After the so-called "final battle," no one remembered which god was the first to fall to their knees.Maybe it was the Warden of Nothingness from the Death Realm, maybe the endlessly bored Speaker of the Multiversal Council. Either way, when their radiance crumbled, the audience below only cared about recording it—live-streaming under a shattering sky:"Brothers, witness history! The world's about to end!"
And then came the aftershock.
It wasn't a logical aftershock.Not an earthquake that shook.Not a tsunami that surged.It was more like a massive rag being impatiently ripped apart by a child.
The sky split into grid-like cracks, like someone debugging an ancient TV. Each fissure leaked a different channel: on one side, medieval knights were brawling with frying pans; on another, cybernetic workers shouted "Overwork or die!"; yet another showed death gods running tacky funeral ads—Buy two souls, get one free!
"This is just a cosmic projector," someone scoffed. A second later, the projection dragged him in, turning him into part of the ad copy:"Choose us for your soul purchases—free shipping after death!"
Even the Death Realm couldn't keep up. Once-majestic reapers now wielded plastic toy scythes that chipped paint at a single tap. The Registrar of Souls flipped through a blank ledger and wailed:"The whole list's empty! Nobody knows who's dead or alive!"
So those marked "dead" kept lining up at McDonald's, while those marked "alive" had to crawl into coffins and play dead to avoid crashing the system.
Humans weren't much better off.No matter how they struggled, everyone got reassigned to a "temporary backup world." Some woke in ancient Rome at dawn, only to attend online lectures at Tsinghua University in the afternoon. Others charged into battlefields, only to be dropped into Disney's Mickey parade.
"This is worse than wage slavery!" roared an armored knight—only to be instantly teleported into a neighborhood WeChat group, answering questions about "how to file a complaint about noisy dogs."
More absurd still, after the multiversal database collapsed, humans and death gods had to live side by side.Reapers moved into apartments, wielding desk fans as scythes, waiting in line for elevators.Humans were forced to cover shifts for them: collecting expired souls at supermarkets today, checking ash labels at crematoriums tomorrow.
"Hey bro, lend me your ID card. I can't log into the system," complained one reaper, handing over half a burnt punch-in card.
No one knew whose fault this "total collapse" was.Philosophers blamed human greed.Scientists blamed a death-server crash.Politicians blamed "hostile external forces."And graffiti on the walls declared: "The cosmic programmers just quit because the pay sucked."
Finally, the structure of reality broke apart like a jigsaw puzzle. Fragments drifted in the void. On one shard, Greek philosophers played poker with death gods; on another, Ronald McDonald led the dead in group aerobics.
Some screamed. Some prayed.But most just shrugged and kept filming TikToks:"Universe collapsing POV—don't forget to smash that like!"
That's when a cold system prompt echoed through the void:
"Thank you for using the Multiverse. This service has expired. Please collect your personal trash and exit your seat before full collapse."
No one moved.Because suddenly they realized: Where could they even go?The Death Realm was gone. The multiverse was gone. The only thing left standing was the sheer absurdity itself.
So they sat by the edge of the void, roasting marshmallows over a bonfire, watching the cracks widen. Someone raised a cup and shouted:
"Here's to the shitty ending of the universe! At least we don't have to pay mortgages anymore!"
The aftershock swallowed the last fragments.The world was gone, but laughter still echoed in the void—like the universe's final black joke.