Prologue
Present Day
The stench hit my nostrils before I could see the cause. It had taken my brain even longer to comprehend the scene in front of me. I couldn’t make sense of it all. Everything was happening all at once. Too fast to keep up with.
Flames dancing before my eyes, like hands reaching up to the starless black night sky. A vision of chaos amidst a blazing inferno that began engulfing the city. The screams of horror and despair were deafening. Drowning out the wailing sirens of help that would prove futile.
People were fleeing for their lives, running blindly through the streets. The air became thick with black, tar-like smoke. I could see them choking on it, filling their lungs as their eyes widened in panic. Unknowingly, they were about to meet their untimely demise.
Heavy drops of rain had begun falling from the sky. Mother Nature’s feeble attempt to neutralize the flames. As if a few spots of rain could stop the fires from below, as if released from Hell itself. As if a small spattering of rain could even try to control them. Their wrath clawed through the earth like the Hell Hounds. Unwilling to relinquish their control on the irreparable damage ripping through every building.
It has an insatiable hunger for destruction, leaving nothing but death in its wake. Everything and everyone who would cross paths with it would all end up in the fiery furnace. Nothing was sacred, no one was safe. No matter how hard they tried to hide.
Lurking in the shadows, I watched it all unfold. Behind the thick bellows of smoke, I was free from my physical body. Relishing in the destruction. Enjoying how Earth was being dismantled piece by piece. Torturous for her no doubt. For once I was uncaring of her thoughts. Uncaring of her feelings. All her creations will burn. Her depiction of a perfect world will shatter before her eyes. She would be useless and unable to prevent the damage. Unable to control what was yet to come. The pain, the panic, the devastation, all will course through this city soon. As it did across the world.
This city was just a snapshot of the total annihilation, the impending doom that faced them all. Mirroring scenes identical to this, from all over the world, at this precise moment in time. Even if she could prevail though it all, there would be nothing left. Only a desolate wasteland that I had once called home.
It had taken her over several millennia to fashion, yet it will take a matter of minutes to eradicate. Unravelling all her hard work, her labor of love, by pulling at one thread.
This would bring the end to the world, to all life as we know it. The world will burn. Nothing will remain standing. Fire, relentless in its mission, will leave everything scorched and decimated. Leaving in its wake piles of ash as tall as the buildings that had once tall and proud. A graveyard of bones will litter the lands. Replacing the once thriving societies that had lived there. All she had once been so proud of, gone. All this may have started with her, but it will end with me.
This was not the result of the world-scale war that was on the cusp of fruition. Not because of the impending missile attacks threatened from beyond the seas. No, any of that did not cause it. The cause of this catastrophic destruction, on this worldwide scale, was…
Me.
