It began with no sign.
No warning.
No prophecy.
Only silence.
Earth spun quietly in the cosmos, carrying on as it always had. Humanity busied itself in the great, tangled web of daily life. The sun rose, the sun set. Cities blinked with lights, highways pulsed with vehicles, and humanity moved forward—always forward—believing tomorrow was guaranteed.
Children laughed as they played outside, their footsteps pounding on playground floors, rattling jungle gyms, and rustling through grassy fields. Some raced each other beneath wide open skies, their shoes kicking up clouds of dust, their lungs filled with the fresh breath of childhood freedom. Others swung high on creaking swings, eyes reaching for the sun, hearts daring to touch the clouds.
In quiet corners of parks and schoolyards, smaller groups gathered beneath trees, clutching notebooks and pens. They studied beneath leafy canopies, scribbling notes in math workbooks or flipping through pages of stories. Their eyes brimmed with a mix of wonder and impatience—half-curious, half-bored, their minds dancing between focus and daydream. Some whispered answers to each other, others doodled absentmindedly in the margins of their notes, crafting little sketches of dragons, superheroes, or the worlds they wished to escape to.
In homes and bedrooms, glowing screens reflected in wide eyes. Small hands gripped game controllers tightly, their thumbs dancing over buttons in a symphony of clicks and taps. Digital warriors, mages, and knights moved across pixelated battlefields, their avatars clashing in online worlds where they could be anyone, anything. Laughter rang out when they won; groans echoed when they lost—but all of it was part of the game.
Some children sat alone, earphones tucked in, eyes flicking between screens and the quiet world outside their window. Others huddled together on living room couches, sharing phone screens, watching animated shows or scrolling endlessly through feeds of memes and funny videos. Time slipped by unnoticed, as childhood moments always do.
In alleys and side streets, soccer balls bounced off brick walls. Makeshift goals were drawn with chalk or lined with backpacks. Laughter mixed with friendly shouts, arguments over fouls quickly forgotten in the joy of play.
From the polished floors of modern schools to the cracked pavements of old neighborhoods, from neon-lit arcades to sun-soaked playgrounds, the children of Earth played, studied, fought, and dreamed—their lives woven into the simple, ordinary magic of just being alive.
Adults, too, wove their own intricate rhythms into the fabric of daily life—each carrying invisible weights, each spinning in their own orbit of duty, desire, or resignation.
At dawn, cities stirred like great living machines. Workers crowded into subways and buses, shoulder to shoulder in the hush of early hours, faces lit by phone screens or dulled by exhaustion. Some sipped coffee in silence, rehearsing presentations in their minds or scrolling news feeds they barely read. Others sat quietly, eyes closed, savoring brief moments of solitude before the day's grind began.
Office towers gleamed in the morning sun, filled with people who negotiated contracts, pitched ideas, and typed tirelessly under fluorescent lights. Suits and ties walked briskly across marble floors, briefcases swinging by their sides, smiles practiced and purposeful. In smaller shops and corner stalls, merchants arranged their wares, greeting regulars with warm nods, while baristas scribbled names on coffee cups and called them out over the sound of steaming milk.
In kitchens tucked behind diners and bakeries, flour-dusted hands shaped dough long before the world fully woke. Bakers worked in quiet camaraderie, letting ovens do the talking as the smell of fresh bread seeped into sleepy streets. Delivery drivers braved traffic, weaving between cars with honking horns and flashing lights, rushing from doorstep to doorstep with meals, letters, or fragile packages.
In schools, teachers stood before rows of desks, voices rising and falling like ocean tides—explaining, correcting, sometimes scolding, often inspiring. Some stayed long after the last bell rang, red pens in hand, circling answers and leaving notes in margins under the dim light of desk lamps.
Animals carried out their part of the endless cycle. Birds glided through thermal winds; cats stretched lazily in the sun. Underneath the seas, gilled creatures danced in currents, unaware of any sky above, swimming endlessly in aquamarine depths. Nature thrives in the cracks between cities, in jungles, in deserts, and beneath polar ice.
Life continued, as it always did.
Hospitals pulsed with life and death, side by side. In one room, doctors guided newborns into the world, their cries piercing sterile halls. In another, monitors beeped softer, slower, until silence came and nurses whispered comfort to grieving families. Life flickered between fragile and fierce, repeating the same cycle humanity had always known.
Elsewhere, families gathered at dinner tables, some laughing over shared meals, others locked in silence, the air heavy with unspoken tension. Orphans played in crowded shelters, chasing moments of joy between the cracks of hardship. Lovers held hands beneath streetlights, promises whispered into warm night air. Strangers scrolled endlessly through glowing screens, filling the void with images of lives that weren't theirs.
Some adults celebrated promotions, lives changed by a single email or handshake. Others sat quietly at home, heads in hand, after hearing the words "We've decided to go with someone else." People were hired. People were fired. People succeeded. People failed. And the world spun on.
