disappeared underwater, dams gave flooded and entire neighborhoods were swallowed by rising rivers.
Hospitals filled beyond capacity, rescue teams struggled to move through flooded streets, and disease began spreading in the water left behind.
May 23rd
Then the rain vanished and the sun took over, burning as temperatures climbed past 110°F across the country. Crops withered in open fields, livestock collapsed where they stood, and power grids strained under the constant demand for cooling until they finally began to fail.
May 26th
Without warning, the heat broke and the sky turned white. Freezing winds swept down from the north, temperatures dropped below zero overnight, and cities that had just survived the heatwave were buried in snow and ice. Roads were frozen solid, power lines snapped, and the communication towers fell silent.
May 27th
Elias Vance closed his notebook and looked out the window.
The sky was bright and cloudless, the streets below alive again with traffic, laughter, and the sound of rebuilding. People stepped outside carefully at first, then with growing confidence, convincing themselves the worst had passed.
Cleanup crews worked hard and news anchors finally smiled. It seemed life would return to normal.
But Elias knew better.
He stood quietly, watching strangers enjoy the sunlight, and a faint smile touched his lips, though there was no comfort in it.
The storms, the heat, the blizzard, they were only the beginning.
In less than three hours, an energy surge would sweep across the planet, satellites would fail, power stations would overload, and entire grids would collapse in a chain reaction that left cities drowning in darkness. Phones would die, signals would vanish, and the modern world would fall silent.
Then the sky would open.
Space itself would split like cracked glass, thin fractures appearing in the air before tearing wide enough for something else to step through.
Creatures no one had ever seen would pour into the world, armored swarms that moved as one, towering beasts with bone-plated skin and winged dragons straight out fantasy that circled above rooftops.
The bodies buried after the floods and blizzards would rise again,dragging themselves forward without rest, drawn to warmth and breath, turning cities into feeding grounds.
Insects would change first, swelling in size and strength until mosquitoes were thick as fingers and could drain a person dry in moments, while roaches and locusts grew shells too hard to crush and numbers too large to fight.
Animals would follow. Zoo enclosures would shatter, sedations would stop working, and creatures once behind glass would become more powerful and more violent. Wolves would grow larger and faster, snakes would shed and emerge twice their length, and bears would charge through gunfire as if it were nothing.
The natural order would reset, and humanity would no longer stand at the top.
For most people, it would be the end of everything. Wealth would mean nothing, their status would disappear overnight, and those who once relied on influence or connections would discover that none of it mattered when something stronger could tear through steel doors.
The unprepared would die first.
But not everyone would fall.
Some people would awaken, their bodies and minds altered by whatever force reshaped the world. A few would gain strength beyond human limits, others would control fire or electricity, and some would move faster or see farther than anyone else. They would come to be known as Evolvers.
Before the fall, they had been ordinary, overlooked, some mocked or ignored, but after the fall they would become the new power in a broken world.
The rules would change in a single day.
Law, morality, reputation, all of it would fade when survival became the only thing that mattered.
Elias knew because he had already lived through it.
He had survived for ten years in the ruins of the old world, long enough to awaken his own ability, long enough to fight, lose, adapt, and harden.
In the beginning he had tried to help people, pulling strangers from danger and sharing what little food he had, believing that kindness still mattered.
It didn't.
Fear twisted people and hunger changed them. Their gratitude turned into suspicion, and their smiles hid betrayal. The world after the fall did not reward kindness.
By the time Elias understood that, stronger groups had already taken control of resources and territory, and he was left struggling to catch up. He fought for scraps, lost ground year after year, and eventually died in the forest of shattered stone, tossed around by creatures that had once been nothing more than insects.
He died alone.
Yet somehow, he opened his eyes again.
Now he stood in his apartment on the morning of May 27th, his hands unscarred,his body young and his memories intact. He remembered the timing of the first rifts, the locations that would become safe zones, the early weaknesses of certain monsters, and the mistakes that had cost him everything.
That knowledge mattered.
But what mattered more was what he had learned about people.
He understood how quickly civilization could fall, how thin the line was between kindness and cruelty, and how survival could turn anyone into something unrecognizable.
This time he would not hesitate, and he would not cling to the idea of being a "good person" first.
In the world that was coming, survival would belong to those willing to change early.
And Elias had already changed.