The God of Destruction, Yuhsokol, had not been seen for centuries. Humanity had forgotten the true terror of his presence, replacing him with gods more convenient, more palatable. But Yuhsokol never cared for the comforts of time. His desire was always simple: destruction.
It began, as it always did, with a feeling that curled at the edges of the world. A sort of pressure. It felt like a storm, though it was not. Not exactly. Some people sensed it before others.
They went about their days distracted, but something was off. Not in the skies. Not in the sounds of the world. But in the air of the streets, in the very pulse of the city.
Zane was one of the first to notice.
He'd always considered himself grounded, too pragmatic to be swept away by superstitions or phantoms. Yet as he walked through the crowded streets of the city one evening, he felt it. Like someone had shifted the ground beneath him, just slightly.
Nothing obvious. Nothing that anyone else would notice. But his pulse quickened as he stood still, watching the people move around him, completely unaware.
The sky, already dark with smog and low clouds, seemed a touch darker. He ignored it at first. The sort of thing that came with the passing of another day, another week. But it grew. Slowly, persistently, in a way he could not escape. No matter how hard he tried to shake it, the sensation stuck to him, like a deep ache.
The first sign came the next day, in the early morning.
Zane had been walking to his car when he saw something strange. A figure standing at the end of the street. It was still, unmoving, as though carved from stone. Zane stopped, his breath caught in his throat.
The figure was tall—unnaturally tall—and the air around it seemed to tremble. But it was not human. It couldn't be. The shape was too vast, its presence suffocating. There was no sound from it. Not even the echo of footsteps.
He blinked. When his eyes returned to the spot, the figure was gone. Disappeared.
He looked around, unsure if he had just imagined the whole thing. A trick of the mind, perhaps, a result of the growing pressure on the air. But deep down, he knew.
It had begun.
At first, it seemed like a strange coincidence. News outlets reported strange phenomena: missing persons, odd weather patterns, inexplicable accidents. But the stories grew. They became more frequent, more urgent. People began to feel it in their bones. The sky didn't look right. Something had changed. Some primal instinct began to stir in them. Deep down, they feared what was coming.
Zane tried to ignore it, but his mind wouldn't allow him. His work became unbearable. The constant reminder of something wrong—something that was slowly, slowly, consuming everything. As the days wore on, the streets emptied, people locking themselves away in their homes, their minds no longer capable of denying the truth.
And then, one night, it happened.
Zane had been out, walking alone in the oppressive quiet of the city. He wasn't sure why he had chosen this particular path, but now, he couldn't bring himself to turn around. He was drawn forward, unable to stop himself.
As he passed under a flickering streetlamp, he felt it again—the pressure in the air, thicker now, sharper, closing in on him. He could hardly breathe.
And then, he heard it. A low groan, distant but impossible to ignore. A sound that shook his body to its core, its origin unknown but unmistakable. It vibrated through his chest, making his ribs ache. He stood frozen for a moment, the tension building as the groan grew louder. There was no escape. It was coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
His heart raced. He wanted to scream, but his mouth felt dry. His mind screamed at him to run, but his legs felt heavy, unresponsive.
The earth beneath him seemed to shift. A tremor. Another. And then the ground cracked.
Zane stumbled backward, eyes wide as the asphalt split open. The city was trembling. It felt as though the entire world was being torn apart.
And then, emerging from the cracks, came the thing that haunted Zane's every waking moment. The thing he had feared since the moment he first felt the change.
Yuhsokol.
The God of Destruction. Towering, dreadful, his form made of what seemed like the very fabric of the earth itself, bent and broken. His eyes—if they could be called eyes—burned with a ferocious light, endless in their gaze. His mouth, a thin crack that didn't move, but somehow, he spoke. Or rather, the world heard him.
It didn't matter if you were close or far away. The voice—if you could even call it that—was everywhere. It wrapped around your soul, broke your thoughts into pieces. Zane's knees buckled as he looked up at the towering, nightmarish figure.
"You are the end," Yuhsokol said, the words more felt than heard, more experienced than spoken.
The ground trembled once more, and Zane fell to his knees, gasping for air. The city around him was falling apart, crumbling, buildings collapsing into themselves, streets breaking open, their foundations unable to bear the weight of what was coming.
It wasn't just the city. It wasn't just the people. It was everything. The very world was unraveling under the weight of Yuhsokol's gaze.
Zane tried to move, tried to run, but his legs wouldn't obey him. He looked up, tears streaming down his face, his breath coming in short, shallow bursts. There was nowhere to go. The air itself was thick with the God's presence, and the earth itself seemed to reject the people standing on it.
Yuhsokol took a step forward, and the ground cracked open beneath Zane's feet.
The pressure became unbearable. Zane gasped, his mouth open wide as his body began to twist and contort, the ground beneath him giving way. He tried to scream, but his throat closed up. He tried to run, but his legs wouldn't move.
A sharp pain tore through him. He could feel his body breaking apart, crumbling like the city around him. His skin burned, his bones cracked, his vision blurred. He could feel the God's hand on him, but it was not a touch. It was something far worse. A force. A pull.
And then, all at once, his world was gone.
When Zane opened his eyes, he was still on the ground, but the world was silent. Not the quiet that follows a storm, not the emptiness of a forgotten place. No. This silence was unnatural. It was absolute.
There was nothing left. No city. No people. Just him, sprawled on the cracked earth, his body twisted beyond recognition, his breath labored, shallow. His heartbeat barely a whisper against the backdrop of nothing.
Yuhsokol stood over him, watching.
Zane tried to move again, tried to scream. But his body was a ruin. Nothing worked. His limbs refused to obey. His mind screamed in desperation, but it was all pointless. There was no escape. There was no one to help.
The God of Destruction wasn't here to torment him, though. He wasn't here to play. He was simply doing what he had always done. What he was created for.
Zane's last thought, as his body folded into itself, was not of fear. It wasn't even of pain. It was of the strange, terrible finality of it all. The Earth had ended, humanity had ended, and there was nothing left. Not even hope.
Yuhsokol moved away, his form fading into the background of the broken world. The ruins of the city stretched out like a dead thing, stretching across what had once been a place teeming with life. All was gone.
And the God of Destruction moved on.