Countless theories described how our world might end. Not a single one explained what actually brought it to its knees.
It began with a hum.
So quiet that we barely noticed it. Less a sound than a sensation. A vibration beneath the threshold of human perception.
Some people would later say they felt uneasy that morning. Restless. Irritable. As if their bodies had noticed something their minds hadn't yet caught up with.
The animals heard it immediately.
Dogs tucked their tails and began to tremble. Cats raised their hackles, hissing at empty air as if facing an enemy we couldn't see. Insects—at least those capable of flight—rose into the sky by the billions. Everything else scrambled toward the highest place it could reach. Even when you were that place — clawing, biting, desperate to get higher.
Rats and other vermin poured out of the sewers. Black, living waves flooding streets and buildings, triggering mass panic wherever the insects hadn't already done so.
An attentive observer might have noticed that everything that had ever considered the Earth its refuge was now desperately trying to escape it. Moles and worms. Rabbits and foxes. Side by side, without hierarchy, without hesitation. Predator and prey forgetting their roles.
There is only one thing capable of erasing all instinctual order:a threat not to the individual—but to the survival of the entire species.
The animals sensed what humanity did not yet even suspect.
Then the hum grew stronger.
The first people began to hear it. To feel it. Like pressure in the ears when breaking the surface too fast. The air grew heavy, as if it had absorbed every trace of moisture and turned against us.
And then the electronics went mad.
Mixers. Televisions. Hair dryers. Everything switched on at once—whether it was plugged in or not. Sound systems erupted in shrill noise before collapsing into a deep, terrifying thrum. Screens flickered with distorted colors and meaningless patterns.
The hum was everywhere now.
Like the bass of an impossibly large nightclub, it resonated inside every body. So intense that it dictated the rhythm of our hearts. Water began to vibrate, forming hypnotic patterns—but no one noticed.
Emergency systems failed. Backup generators screamed—and joined the noise.Nothing designed to protect us responded anymore.
The weak and the sick collapsed where they stood. Others clutched their ears, screaming without hearing themselves.
Then the glass began to move.
Windows warped as if liquid, pulsing in time with the hum. The ground trembled. In some places it swelled like waves under stormy water. In others it cracked and split apart.
The hum grew louder.And louder.Until it was no longer sound but a roar that shook buildings to their foundations.
And then—suddenly—it stopped.
Silence.
Yet everyone felt it instantly: something was different.
The sound had given our world a heartbeat it had never possessed before. And as the sky bloomed in impossible shades of green and violet, the true catastrophe finally reached us.
It took weeks to address the damage caused by the Worldrise—as the event would later be called. To general surprise, power grids and communication networks remained largely functional, aside from a handful of collapsed power lines and one destroyed coal plant.
What took longer was rebuilding homes. Roads. Treating the injured.
Almost everyone bled from their ears, nose, or mouth—some even from their eyes. Countless people suffered heart attacks. In the end, scientists estimated that nearly twenty million people worldwide had died because of the hum or its aftermath.
But the greatest challenge was something else entirely.
The rats.And the other animals.
They did not return underground.
And months later, we finally understood why.
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The agent taps frantically on his tablet, and the windows darken as a large screen lights up in front of us. Around me, excited murmuring fills the room, but I stay focused on my phone and the webnovel I'm currently reading.
"Exactly eleven years ago today, humanity learned what truly happened on the day of the Worldrise. Most of you are probably already familiar with the video by the livestreamer Izzy, but I would still like to watch it with you again."
With a sigh, I decide to finally give this my attention. The System was a bitch, and I didn't want to regret someday that I hadn't paid attention here.
At first, the screen shows nothing. Then the camera tilts upward, revealing dried grass and a dirty pair of sneakers. In the next moment, a boy with short blue hair, sticking out in all directions, grins at us. Freckles cover his face.
"Okay guys, I found something in the woods while scouting a location for my next video, and I just have to show you this."
The agent of the Association pauses the recording.
"Izzy was a streamer who visited lost places and, in exchange for coins—the currency on his platform—opened creepy doors and things like that. As far as we know, he was the first to make contact."
The recording continues.
"I know that if this were just a video, you'd accuse me of making it all up. That's why I'm doing this as a livestream."
On the right side of the screen, the live chat scrolls alongside the footage. Most viewers tell him to stop dragging it out; others claim it's obviously just a trick to get more views.
But when Izzy turns the camera, the comment feed seems to freeze for a few seconds. The viewers must have been too stunned to type anything.
Then the comments explode.
They race past the edge of the screen so fast I can't read them.
In front of the camera is an old, decaying building. Moss and creeping plants have begun reclaiming it. The windows are long gone. Trees stand so close that their branches have pushed through every opening.
And right where the entrance door should have been years ago, there is a hole.
Well—no. Not exactly a hole.
Clouds or mist fill it completely. And yet it's obvious that it is a hole, because the entire structure forms a perfect oval. Its edges glow bluish, reflected by the small clouds swirling inside it like a vortex.
It doesn't look like something that was ever meant to exist here.
"I know you're probably wondering what this thing looks like from the other side," Izzy says, "so let's just go in through the side entrance."
"As if that would have been my first question," a male voice whispers behind me.
"I watched this live with my brother back then—honestly, I was too shocked to even think," someone else replies.
I would never have wondered what it looked like from behind if I had found something like that in the woods. But Izzy's viewer count was climbing into the millions, and he knew this could be his golden goose.
Even though I know this video by heart, I watch again with growing excitement as he enters the ruined building through another door. The roof has long since collapsed, and leaves and dirt are scattered everywhere.
Izzy turns a corner, and the back of the hole comes into view.
I squint—it's that bright. The glowing blue oval floods the screen, and the rows of seats in front of me are tinted blue, as if a filter has been laid over them. Everyone stares at the screen, transfixed.
Even though every single one of us has watched this video to death.
Small flashes of lightning flicker around the edge of the structure. Every imaginable shade of blue dances in a pulsing rhythm that is all too familiar to everyone in this room.
"I've got a feeling this thing has the same rhythm as the hum," Izzy's voice echoes through the speakers.
The agent of the Association pauses the video again.
"Izzy intuitively recognized something here that our scientists later confirmed. Every portal pulses in the same rhythm as the great hum. Today, we know this to be the Earth's mana flow. But of course, you all already know that."
The video continues.
Izzy starts responding to comments, and the first viewers begin sending him coins, urging him to do things. At first, the streamer only moves closer to the oval. The hairs on his arms stand up, and he giggles.
"Guys, if you could feel this. It tingles and prickles like popping candy on your tongue."
500 if you throw a stone into it.
I watch as Izzy steps back outside the building and actually picks up a stone. He weighs it uncertainly in his hand, but as more viewers offer coins, he throws the stone toward the oval.
I watch, fascinated, as the stone flies toward the portal and seems to slow in midair, until it glides into the clouds. A blue flash crackles at the point of contact, briefly revealing a surface that almost looks like water.
Then the stone is gone.
A literal rain of coins floods the screen.
Even though I've seen this countless times in videos, it still fascinates me every single time.
Try it with a stick.
Izzy, hyped by the money and the incredible 2.3 million viewers currently watching, doesn't hesitate.
"It feels like stabbing into water," he says as he pushes a long stick toward the portal. When the tip touches the surface, blue lightning flashes again. One bolt crawls partway up the branch, and Izzy drops it with a shriek.
Then he laughs, embarrassed.
When he turns the camera back to the portal, the stick is still suspended in midair, exactly where it was.
It looks like the portal is holding on.
Blue lightning dances across it.
Someone offers 10,000 coins if he puts his hand into it.