January 31st, 1957.
Two full years had passed since that fateful day, and in that time, Alma Daedalus Alastor had not only turned eighteen years old, but had also grown into a towering figure, standing at an imposing six feet and five inches tall.
Alma's life remained undisturbed. There were no attempts on his life, no lurking threats beyond the trees that surrounded his secluded home deep in the woods—nothing at all. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he had time. And with that time, he turned his attention inward, training once more with renewed purpose. The strength he had previously cultivated—an already impressive 310 pounds—had since doubled, now reaching a staggering 620.
A quiet stillness settled into his days, bringing with it a strange and sudden sense of peace. He felt whole, in a way—but that wholeness was oddly hollow, as if his completeness was built on something missing. The question that had always lingered now returned with sharper edges: Who am I? Shield and Spear—those enigmatic forces or beings—had confused him more than he cared to admit. Their presence in his life, always arriving at his lowest points, felt far too timely to be mere coincidence. And yet, he couldn't fully explain them. Now, with his most recent and disturbing ability—the Endless Labyrinth—his confusion only deepened. Part of him suspected that God had given him more than just the house he now called home.
Whatever the true nature of it was, it frightened him. Even recalling the Endless Labyrinth—its silence, its weight, its inescapable tunnels—was enough to send a cold shiver down his spine. Though he had only used it once, the memory was branded into him. The sensation beforehand—of despair, of being crushed under the weight of nothingness—followed by its absolute absence afterward, left him more unsettled than he was willing to admit. He had every reason to be angry at Finley, to at least feel some trace of bitterness, no matter how small. But strangely, in that moment, he didn't. The anger just wasn't there.
Instead, what followed surprised him even more: happiness. He began to notice how much lighter he felt. That deep despair—the kind that had taken root in his chest ever since the day his parents died—was gone. It didn't hang over him anymore, didn't weigh down his every step. In its place was something resembling relief. Perhaps not the purest form of it, but relief nonetheless.
Throughout those two long and grueling years, Alma had searched relentlessly across every stretch of land, road, and ruin in the state of North Carolina, never once letting exhaustion or disappointment deter him from his purpose.
Initially, he had harbored ambitions of expanding his search to cover the entirety of the United States of America, but he quickly realized the sheer scale of such a task would take far longer than a single human lifetime could afford him.
On this particular day, Alma returned to a place seared into his memory—the very building where he had ended Finley's life—hoping that something he might have missed before would now reveal itself under closer scrutiny.
He had searched the premises shortly after executing the Founder, but his efforts at that time yielded nothing of significance; today, however, he allowed himself to hope—quietly, desperately—that things might unfold differently.
Perhaps, if fortune favored him, he would stumble upon a clue: a lead to more buildings connected to the organization, or even the possible whereabouts of other J.I.B.R.I.L. members, assuming any remained alive or hidden.
He wandered methodically through the various laboratories once more, eyes combing each wall, each surface, with the same intensity as before, yet again finding nothing but emptiness and dust.
But then, as he continued down one of the long, narrow white hallways, a subtle detail caught his attention—so faint it might have gone unnoticed to a less discerning eye—a thin slit along the wall that disrupted the otherwise seamless architecture.
He pressed his palm against the wall, and with a sudden hiss of white gas releasing into the air like a sigh of surrender, the pressure behind the slit gave way, and a concealed door slowly parted to reveal what had been hidden: a secret laboratory, cold and silent.
Inside the room, two long, transparent cabinets were bolted firmly to the ground, pristine in their clarity, suggesting that the more sensitive or valuable equipment had likely been stored in compartments below.
In the far-right corner of the room sat a metallic desk, similarly bolted to the ground, and atop it lay an assortment of scientific instruments—beakers, meters, vials—and at the very center rested an object that immediately captured Alma's attention.
It was a device of unknown design, sleek and utterly silent, shaped like a closed tome filled with secrets never meant to be read, its surface a pitch-black sheen that gave away nothing of what it might contain or control.
To the far left of the laboratory, massive rows of data servers extended all the way to the end of the wall, humming quietly, like dormant giants awaiting activation.
And at the very back of the room, casting an unsettling presence over everything else, was an anomaly that Alma could only describe as a fabricated black hole—a swirling void, rimmed in faint violet light, its core pitch black and unnervingly motionless, with streams of pale miasma rising from its surface like ghostly smoke.
The sight of it disturbed Alma on a level deeper than thought; perhaps it was the unnatural stillness of the thing, or perhaps the mere fact that something so dangerous had been hidden away, behind a wall never meant to be opened.
Without hesitation, Alma stepped into the room, and the hidden wall quietly closed behind him, sealing him in with the secrets it had long concealed.
