The Unknown hovered in the sky above what had once been a city. Now it was a wasteland of jagged stone spires, flickering gravity, and a dark haze that refused to settle. The sun hung crooked in the heavens, half-frozen, half-burning.
Below, a formation of exorcists gathered, their robes torn and caked with soot, their holy symbols glowing like dying embers struggling to reignite. They spoke no words at first—only opened their Bibles. The pages flickered like living fire.
One of them, an arch-exorcist clad in silver and gold vestments stepped forward. His eyes gleamed with divine fury. "Vescarion, son of the devil. The world you corrupt belongs not to you."
The Unknown tilted his head, floating lazily upside down. "Belongs not to me? Then tell me, priest—why does it look so much like me?"
The arch-exorcist slammed his palm into the ground. The soil rippled like liquid, forming luminous inscriptions in Latin. From his Bible, the text tore free, swirling around him before solidifying into a spear of radiant energy, every verse a fragment of scripture etched into its shaft.
With a burst of motion, he lunged. Vescarion caught the spear barehanded, smirking as divine light scorched his arm. "You mortals never learn. Your miracles are just smaller lies."
A second exorcist appeared behind him, her voice ringing through the distorted air:
"בדברו נעשו השמים!"
Her Bible twisted, forming a pair of blazing blades. She spun through the air, slashing arcs of pure white across the demon's wings. The air screamed as holy energy met corrupted matter.
Vescarion retaliated, wings stretching impossibly wide—black feathers scattering like dying stars. "Then let there be destruction!"
The sky answered him. Fragments of reality splintered, time itself flickering backward and forward in seconds. The ground tore open, swallowing entire forests and vomiting them out in reverse. One exorcist was caught mid-step and appeared frozen, then crumbled into sand as the laws of decay accelerated around him.
Still, the others pressed on. Their chants rose louder—Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, even tongues long forgotten. Their faith bound them together, weaving a fragile tether that held the collapsing Earth for a heartbeat longer.
One knelt, placing his Bible to the ground, whispering a single line. The words transformed into a golden sigil that wrapped the battlefield, slowing Vescarion's distortion field. "You are bound by truth eternal," he declared.
Vescarion's laughter broke the heavens. He twisted the air, his grin widening, eyes glowing crimson. "Truth? Then let the 'truth' consume you!"
The energy exploded outward—a pulse of reality-distorting waves. The exorcists were flung apart, their weapons shattering into fragments of scripture that dissolved into the air. The landscape twisted violently, mountains folding, rivers flowing upward, the moon flickering in and out of existence.
Vescarion descended to the ground, panting, power radiating from every inch of his form. "You have delayed the inevitable," he growled, his voice shaking the crust beneath their feet. "Your miracles are nothing but beautiful lies."
A new voice cut through the dust.
"Coming from the descendant of the father of lies."
Eve stepped forward through the haze — her robe torn, face streaked with soot and blood, but her eyes burned with a light fierce enough to split the dark. Her Bible floated beside her, pages fluttering without wind. Around her wrists, rings of scripture formed like celestial chains.
Vescarion tilted his head, smirking. "Ah… The woman of Eden. Still pretending you didn't eat the forbidden fruit?"
Eve raised her hand. The pages of her Bible spun violently, each verse glowing like a blade unsheathed. "You sly devil," she said calmly, "You truly are cursed above all creatures."
With a single motion, she struck.
Holy glyphs spiraled outward from her palm, searing through the air in golden arcs. Vescarion countered with a backhand wave, dark energy clashing against divine light. The impact tore open the ground, sending shockwaves that cracked the earth for miles.
They moved faster than sight — Eve dashing forward, her feet barely touching the ground as she swung a sword forged entirely from The Word. Each slash was a prayer, each impact a plea for mercy from a collapsing world. Vescarion fought with monstrous grace, every motion twisting the world around him, bending matter like clay.
"You think your little faith can rewrite reality?" he sneered, parrying another blow.
Eve's lips moved in silent prayer. Her sword expanded, forming into a blazing cross. "האמונה היא מהות הדברים המקווים, הוכחה לדברים שאינם נראים."
Vescarion's smirk faltered, then the light consumed him.
The explosion that followed was biblical. The heavens howled as light and shadow collided, swallowing the horizon in a pillar of gold and black.
The force flung me to the ground miles away, the sound ringing in my ears like a divine thunder. When I lifted my head, the world had changed again.
Skyscrapers were completely gone — replaced by stone pillars and primitive huts of raw earth. Trees stretched wider and older than they had in centuries. The ground was cold and uneven beneath my palms.
