Witness of The Great Collapse

"Through rain and shine, through smoldering heat and frostbiting cold, against the rage of the earth and the wrath of the sky—against all odds and even the will of the gods—the realm of men will always strive to dominate. Empires may crumble, civilizations may fall, but the fire of human ambition never dies. It is our nature to rise, carve our place in the world, and bend nature and fate to our will. For as long as breath fills our lungs and blood courses through our veins, mankind will defy the inevitable, reaching ever onward, ever upward—until the very end."
-unknown, before The Great Collapse.

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plop, plop
It started with a drop, a ripple, a hint of cold, a tiny bump on the skin.
It was one, then two, then four, eight, and in the next 5 seconds or so, it was countless.
It was out of place, out of season, out of prediction, unassumed, uninvited, yet it came.
Everyone thought of it as just another passing bizarreness, that it was, indeed, out of place—but that was it, no one batted an eye, strange as it might seem.
What started as little pricks went on to rattling trees and leaves, then to drumming metals.
Within moments, no one could hear anything other than the deafening chorus of billions—trillions of water beads cascading from the heavens, drowning the world with it.

One boy stood in his lonesomeness.
He was different from the rest; he was immune to this nature-wrought orchestra. He held his hands up towards the heavens—gesturing as if trying to embrace it or beckoning it to fall, but no one knew for sure, nobody cared—they were all desperate to escape from the battering cloudburst, seeking shelter and respite.

While everyone else was desperate against being wet, the boy didn't seem to care; they boy's feet didn't even move—not even an inch, he stood there, his upper body flailing slightly as if following the rhythm of the world.

"Aaaaa!!"

The boy shouted, raised his arms even higher, widespread.

"Aaaaa! Aaauu! AAAAUUUUU!"

He shouted and shouted, but nobody heard him—not one soul, for his cries were engulfed in a hysteric song. The boy beckoned to the sky frantically, waved one arm to his surroundings, and pointed up with the other. Yet his surroundings found his act undesirable and turned a blind eye to his antics.

Then an object fell from the sky. It fell on top of a 2-story building and wrecked half of the building's second floor. It happened in the blink of an eye; it was like a sudden surge of electrical current. It was brief, and it was LOUD; louder than the storm, louder than the sound-consuming downpour, it broke the world, it broke the symphony. It was huge, whatever it was.

Everyone was dumbfounded; some reluctantly went away, some were panicking and screaming at each other, some took out their phones and snapped photos, some apparently hesitant to remain but nevertheless stayed there—out of curiosity, perhaps.

But the boy was different, after a moment of silence, the boy rushed toward the building wrecked by the unknown object. He ran into the building and desperately tried to clear some of the rubble inside.

His hands trembled as he pushed aside the jagged pieces of concrete and splintered glass.
The rain slicked his fingers, making every motion clumsy, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. Beneath the debris, movement—a faint, shuddering shift in the rubble. The boy knew what it was and dug deeper with renewed urgency.
His nails cracked, his skin tore, even his then-black clothes no longer held the tiniest resemblance to the outfit he remembered—thanks to all the debris and splinters in the building, whatever they were, the boy cleared them away from the point where he saw the slight pulsing among the rubble.

After more desperate attempts, the boy finally unearthed someone—two people, a man and a girl.
Half-buried under the wreckage, the man’s leg was pinned under a collapsed wooden beam, his face twisted in pain, while the girl clung desperately to his arm, her lips moving rapidly, forming words the boy couldn’t hear.
The boy could see her wide, terrified eyes, the silent plea etched into her face. She wasn’t crying, but her breaths seemed sharp and frantic.

The boy swallowed hard, his own pulse pounding—not in his ears, but in his throat, his wrists, his fingertips. He exhaled, trying to steady himself.

He reached out and gestured hurriedly. I’ll help.

The girl stared blankly. She didn’t understand.

No time.

The boy gritted his teeth and grabbed the beam pinning the man’s leg.
He pushed with all his might, feeling the resistance in his bones, the way the impact traveled up his arms.
It barely budged.
He tried again, adjusting his stance, leveraging his entire weight against it.
A deep vibration coursed through his body as the wood groaned, shifting just enough for the man to drag himself free.

