In the summer of the year 15,983, a great panic spread throughout the Solar System as news broke that a massive crisis was approaching.
It was only two days earlier that the Solar System Union had made the announcement from its headquarters on Titan, Saturn's sixth moon. Another universe was about to break through the dimensional barrier and collide with the universe in which we lived.
Three thousand years had passed since the existence of dimensional walls had been scientifically proven. Since then, countless scientists had devoted themselves to studying them, and the existence of other universes had become an established fact.
Even so, such discoveries had never affected everyday life, and I had never given them much thought.
But two days ago, reality was thrust before us. An unimaginable catastrophe—the collision of universes—was imminent.
Yet events moved in a direction that neither humanity nor I had ever anticipated.
It was not merely a multidimensional universe.
The Multiverse itself was on the verge of colliding with another Multiverse.
The announcement from the Solar System Union headquarters naturally sent shockwaves through the one hundred trillion inhabitants of the Solar System.
A Multiverse—a vast structure containing countless universes. Such colossal cosmic entities were about to collide. In all of physics, quantum theory, and every branch of science, no natural phenomenon on such a scale had ever been observed. No one could imagine what would happen.
I lived in one of the hundreds of millions of gigantic colonies scattered throughout the Solar System. As people began evacuating from the colony, I realized that I was strangely calm.
The scale of the situation was simply too enormous. I had no idea what was happening or what it even meant.
Even so, only a few days after the announcement, reality forced itself upon me.
Something happened.
One morning, as I headed toward the elevator that would take me to the colony's engineering section where I worked, a woman's scream shattered the haze in my mind.
Wondering what had happened, I followed the crowd gathering nearby.
There, a young student was being crawled upon by a black object that had seized his ankle.
Instinctively, I hurled the bag I was carrying, trying to drive it away.
But the bag passed straight through the black object.
Then I heard a startled cry from behind me.
Turning around, I saw another black object climbing up the body of a middle-aged man.
I immediately understood that it possessed a human shape.
Before I could make sense of what was happening, I stood frozen in shock.
Then another human-shaped black figure crawled toward my feet.
I kicked away from the ground and fled.
After running only a short distance, the familiar scenery around me suddenly transformed.
The colony, which should have been lined with steel and concrete structures, became something else entirely.
Everything was covered in red, slimy fluid.
The surroundings resembled the interior organs of a human body.
Before I could even scream, another figure appeared.
Its entire body had been pierced by steel stakes.
Black belt-like restraints wrapped around its flesh.
Its eyeballs had been gouged out, blood dripping from the empty sockets.
The sight was horrifying.
A scream escaped my throat as I tried to run.
But I could not move.
My body froze as though caught in paralysis.
The grotesque figure crawled toward me with wet, sticky movements.
It pressed itself against my body.
Then it bared the only visible part of its face—a set of black, filthy teeth—and bit into my cheek.
The pain was unbearable.
As I screamed, the teeth tore away a chunk of flesh from my face.
I saw my own blood spray before my eyes.
Then the creature's mouth clamped onto my neck.
An explosion of agony shot through my body.
And I lost consciousness.
The Multiverse.
A place where humanity had evolved along a different path.
[Crawling Out] End