In dark alleys and behind closed doors, crime whispered. Deals were made in the shadows. Some wore badges and enforced justice; others wore masks and broke laws. Courts held trials. Judges passed sentences. Juries debated. Somewhere, life was ruined. Somewhere else, life was saved.
The world was busy—an endless hum of joy and sorrow, progress and failure, legal and illegal, sacred and profane. Humanity carried on, tangled in its rituals, never knowing that soon, the sky itself would open and swallow everything whole.
And then, it began.
At first, the stars twinkled just like any other night. Children pointed up at constellations, lovers held hands beneath city lights. Somewhere, a scientist noticed a pattern in the telescope feed—but before the alarm could be sounded, it was already too late.
One by one, the stars fell.
Not like shooting stars, no—these were divine spears, tearing through the cosmos, breaking through galaxies, bypassing planets and crashing toward Earth. There was no time to react. No time to run. No prayer to answer.
The first star struck, and the sky ignited. Cities vanished in white-hot fire. Oceans boiled as molten fragments collided into the seas. The ground split apart, swallowing entire continents whole. Earthquakes shattered the world's bones. Buildings crumbled. Mountains collapsed.
Children screamed, but their voices dissolved into ash.
Adults clung to whatever they could—but there was nothing to hold onto.
Fires raged. The earth trembled. The oceans wept steam into the sky.
Cries filled the air—cries to gods, cries for mercy. But no one answered.
Their deities were gone, silent, or perhaps had never been there at all.
And the stars continued to fall.
Explosions stitched across the globe in rapid succession, until finally, with a last, cataclysmic roar, the Earth itself detonated. The planet that had once brimmed with life was reduced to fragments—dust and echoes drifting in a void of their own making.
But it did not stop there.
Neighboring planets soon followed. Saturn's rings disintegrated. Jupiter's storms fell silent. Mars cracked like an egg beneath invisible pressure. Galaxies collided like collapsing dominoes. Ancient black holes—eternal since time's beginning—folded into one another, unraveling into blinding annihilation. Creation itself began to collapse, fragment by fragment, molecule by molecule.
And then—
Silence.
A silence deeper than any human mind could comprehend.
No burning sun.
No echo of planets.
No murmur of life.
No hum of existence.
Everything was gone.
The universe—once vast, alive, infinite—now lies in absolute stillness.
Time paused.
Space emptied.
And for a moment, it seemed this was the end.
The final full stop in the book of everything.
But then, from the heart of that nothingness, came a sound.
A single, impossible boom.
Not an echo, but a beginning.
A new universe erupted into existence—violent, radiant, and alive, shattering the silence of the void with a single, impossible boom that echoed across the fabric of reality. It wasn't a gentle birth, but an explosion of cosmic wonder, a furious blaze of creation that tore through the nothingness like celestial wildfire.
From its core spun new galaxies, sprawling like rivers of molten starlight across the ink-black canvas of space. Cosmic tides flowed, birthing stars with newborn fire in their hearts. Nebulas bloomed like painted veils, weaving vibrant tapestries of color where there had once been only darkness. Planets whirled into place, sculpted by gravity's unseen hand, cradled by the warmth of suns that had never existed before.
Amidst this grand cosmic rebirth, a new world emerged.
It was not Earth, but it carried Earth's essence, as if fragments of the old world had been whispered into the bones of this one. Seas churned. Continents formed. Mountains pierced the clouds, and rivers cut their paths through fresh, untouched land. Oceans sparkled with twin reflections—not of a single sun, but of two burning stars that hung in the sky, casting twin shadows and dual dawns across the surface below.
Three moons circled the world, tracing elegant arcs like celestial dancers in a never-ending waltz, their silver bodies shifting tides and weaving night into a thing of mystery and wonder.
But this world held more than just land and sky.
Its air shimmered with something new—a force unseen yet deeply felt. Mana. A mystical energy, threaded into the very weave of reality itself. It saturated every leaf, stone, and breath of wind, becoming the cradle of creation for this world. Life did not merely evolve here—it was sculpted, guided, and intertwined with magic.
From that ether, new creatures took form.
Beasts unlike any Earth had known roamed the forests and plains. Some wore fur streaked with scales, while others bore feathers that rippled like silk but held the bite of blades. Feathered serpents coiled through the sky, their bodies glinting in twin sunlight. Scaled wolves prowled shadowed valleys, eyes aglow with mana-born sight. Leviathans swam not just in the oceans, but through the skies, their massive forms gliding between clouds as if the air itself had become a second sea.
The land blossomed in equal strangeness. Trees whispered with voices no human tongue could understand, their leaves pulsing softly with bioluminescent glow. Flowers bloomed in impossible hues, fed not only by sunlight but by mana that hummed beneath the soil. Lakes mirrored the skies not just in reflection, but in essence, shimmering with starlit veins of raw energy.
It was a world of beauty, terror, and awe. A world sculpted by forces beyond mere evolution. Wild. Untamed. Alien.
And yet, as the days and nights passed beneath the twin suns and silver moons, one question loomed over this reborn paradise:
Where were the humans?