A few days later, the end had come.

  And the cosmic irony of it coming on a Monday couldn’t be emphasized enough.

  Galen had been home alone, relaxing in the living room reading one of his many books. His parents had left two days ago to visit his mother’s parents, who lived across the state. Serenity had been dropped off earlier in the day at a friend’s house.

  He wasn’t bothered by being home alone. He would’ve hung out with one of his friends, but most of them were busy at the moment. Plus, Galen wanted to be ready to pick up his sister later. That resulted in him being a little bored as he finished reading his book. He set it down on the table in the middle of the living room, and decided to clean his father’s firearm to pass the time.

  Yes, his family owned firearms. And yes, he had been taught and trained in their use and maintenance. Surprisingly, it wasn’t his grandfather who had taught him. It had been his dad. Though Galen’s father hated unnecessary violence, he didn’t mess around when it came to the safety of his family. It was something he had in common with his own father, Nolan.

  Weirdly enough, despite his grandfather training him in preparation for some vague apocalypse to come, Nolan hadn’t bothered to teach Galen how to use firearms. He’d eventually become curious enough to point that out. His grandfather had merely shaken his head and said that it would be a waste of time to teach him a skill that wouldn’t help him face what was coming.

  That had been baffling to hear, especially since his grandfather had rigorously taught him how to fight via more primitive methods, such as hand to hand, knives, and even swords. It was an inconsistency that Galen could never make sense of.

  He’d recalled all this as he cleaned the nine millimeter pistol his father owned. After finishing the maintenance on the firearm, he checked the chamber to make sure there wasn’t a bullet inside, pulled out the magazine, flipped the safety on, and put it back where it had originally been.

  Returning to the living room, he grabbed the remote control for the TV and sighed as he sat down on the sofa.

  Just before he pressed the power button on the remote, he thought he felt… SOMETHING pass through the air. He frowned, wondering what that strange sensation had been. Deciding he’d imagined it, he shrugged his shoulders and pressed the power button.

  Nothing.

  His frown deepened, and he checked the batteries on the remote. He could have sworn he had just replaced them.

  Swapping them out for new ones, he tried to turn on the TV with the remote again.

  Still nothing.

  “Damn it, Serenity,” he muttered.

  He walked over to the outlet behind the TV to make sure his little sister hadn’t pranked him by unplugging it before leaving.

  It was still plugged in.

  How strange.

  He unplugged the TV and put it in the other outlet.

  Nothing.

  Galen sighed as he brought out his phone, ready to look up some troubleshooting tips for a malfunctioning TV. His eyes widened when his phone remained dark, as though the battery were dead. “Ok, I NEVER go to sleep before making sure my phone is fully charged! What the heck is going on?!” he yelled in frustration.

  It was then he felt it.

  Unlike the last one, this time, he physically felt a surge of some kind pass through the air. The surge felt so… unnatural. It was as if something in the world had gone horribly wrong.

  “What the-” he began before he felt the ground under his feet shake.

  At first, it was subtle. Barely noticeable, like a distant growl. But the persistent trembling quickly grew in intensity.

  The house’s windows rattled, and the floor beneath his feet shuddered. Things all over the house toppled over, including the urns containing his grandparents’ ashes, and the once-cozy atmosphere descended into panic. He rushed to the front door, his movements unsteady as he struggled to maintain balance. He dropped his useless phone at some point.

  Once he was outside, he gasped.

  The ground had cracked and split, like a monstrous beast stirring from slumber. He saw people stumbling and falling, their screams mixing with the sound of the quake. Dust quickly filled the air, turning the bright morning into a murky haze.

  In mere seconds, the earthquake had escalated from a mere tremor to a full-fledged cataclysm. his vision shook violently as the earthquake continued, unrelenting. It was as though the planet itself was shaking, filled with fury, but also… agony?

  Once the shaking mercifully stopped, he was on the ground, breathing erratically but somehow okay.

  Serenity, he thought in a panic.

  Serenity was at her friend’s house, no doubt at the mercy of this quake as well.

  The urge to find and protect his sister took over. Though he wanted to go find her right away, he took a quick moment to run back inside his house and grab his father’s pistol. In a disaster like this, people could become a threat in their panic, so Galen needed something to protect himself and Serenity just in case.

  After shoving a fully loaded magazine into the pistol and shoving the gun into his holster, he gave one last forlorn glance at the spilled ashes of his grandparents before he began to sprint towards where he had last left Serenity.

  Amid the chaotic ruins of what was once his hometown, Galen navigated the devastation with skill cultivated by years of his grandfather’s harsh training.

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  Galen sprinted through debris-strewn streets, vaulting and climbing over fallen cars and any other obstacles in his way. The air was thick with dust and the smell of destruction, but he pushed forward.

  Every now and then, he would pause for but a moment to make sure he was going the right way. The once-familiar landmarks had grown almost unrecognizable due to the earthquake, making his stomach churn.

  Soon, another earthquake shook the ground beneath him. The buildings swayed precariously, threatening to collapse at any moment. He waited for the tremors to subside, and then continued moving forward.

  Over the distance, plumes of smoke rose from all over town as fires began to ignite, adding to the nightmarish backdrop. Galen’s world seemed to be tearing itself apart, yet he pressed on.

