[[ The Otherworld Trials have been triggered. The race for existence has begun. ]]
[[ You are the cause of the apocalypse. The one shunned by worlds. Those who have suffered will surely seek the truth, and therefore...
They will seek you. ]]
Magnus couldn't help but grimace upon unfurling the scroll that had abruptly appeared before him. His eyes wandered to the thick, metallic card in his hand.
Runic engravings and mechanical etches were littered in organized chaos onto a square-shaped card of bronze. At first, this card had been nothing but an antique, rotting away in a crevice.
But Magnus, as the thrillseeker that he was, had found himself exploring some underground system right underneath his city.
In a bid to avoid the venomous lunge of a snake, he had dived to his right and crashed straight through a wall.
And from the debris, he discovered the card.
"What have I done?" Magnus muttered. Worry could be seen on his face... and yet there were undertones of excitement.
It was as if a dream of his had just come true, but it was one of those evil ones instead.
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
A bone-shaking resonation coursed through his body at that very moment.
It was jarring.
It was mind-boggling.
Magnus felt some kind of force wash over him, forcing his mind into hiding within itself. His ears rang, and his face felt hot.
"W...what... is happening...?"
BOOM!
A cloud of dust descended upon Magnus. Something large must have slammed onto the city above, he thought.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
And, as one would expect, the catacombs he had found himself in was giving in.
"Cough! Cough!" Magnus' eyes shone in a defiant light as he bolted out the way he came.
No other thoughts consumed his mind as he fled in a hurry.
He sprinted past cobweb-filled halls and rushed through stinking sewage areas. Cuts and bruises appeared on his body as he refused to slow down even as he navigated the sharp turns.
He was lucky he had memorised his way down.
Because, at the very moment that the midday sun shone on his fair skin, he felt the earth behind him collapse.
He looked behind him, still somehow clutching the bronze card in his left hand, and the mysterious scroll in the other, and witnessed the earth just.... sink.
Buildings were cracking as they threatened to topple over. They all leaned towards the epicentre of it all, like disciples bowing before their master.
Magnus could not see what lay behind the many well-engineered buildings of his city.
But what he could see... was something far more jaw-dropping.
"What the fuck..?" He muttered under his breath.
There was a planet hovering in the distant skies. An entire planet! One perhaps larger than Earth, in fact!
Gravity seemed to have been bribed. It did not act at all in this sudden change, and yet everything else looked totally normal.
Magnus watched as Earth moved relative to the mysterious planet. As if he was looking at a satellite image, he saw mountains, rivers, seas, and canyons.
It was majestic beyond reason.
"...Because this is all beyond reason in the first place." Magnus felt his head become faint.
He wrenched his eyes off of the grand view before him and checked his phone by habit.
"An hour..."
No wonder he felt his neck ache and his mind become cloudy. He had been staring at a foreign planet for an entire hour. Time had passed him by in the blink of an eye.
"Well... I can't blame myself at least," Magnus looked around him.
Scattered and looking akin to zombies, the once-bustling crowd of a metropolis was frozen, staring at the scenery above.
They looked mesmerized.
Entranced by the grandeur of something beyond their wildest dreams. Or perhaps by sinister magic.
"Haha," A wry chuckle escaped Magnus' lips as he took another look at the scroll in his hands. From his brief scan, he also saw everyone holding a scroll of their own.
He tapped on the shoulder of a nearby man and asked,
"Hey, can I borrow this for a second?"
"Huh?" The man was jolted out of his reveries. Seeing Magnus point at the scroll in his hand, he thought for a bit before saying, "Y-yeah... Sure... Go ahead."
"Thanks," Magnus happily took the scroll and compared it with his.
"The Otherworld Trials have been triggered. The race for existence has begun." He read aloud.
"There's nothing else here,"
Magnus turned the scroll over and looked through it up and down. The message was awfully simple yet oh so ominous. Nothing else was written though. Not one splotch of ink more, not one less.
Whoooooom!
Out of nowhere, a familiar pulse of energy came washing over. This time, however, it felt milder. Like how going into a hot bath doesn't feel as hot as it should be after showering in warm water.
A new scroll appeared in front of every person's face. Including Magnus.
It shook thousands of people out of their dazed expressions. Perhaps, it shook even billions. But Magnus wasn't so sure if the people living on the other side of the planet experienced the same thing.
