New Beginnings

It was never meant to be this way.

The machine loomed at the heart of the chamber like a monstrous construct of metal and magic, humming with the pulse of a dying world. Its frame stretched upward like the ribs of some mechanical god, cables coiling across the floor like veins, siphoning power from forces none of the figures in the room fully understood.

A soft, pulsing glow throbbed at its core, deep violet and shifting crimson, its light bending the very space around it. The chamber shuddered with each beat, as if the very fabric of reality was fraying at the seams. 

No windows. No escape. Just the oppressive hum of the machine, the rhythmic numbers spilling across glassy screens.

On one side of the chamber, monitors flickered, their data scrambling and recalculating in real-time. Lines of logic twisted and warped into unreadable glyphs.

On the opposite side, ancient runes pulsed in the dark, their glow threading through the air like embers. Their magic felt fragile, straining against something far greater than itself.

Alarms howled. Red warning lights flared in sharp bursts, throwing fractured shadows against the steel walls.

Two figures, clad in sleek, obsidian cloaks, moved frantically at the consoles. Their movements were precise, desperate. The younger of the two, a scientist with sharp, darting eyes, typed furiously. Her breath came in quick, uneven bursts but her hands were steady and working. Beside her, an older scientist adjusted the dials with mechanical precision, his voice cutting through the chaos like the edge of a knife.

"Damn it," he muttered, trying to take back control. "It’s accelerating."

"Something’s wrong," the younger one gasped, her voice tight, restrained. "The calculations aren’t holding. It’s rewriting itself."

The third figure, a mage, stood apart, her focus on the runes. Her breath came in sharp gasps, her hands weaving through the air in practiced sigils. She whispered under her breath, reinforcing the enchantments, trying to cage the power surging through the machine.

The machine shuddered. The pulse of energy deepened, its rhythm slipping from controlled hum to violent tremor. The lights were blindingly red, blinking repeatedly in the otherwise dark chamber.

The numbers suddenly flickered as the metal roared, warping into unreadable symbols. The runes wavered, distorting violently.

Her hands wove through the space in front of her, tracing sigils with trembling fingers. She whispered under her breath, reinforcing the apparatus, but the symbols rippled, fragile as melting frost.

“No,” she said quietly. Something is wrong. Something is deeply, deeply wrong.

“This isn’t right,” the younger scientist screamed over the noise, her hands darting across the interface. Her voice was steady, but her breath was not.

“It’s overloading,” the other scientist muttered, his voice sharp with control- but there was something else beneath it.

Fear. Uncertainty.

Determination.

He adjusted the dials, recalibrating the computers, but the energy only surged, devouring every correction.

At that moment, the mage stumbled back, eyes wide.

“No,” she whispered. Her hands shook, fingers still moving through the air, desperately trying to reinforce the runes that now flickered and broke apart like dying embers. “No, no, no...”

The lights overhead burst in rapid succession. The walls groaned, the metal twisting. A high-pitched keening filled the air, not from the machine, but from the fabric of reality itself.

The mage’s breath hitched.

“No,” she gasped, stepping backward, her arms trembling as she tried to re-stabilize the stones. But the runes were already unraveling, breaking apart haphazardly.

A burst of sparks rained down as the overhead lights exploded, one by one.

The pulse of energy deepened, its rhythm slipping from a steady hum into a violent tremor.

Then a rupture. A single note of silence, deafening in its purity.

And then the blast hit.

Raw, blinding energy erupted from the machine’s core, a force neither technology nor magic could contain. The shockwave tore through the room, and the mage barely had time to scream before she was gone- her silhouette swallowed in the eruption of violet-white light.

The younger scientist gasped, stumbling forward, reaching.

Too late.

A hand clasped her wrist, yanking her back before the flames could consume her too.

“No,” she choked out, struggling against the pull. “No, we can still... what have we done?”

The other scientist growled, his grip ironclad.

"We have to shut it down. Now," she added, her heart hammering in her chest.

“No,” he choked out, struggling against the pull. “No, I can still...”

A massive chunk of metal, torn free from the collapsing ceiling, came hurtling down. The older scientist turned, eyes widening just before impact.

The force struck his skull.

He crumpled.

Her breath shattered into ragged, uneven gasps. She dropped to her knees beside him, fingers pressing against his throat, desperate for a pulse.

Nothing.

Her hands trembled. Her whole body trembled.

The woman screamed.

The machine roared again. She turned back to the console, fingers flying, but it was no use. Every command she sent was devoured, overwritten by something vast and unknowable.

The machine no longer recognized them. No longer listened. It was no longer theirs to control.

If only he were here.

The mastermind. The one who actually understood.

The room around them trembled, the air warping, stretching. A heavy, suffocating stillness bled into the world, pressing against their skin, their lungs. It was like the moment before an explosion.

But the explosion never came.

Instead, stillness. A heavy, suffocating stillness that wrapped around her body like a vice.

Everything around her froze—the flickering flames, the swirling smoke, the metal caught mid-collapse. The pain in her chest was suspended in time.

The shuddering walls, the flickering flames, the sparks frozen midair. The desperate yell caught in the other scientist’s throat, the grief still raw in his eyes.

Even thought itself felt slower, distant as if she were sinking into a void.

Then... whiteness.

Pure, endless. The moment stretched into eternity.

A world undone. A world waiting to begin again.

And then...

Nothing.