Vivien looks up at her ceiling, filled with anxiety, unable to sleep, even after laying in bed for a few hours by now.
Today would be the day, The day she would know if her gut feeling was correct, or if she'd wasted the last week panicking for nothing; She knows deep down that she'd rather be wrong than correct about something this major.
Having witnessed first hand the lengths the golden-masked man had gone to in order to hijack the broadcast at her previous workplace, She was one of the minority that believed his supposed doomsday date to have some truth behind it, going as far as quitting her job at her place of employment when they had asked her to work the night the 'Savior' had warned about.
So she lays back in her bed, alone in her small apartment, waiting for the world to end.
She lays there with nothing occurring for just less than an hour.
Then it begins.
No sound accompanies a flash of light outside of her window, barely seen in her peripheral vision at first.
A green bolt of lightning fell from high within the sky, arcing down-wards in sporadic directions, hitting the ground within an instant.
But it lingers, rather than disappearing the moment it finishes striking, the bolt lingers in the sky, a tear in space.
Then come the screams.
_______________
Aaron sits on his bed as the clock strikes midnight, Waiting with a small handgun he had borrowed from his friend Kyle, the magazine sitting next to him as he breathes slowly to calm himself down, hoping to be wrong about the 'breaking'.
Sitting there for an hour patiently, Aaron looks down at his phone to check the time.
[1:54am /No signal/ 78% Charged]
"Shit"
Aaron curses as he sees the lack of signal, knowing what it likely means.
Loading the magazine into the gun, he moves to his window to look outside, peeking his head out of the window only to see bright tears in the sky; Mostly green, though with some red, the rifts look like bolts of lightning stuck in time.
Then he looks closer, and sees dark shapes emerging from some of the breaks, though at the distance, as much as he tries, he cant make out any real details.
'Bugger- How long have I not noticed, Was there really no sound at all?'
Aaron worries, though he doesn't hesitate, making his was into his house, slapping light switches and going to different rooms to wake up his father and younger siblings.
_______________________
Sitting atop a skyrise as the clock approaches midnight, Icarus listens to the fairly busting city below him with a regretful smile on his face.
'If only I arrived earlier, maybe I could have convinced more of them'
He thinks, his face softening with regret, though it quickly fades away as he glances towards the sky with inquisitive eyes.
"Its coming"
He says to himself, shedding his jacket to reveal a heavily scarred torso, any flesh not scarred Littered with runes.
Pale colours begin to glow from the runes, the air around Icarus shimmering as he absorbs traces of mana into the runes.
The sky opens directly above him.
A massive crack in the sky, emitting a dark red glow appears within less than a second, before staying there as though it had always lay between the clouds and the earth.
Closing his eyes as the crack opens, a large rune in the center of Icarus' torso previously dull begins to glow as the mana within the air around him gets pulled into the circular, complex rune, making it glow the same dark red as the rift above him.
Icarus' face scrunches as he does his best to maintain his concentration, absorbing the mana as fast as he can.
For the next few minutes, nothing emerges from the rift above Icarus, currently sitting cross legged like some sort of monk, the air around him distorted into a vortex, centered upon a rune etched into the very flesh of his chest.
After five minutes, he finally stops absorbing mana, though a small area around the dark red glowing rune upon his chest maintains a shimmer around it, though caused by a heat mirage rather than the movement of mana.
"Time to live up to my name"
He smiles, stretching out for a moment before the runes on his legs emit blinding green and white light.
*Crack*
The roof underneath him cracks slightly as he propels himself like a bullet into the rift, disappearing entirely.
________________________
Kyle looks up at the sky with a manic excitement in his eyes.
Having locked each and every door and window of his fairly run-down house, He looks at the strange creatures pouring from the rifts in the sky, holding a pump-action shotgun in his hands; eager to go out and see just what creatures from other worlds may look like, he restrains himself, reminding himself that he needs to wait for his friends Aaron and Daniel.
"What the?! HELP! HELP!"
Shouts and screams full of panic echo from a few houses down, leading Kyle to open his window and lean out.
The first look he gets at one of the otherworldly creatures is a jarring one.
A spindly creature lays on its side, its legs appearing to have shattered during its landing, arms appearing to be nearly three meters in length drag its thin, somewhat humanoid body towards the house from which the screams originated.
'Well if I was expecting a large target, Fate had other plans'
Being honest with himself Kyle doesn't really care about his neighbors, his blood simply boils to experience something interesting and getting into a shoot-out with an otherworldly monster sounds like just his kind of fun.
"Oi, Stick insect!"
Kyle doesn't really think much about his decision as he cocks the gun in his hands and vaults from his ground-floor window.
'What the fuck is that?'
Seeing the creature turn to face him, Kyle's eyes widen slightly at the horrific visage, its head is covered in the same dry, overstretched skin as its body.
Rather than any apparent eyes or ears, all it sports is a long serpentine tongue, flicking at the air as its focus is redirected at Kyle.
*Bang!*
Kyle doesn't hesitate, squeezing the trigger before pumping the action on his gun once more, sending a shell dropping to the tar below his feet.
Ears ringing, Kyle is unable to hear the creature's response to the buckshot tearing into its flesh; though as he slowly steps towards it, readying another shot, he sees its body twitch and writhe.
*Bang!*
Kyle fires another shot, the creature no longer looks towards him, not more intensely writhing upon the ground.
Kyle chambers another shell.
*Bang!*
The creature finally stops moving as Kyle lets loose another blast, barely more than ten meters away.
*Bang!*
*Bang!*
Just to be sure, Kyle empties the gun into the strange creature.
Closing the distance between himself and the now still creature, He cocks his gun once more, bluffing another shot in case anyone around him thinks of doing anything stupid.
He then crouches down infront of the dead creature finally granting himself a good look at the otherworldly abomination.
With skin like tanned leather, pulled tight across tendon and bone, each of the creatures four almost humanoid limbs extends far longer than even Kyle's respectable near two meter height.
'I wonder what it would have done with intact legs?'
Kyle thinks as he looks at the creatures shattered lower limbs, pieces of black bone sticking out through puncture wounds in the eerie, pale brown flesh.
"Neat"
Kyle says as he begins to walk back to the window from which he jumped out, Giving his Neighbors, the original targets of the unnatural beast a curt wave before leaving the creature to bleed out in the pale moonlight.
'Better to be safe than sorry- I can't be sure of where that thing emerged from, and I should probably get the drop on them if I want to kill more'
Climbing through his window, Kyle scrambles in his cupboard for more shells, loading them into the gun before returning to patiently waiting for his two friends.
_____________________
With shaking hands, Jake looks at the massive spatial rift infront of him, stretching from the ground to above the clouds, it emits a pale white glow, silhouetting the creature standing over his mother.
Translucent, membranous wings fold under the glistening arms of the creature, hunched over his mother, no longer breathing.
Each feral movement of its otherworldly arms pulls more flesh from her bones, towards its mouth, sickening chewing disappearing into the night air.
Jake blames himself for not asking Kyle for a gun, Jake blames himself for not having the courage to admit to believing 'childish' doomsday prophecies, but mostly he blames himself for not having the courage to act sooner.
Holding two large kitchen knives, Jake hates himself for not attacking the bat looking creature the moment it descended upon his house, Jake burns with hatred, his eyes slowly filling with an almost suicidal determination.
Jake screams and charges towards the creature.