"Souta! You okay!?" Kenta's voice came from behind a mound of broken debris — or what used to be it. The stone had reshaped itself mid-collapse, forming something like a crude shelter. Hiro was beside him, covered in ash, his usual energy replaced by quiet fear.
"I'm fine," I muttered, staggering to my feet. My breath hitched as I looked around. "What… happened to the world again?"
"No idea, man," Kenta said, coughing through the dust. "But whatever's left of physics is on vacation. I just saw a rock float past, glitch like a bad video game, and poof—gone."
My eyes widened. The fragmented puzzle in my head started to form a grim picture. The crying middle-schooler, the cosmic distortion, the world unraveling into primitive chaos
Someone had wished something vital—something fundamental to the universe out of existence.
"Souta…?" Hiro's voice broke through my thoughts, his brow furrowed with concern. "You okay? You look like you just remembered an unpaid debt with your landlord."
"I…" I swallowed hard, turning to face them both. "There's something I need to tell you… about the Unknown."
Kenta arched an eyebrow. "The what now? Sounds like a bad band name."
"I'm serious!" I snapped, then forced myself to breathe. "The Unknown—he's not human. He's… a being. Something ancient, chaotic. He appeared because of a wish. Someone wished something stupid—something that broke the universe. That's why everything's like this."
There was a moment of silence.
Then Hiro folded his arms. "Right. So what you are saying is a middle-schooler cries, world turns prehistoric, a demon shows up, and God's exorcists drop in for a remix of the Book of Revelation."
Kenta snorted. "Yeah, you'd make a nice novelist."
I focused on a piece of debris nearby, a broken metal sign half-buried in the dirt. For a moment, I felt that faint, alien tingle at the back of my mind—the lingering touch of the Unknown's energy, still etched into my nerves. I pointed at it, channeling the strange pull that refused to leave me since that encounter.
The sign flickered, pixelated, and then bent, folding in on itself like origami made of light before vanishing entirely.
Kenta's jaw dropped. Hiro's glasses slid halfway down his nose.
"Okay…" Kenta said slowly. "You… just erased it out of existence."
"Erased?" I muttered, shaking my head. "It's still there… probably."
Hiro exhaled, adjusting his cracked glasses. "Wait… so you are saying some cosmic maniac actually granted a wish and erased math from existence?"
"Pretty much," I said.
Kenta stared at me like I'd grown a second head. "Bro, you must have hit your head somewhere."
I clenched my fists. "You just saw me bend reality like a crumpled receipt!"
"Yeah," Kenta muttered, "and my brain's still buffering from that."
Hiro sighed. "Okay… let's say I believe you… just this once. What does that mean for us?"
"Listen," I said firmly. "Whether you believe it or not, he's real. The Unknown is out there—fighting those exorcists right now. And if he wins, this new Stone Age will look like a paradise compared to what comes next. Remember, mathematics is the language of the universe."
That silenced them. Even Kenta's smirk faded.
"So what's next, what do we do?" Kenta asked.
"I… have a plan." I said, barely confident in myself.
Hiro's cracked glasses caught the dim, shifting light as he studied me. "Alright then… what's the plan?"
I looked past the fractured skyline, past the dark wound that still pulsed in the heavens. The air tasted of iron and old fires; somewhere above, holy light and black laughter still collided. My voice was quieter than I felt. "We stop him."
Kenta's smirk died on his face. "Stop who?"
"The Unknown" I didn't bother explaining what he was — names didn't matter. Consequences did. "Not for me, not for glory but for everyone. Billions could die if he's left to remold reality however he pleases."
Silence pressed in. Even the wind seemed to pause, as if listening. Hiro swallowed, then nodded once, slow and tight. "How could we high-schoolers who can't tie our shoe-laces stop a world-ending threat?."
I clenched my hand until my knuckles whitened. The world around us still jittered—gravity hiccupped, a distant ruin folded in on itself like a page being turned. My heart hammered against my ribs like a warning drum. "We'll cross the bridge when we get there." I said.
"Souta, I think this is the bridge." Hiro replied.
Kenta laughed, but it had no humor. "Great, mysterious protagonist energy. You're going to get us all killed, aren't you?"
The sky cracked with a sound like a billion broken clocks. Somewhere in the distance, a cry rose and died. The enormity of what lay ahead tightened every nerve in my body. I could feel the Unknown's echo in my bones — a reminder that we were already in the middle of someone else's madness.
"How about we play the heroes for real this time?" I said with a smirk, sweat tracing down my face in a mix of nerves and anticipation.