  At last, he began to recognize a particular street. His heart soared with relief as he realized it was where Serenity’s friend was supposed to live. She had to be close.

  With renewed determination, he pushed himself harder.

  As he rounded a corner, he finally found Serenity who’d been running in his direction, seemingly trying to get home. Tears were streaming down her dirt-streaked face. When she saw him, her eyes widened with relief.

  "Galen!" she cried out, launching herself into his arms.

  He hugged her tightly, a mix of emotions welling up inside him. "I've got you, Serenity! I won't let anything happen to you."

  “Galen! What’s happening?!” Serenity yelled.

  “An earthquake! That should be obvious, shouldn’t it?!” Galen snapped.

  Serenity shook her head, “No, not just that dummy! There’s something else. Something feels… damn it, I don’t know! Something feels horribly wrong! Don’t you feel it?!”

  Galen did. But he couldn’t focus on that right now. He had to find some sort of shelter for him and Serenity.

  “Serenity, what happened with your friend? Where’s their house?!”

  Serenity began to tear up, “The house collapsed on top of them before they could follow me out. I tried looking for help… Oh, God. Galen, they’re dead aren’t they?”

  The ground shook underneath them again, tipping them slightly off balance.

  “Don’t think about that right now. Follow my lead, Serenity. We have to find shelter while the quakes have stopped!”

  Serenity began to cry, and she whimpered to him, “Galen, I want to go home…”

  Panicked as he was, he didn’t know where else to go. They’d prepared for emergencies, but that was hard to remember through the panic of actually going through one.

  Galen nodded and said soothingly, “Alright. Follow me. We’ll head home.”

  They’d just started moving as another quake hit.

  “Damn it! Not now!” Galen hissed through clenched teeth as he held onto Serenity with all he had.

  The quake suddenly stopped just as quickly as it had began. He could feel Serenity trembling in his embrace, “Galen… what’s happening… that feeling is getting worse!”

  “I don’t know… I don’t know, Serenity!”

  Serenity then gasped in shock and stiffened in his hold.

  “Serenity, are you okay? What happened?” Galen asked.

  “Galen…” Serenity gasped, pale as a ghost and eyes wide like saucers as she looked up, “the sky is… breaking!!!”

  He looked up, and noticed cracks IN THE AIR. The sky’s color seemed to be changing as well, becoming a swirl of dark colors rather than the natural blue it should have been.

  “Wha- How…” he began before the quake returned stronger than ever.

  The trembling was so strong that Galen lost his grip on Serenity, and the two were briefly separated.

  Just long enough for the ground to split open between them and push them further from each other.

  “GALEN!!!”

  “SERENITY!!!”

  Both had an arm out reaching towards the other, but the distance was far too wide to reach as a chasm now separated the two siblings.

  As he panicked, a sound like shattering glass magnified many times over resounded in the air. He suddenly found himself being sucked up into the sky, where cracks had formed in the air right above him. Only now there was a white hole, seeming almost like a portal, that was sucking in air, slowly pulling Galen in.

  Serenity watched him being pulled into the rift in the sky with a slacked jaw. She was about to cry out to him and reach towards him again, only to stumble.

  As Galen was slowly being sucked into the hole in the sky, he watched with horror as the ground continued to crack and splinter at Serenity’s feet.

  No… NO!

  The ground at Serenity’s feet shattered, and he watched his little sister plunge into the chasm, all while she cried out and reached for him. The last thing he saw of his little sister was her face filled with tears and terror before the darkness swallowed her.

  “NO!!!” Galen roared, tears flowing down his cheeks as he tried to fight the pull of the spacial rift and plunge himself after his sister.

  Even if he had somehow managed to free himself from pull of the void, he knew he would’ve just died along with his sister.

  In that moment he didn’t care. But the world seemed to have other plans for him.

  More unnatural, reality breaking cracks began to form around him. Another horrible shattering noise was heard, but this one sounded distant. It was quickly followed up by another right by Galen. He was subsequently pulled with sudden force into the tear in the fabric of space.

  The instant he passed through, everything went black.

  ***

  He didn’t know if he was alive or dead.

  In spite of his questionable state, his mind was assaulted with visions of the world dying. They were feverish and nightmarish, and he was unable to tell if they were real or just figments of his panicked imagination. Tsunamis rose. The skies cracked open. Mountains toppled. Volcanoes burst. Tornadoes and hurricanes raged. Millions upon millions died amidst the carnage.

  His vision continued to expand outward, until he saw the planet itself. Molten cracks began to spread throughout the globe, until ultimately Earth shattered unnaturally into four distinct pieces.

  Galen figured out he was still alive. Because he felt something tear and break apart within him in sync with the planet’s destruction. He tried to let out a scream, but no sound came out. It felt as though something had been torn out from the very depths of his soul. His being felt incomplete, as though a hole were now present.

  The feeling had been so agonizing that it had rendered him completely unconscious, and the last thing he did before passing out was let out a bellow of grief for Serenity.

  **Author's Note: I commissioned an artist not too long ago to depict the final scene of Galen and Serenity's separation in Light Novel style. Here's the link, check it out and give the artist, Argo RF, a follow if you like his work!

  Argo RF does AMAZING artwork and music.**