The boy moved quickly, pulling the girl out first.
She gasped—he could see it in the way her chest heaved, her mouth parting in what was probably a sob. He didn’t stop to process it. He hoisted her onto his back and turned to the man, whose expression was twisted in pain.
The man tried to stand, wincing as his injured leg gave out beneath him. He grabbed the boy’s arm, and for a moment, they locked eyes.
The boy pointed to the street, urgency written in his movements. We have to go.

Together, they stumbled toward the exit, weaving through broken furniture and shattered walls. The relentless downpour battered against his skin, seeping into his clothes.
His vision blurred as they stepped outside—cold rivulets streamed down his face, streaking the world in hazy smears of light and movement.

And then he saw it.

People weren’t just watching anymore. They were running.

Mouths open, faces twisted in terror—silent screams. Hands pointing, bodies colliding, feet pounding against the pavement in a rhythm he couldn't hear but could feel in the tremors of the ground beneath him.

The fear in their eyes wasn’t just for the storm anymore.

Something else was there.

The visage of this something gradually became clearer as the dust from the rubble quickly dissipated under the relentless downpour. It was black—an unnatural void against the dim sky—and it was pulsing. Nobody knew for sure what it was, but its form was curled inward, almost as if it had hurdled into itself before lodging deep within the wreckage of the building’s second floor.

The something stirred. A shudder rippled through its strange, pulsing form, and then—movement. The jagged remnants of the building groaned as the mass began to unfurl, shifting and expanding, shedding dust and debris like a creature rousing from a deep slumber. What had once seemed like a featureless black husk now revealed scales, sharp and glistening under the storm’s dull light.

Then, with a slow, deliberate stretch, it emerged.

A serpentine neck uncoiled, followed by a pair of enormous wings, their membranous expanse slick and trembling. Clawed limbs dug into the crumbling wreckage, finding purchase as the creature righted itself. Its head rose at last, angular and fierce, eyes like molten gold burning through the mist.

It was no meteor, no wreckage of war. It was a beast of myth and legend, torn from the pages of ancient stories and thrust into reality.

And it was alive.

Chaos erupted in an instant.

The injured man barely had time to gasp before the beast’s massive jaws descended upon him. There was no roar, no warning—just the sickening snap of teeth, the crunch of bone, and then nothing.

The boy saw it happen, but his body refused to move. He stood frozen, his breath locked in his throat, his mind refusing to register what his eyes had just witnessed. The girl, still clutching his back, trembled violently, her fingers digging into his shoulders as though trying to ground herself in a reality that had just shattered.

Around them, people were already fleeing—sprinting away in blind terror, their shapes blurring into the storm-drenched streets. But he and the girl were still too close. Too close.

Then, at last, something snapped inside him.

Run.

His legs obeyed before his mind could catch up, propelling him forward in a desperate sprint. His feet splashed against the flooded pavement, his breaths ragged and uneven, his arms tightening around the girl as he forced himself to move, move, move—before that thing turned its hunger onto them.

But soon, the boy, the girl, and all of humanity would come to know true despair.

The sky, already dark with storm clouds, split open once more. More objects—black, pulsing, shrouded in flame—came hurtling down like omens of doom. They struck buildings, streets, open fields, each impact sending shockwaves through the trembling earth. Fires erupted, debris scattered, and the panicked screams of the fleeing masses grew louder.

People barely had time to process what was happening, but one thing became chillingly clear—wherever that thing had come from, there were more. Many more.

This was not an accident.

This was not a single nightmare to be survived.

It was only the beginning. The dawn of a disaster unlike anything the world had ever known.

The boy was one, and the girl was another.
There were two—two of the first to stand at the precipice of oblivion.
Who would bear witness to the unraveling of an era, the silent harbingers of an age gasping its final breath.

Little did they know, history would remember them—not as mere survivors, but as the first to see the sky weep fire, the first to hear the world’s dying whisper.

Two witnesses of the Dawn of the Last Age.