Endless darkness stretched in every direction.
There was no sky, no ground, only void.
A man stood at its heart.
Light-skinned, mid to late twenties, his wavy hair clung to a sweat-slick brow.
A rugged waist wrap and animal-hide trousers gave him the look of a barbarian but the crisscrossing battle scars across his bare torso told a deeper story.
A fighter.
A survivor.
A man hardened by war.
Yet his eyes were wide, hollow, told only of defeat.
He stood motionless, chest heaving, as the darkness whispered.
"Sibir… you've doomed us all."
"You fool."
"You saw the signs and still walked in blind."
"The last child of Mother has failed."
"I only regret not choosing death."
"You fell for it too, didn't you?"
The voices came from nowhere and everywhere.
Mocking.
Accusing.
Condemning.
One after another, like a tribunal of the damned, until the words blurred into a single, suffocating chant.
Sibir's mind reeled, barely holding its shape beneath the pressure.
It was a trap.
All of it.
His journey.
His sacrifice.
His hope.
The people he'd left behind.
The victories that should've mattered.
All of it was just a path to a perfectly laid snare.
A soft tremor ran through his chest.
Not from the wounds across his body.
A hollow ache that pulsed in time with his thoughts of Pain and betrayal
Why? he asked himself.
Why?!
There had been no clues just intuition.
He thought he was rational.
He thought he saw the patterns.
But greed, greed was flesh-born, and the Tower fed on it.
And then, a voice calm, alien spoke directly into his skull:
"The Abyss offers no rules beyond what it enforces."
"This was not a coronation, Sibir. It was an execution."
Rage ignited within him.
With a raw, broken scream, he roared:
"ADMINISTRATOR!"
His voice echoed into the abyss, shaking the silence.
But there was no answer.
Only ripples.
He staggered, knees buckling, hands curling into fists.
He remembered now: The Administrators only governed to the hundredth floor.
Beyond that, no gods, no laws.
The divine did not intervene in mortal affairs not because they were forbidden...
But because they simply couldn't.
His vision blurred.
His ether, his last reserve cracked apart inside him, dissolving like salt in the ocean of void.
And as Sibir collapsed to the cold nothing beneath him, he realized:
This was the end.
The world had fallen and he could do nothing else but watch.
...
**/**/****
The morning began with the clatter of shoes on the pavement and the rustle of wind through a loose tie.
Sibir was running again tie askew, bag flapping behind him, half a slice of toast still tucked in his cheek like a chipmunk.
A grin spread across his face, wide and boyish.
Despite the chaos, he was flying.
Not from the bus he was barely keeping up with, but from the weightlessness of a dream realized.
It was his first day.
The first real day.
After years of lectures, sleepless nights, research papers, and near-breakdowns, Sibir Cansellas had landed the job.
Not just any position, but one with Salvador Corp, the towering giant with its tendrils deep in finance, energy, health, and tech.
A name that shaped nations.
The bus screeched to a halt.
The driver threw a dry look over his shoulder before handing Sibir his change.
"Still broke, huh?" he muttered with a smirk to himself
Sibir nodded with a breathless chuckle, stuffing the coins in his pocket.
"But I'm broke employed now."
By 7:03 AM, he was standing before the monolithic structure of Salvador Corp.
Sixty floors of silver-tinted glass, glistening like a blade against the sky.
Its shadow swallowed the street, imposing, reverent.
The security checkpoint was routine: bag checks, questions, and a quick scan.
"I'm new. The first day," he said, holding up the HR letter.
"Congratulations," one of the guards said, almost sincerely.
He was escorted inside, the building swallowing him whole.
The lobby alone could've been a palace with a marble floor, sculpture displays, and a digital waterfall cascading data in real-time.
From there, a whirlwind.
HR.
Orientation.
Elevator rides that never seemed to end.
Floor after floor of teams, labs, and glass-walled offices.
The tour lasted nearly an hour, and by the end of it, his mind was too euphoric to retain half of what he saw.
At last, the department head handed him a card.
"Welcome to Salvador Corp, Mr. Cansellas. We look forward to seeing what a bright mind like yours can bring."
Sibir took the handshake and card with a nervous laugh.
"Thank you, sir."
His new office was, embarrassingly, larger than his rented apartment.
He barely did any work that day, some light reading, a few polite introductions, and several attempts at organizing the mountain of files by his desk.
Eventually, he gave up.
Tomorrow would be his proper start.
Today, he'd just soak it all in.
By evening, he was back home in a small flat, clean enough, single-bed bachelor setup.
He cooked a modest meal, took a long bath, and lay in bed staring at the ceiling with a quiet kind of joy humming in his chest.
Life, finally, was beginning.
Until the world cracked.
A low, grinding sound jolted him from sleep.
Clack.
Groan.
Tremble.
Sibir sat up, heart thudding.
"An earthquake?" he murmured, grabbing his phone.
No alert.
No warning.
He stood slowly, feet unsteady, as the sound deepened, like stone scraping against metal.
The floor jerked sideways.
Pictures fell.
Plates shattered.
CRACK.
The entire room tilted.
He fell hard, shoulder smashing into the wall.
Dazed, he crawled toward the window, gripping the metal frame just as the second quake hit.
The building screamed.
It wasn't just shaking anymore, it was collapsing.
The floors were folding.
The ceiling above cracked like ice underweight.
A section fell inches from him.
Smoke and dust choked the air.
He could barely think.
Barely breathe.
His apartment dropped with a loud thud
When it stopped, he was no longer on the second floor.
The second floor no longer existed.
Dizzy, bleeding, he struggled and stumbled toward the shattered remains of the balcony.
Moonlight guided him forward.
Where there had once been three floors, there was now rubble, blood, and screaming.
People were shouting from the streets.
Some trapped.
Others missing.
The building groaned again.
Sibir's knees buckled.
He looked around, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.
The neighborhood was in ruins.
Fires sparked in the distance as far as he could see
Sirens were nowhere.
The sky above swirled, clouds coiling unnaturally, like a hand closing into a fist.
And through the ringing in his ears, a single thought pushed through.
Is the world ending?