Seeing a new development, Magnus acted swiftly. No sign of hesitation could be seen in the way he grabbed at the scroll and unfurled it.
It was a bit brutish, especially when compared to those people who treated the scrolls like it was their god or prized possession.
But that was what excitement does to Magnus. It makes him... a tad bit reckless.
He then read through the scroll's contents.
[[ Scroll of Application ]]
[[ Sign your name on the dotted lines below to resign yourself to the Otherworld Trials. Death will be rewarded to those who do not sign after five minutes of unfurling this scroll. ]]
[[ By signing this scroll, you will have the chance to become a "Scribe." Details will not be delivered for your inconvenience. ]]
Click!
Scribble.
Done.
Three seconds was all it took for Magnus to grab his pen from his uniform's pocket and add his signature to the mysterious scroll.
Excitement glittered in his eyes. The prospect of diving into the unknown gave him a rush like no other.
He had long wanted to go skydiving through the clouds and free diving into the depths of the ocean to have a taste of such an experience. But he never got to. He was still a student, after all.
The most he could do was free run across balconies and along ledges of skyscrapers, like a cat. Nimble and fearless.
Today's events, however, trumped all he could wish for.
Thus, after signing, the scroll in his hands experienced a change.
Its beautifully calligraphed letters began squirming chaotically. They wormed across the parchment and formed a different set of sentences with Magnus' signature at the centre.
[[ Application acknowledged and accepted. You have three (3) days to prepare. See you in another world! ]]
Poof!
And then, with a small cloud of pink smoke, the scroll was gone.
.
.
.
Now comes the chaos.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths had been reported just a few minutes after the disappearance of the Scroll of Application. There was more to follow.
Screams, looting, and violence ran rampant as people began "preparing" in a state of absolute panic.
The governments of every country had unleashed their militaries, trying to preserve some semblance of order, only to discover that their weapons malfunctioned each time. Blue light would spark with every attempt they made to unleash missiles of mass destruction or shoot at any person who signed themselves up with the Scroll of Application.
Their attempts would be instantly silenced and stopped.
All they could do was engage the people in melee and trust that their armour could nullify the physical trauma wrought by crowbars and stones.
People from all around the world also discovered just what had crashed into every single major city on the globe. Pillars of black, obsidian-like glass was all they could see upon arriving a certain distance away, rising into the sky, higher than the Himalayas.
Their names were all written there, looking like an ominous obelisk with magical writing. The people assumed that it was a record for all those who were still alive. It was a record for those who did not throw away their scrolls in blinded doubt.
Pictures had been taken and posted on the (thankfully) still-functioning internet. News organisations were going crazy trying to process the influx of information.
Reports of people gaining superpowers, magic abilities, and other random events kept flooding in.
What was worse was the fact that there were indeed some among them who indeed gained superpowers out of nowhere.
Now, they could not tell right from wrong, fake from true, and likewise.
It was all chaos. Chaos that cannot be generalised with words.
As for Magnus?
He was... sitting in class.
Bored out of his mind.
Covered in grime and still quite wounded from his escape from the catacombs, Magnus was watching a documentary together with his nervous classmates and anxious teacher.
'The fact that my high school is this delusional is astounding.' He thought as he stealthily scrolled through his phone. 'The world is going to shit, and we are all going to be sent to another world in three days, and they still think it's all fake?'
The seat beside his was currently empty. It was the seat of the class representative. Someone who acted as a leader for him and his class. A kindhearted boy who was always gracious with his ways.
That boy was now dead. His body turned to dust before the eyes of his friends after refusing to sign the Scroll of Application.
Even at the worried requests of his friends, he refused to believe that he had no choice. Until the end, he fought for what he believed was right, and now he was quite the legend in the class.
It was a triple-edged legend.
For some, his end was a target for schadenfreude. For others, it was a pity.
But Magnus... Magnus respected such a legend.
'To be able to fight against the unknown like that... I might've tried just not signing it at all too.'
Thinking about that, he couldn't help but recall the message he received just as this all began.
[[ They will seek you. ]]
Magnus chuckled, eliciting a few short glances from his classmates.
Under his breath, he whispered to himself, "It makes it sound like I'm some sort of villain. Hah! Then I will lead them on a wild goose chase. I'd love to see them try to catch me."