His footsteps echoed as he approached the desk in the far corner, and when he reached the strange device, he opened it with cautious curiosity.
The surface came alive with a flash of light, and a rectangular screen flickered on, illuminating the space in front of him; beneath it was a grid of square, raised keys.
"A computer?" Alma muttered under his breath, unsure whether he was truly seeing what he thought he was.
A letter appeared across the screen—a final note, perhaps—and Alma pressed every button he could, trying to interact with the machine, but nothing responded to his touch.
Instead, he simply read the message, leaning forward and narrowing his eyes to make sense of the words.
"I'm not sorry, Founder. I cannot work for these people. For this organization—for you. This was not in the job application. You threatened my loved ones if I ever considered quitting or retiring. And to that, I say: fuck. you."
"Everything I contributed to your hellish experiments—every test, every subject, every scrap of progress—I've destroyed. Gone. You'll never know what I accomplished, how far I got, or how much I might have changed your world. The only thing I couldn't erase is that synthetic black hole. And I pray, if any gods are listening, that it swallows you and only you, you damn bastard."
Alma looked away from the monitor, turning his gaze toward the fabricated black hole in the back of the lab, its strange energy almost magnetizing his attention to it.
There was something unnatural—perhaps even sacred or profane—about the anomaly, and Alma's instincts pulled him toward it before his mind could even protest.
Alma crouched and opened the cabinet doors one by one, brushing aside a few cobwebs until he uncovered a row of bottles lined up neatly along the back wall. Each one bore a white label, slightly faded with time, and hand-written in stark black ink: Chemical 1-AY, Chemical 2-TB, Chemical 3-IR. The pattern continued, with four more bottles similarly marked—seven in total, all uniform in size and shape, but filled with substances of varying hues and consistencies. Some were cloudy, others clear, one faintly glowing with a bluish tint.
He ran his fingers across the labels, the handwriting striking him as precise and clinical—too neat to be casual, too personal to be machine-generated. Whoever had written these took care in their documentation. It didn't take Alma long to put the pieces together. The fabricated black hole, wasn't just some experiment—it was the origin point. These Chemicals had come from it.
He stepped back, eyes narrowing, thoughts racing. This black void wasn't a byproduct—it was a source. A generator. A wellspring of unknown matter, harvested and processed by someone who clearly knew what they were doing. Alma glanced toward the strange device on the desk—the one still humming with the faint glow of a standby screen. The letter saved on it had to be from the lead scientist. The same person who had discovered and extracted these materials, who had documented them, categorized them, and then, for reasons unknown, abandoned it all.
Alma's gaze returned to the bottles. He picked up one that had already been emptied, its contents presumably used up in some prior experiment. Without hesitation, he turned toward the anomaly at the center of the room.
Alma stood in silence, the quiet hum of the lab pressing against his ears. He had more questions now than when he started—and he had the unsettling feeling that the answers might lie on the other side of that void.
He hurled it at the black hole, expecting it to vanish or distort, but no spaghettification occurred; the object simply passed through it, untouched and untransformed.
Driven by curiosity and something deeper—something he could not name—Alma reached out with his hand, expecting resistance or violent gravitational pull, but instead, his fingers met no force at all.
Instead, his hand passed cleanly through the surface.
And then, without warning, his entire arm was pulled inside, and in the blink of an eye, his entire body followed, vanishing into the void with no time to scream or resist.
Alma Daedalus Alastor no longer existed.
His atoms unraveled, separating and dissolving, but there was no pain—not even a flicker of it. It felt natural, as though this breakdown and reconstruction were always meant to happen.
He was being rebuilt, cell by cell, particle by particle—remade into something greater, something beyond human.
When Alma opened his eyes again, a sharp gasp escaped his lips, as he found himself suspended in a vast, endless void of pitch-black space.
All around him were galaxies—countless, eternal, radiant in every direction—and in that moment, Alma saw the most breathtaking sight he had ever laid eyes upon.
The shock of the view faded just long enough for him to realize he was floating freely in what should have been the cold, airless depths of space.
Yet somehow, impossibly, he felt no freezing temperatures, no pain, and even more inexplicably, he could breathe—though each inhale filled his lungs with nothing at all.
He began drifting forward, his body gently gliding without any movement from his legs or limbs, as though he were swimming in a sea without friction.
As he focused on one of the larger galaxies ahead, he realized he was moving toward it at alarming speed—far too fast for comfort.
He tried to slow his momentum, flailing as if in water, and though flopping around like a fish out of water was funny, it did nothing. Nothing he did worked; the universe itself seemed to be pulling him forward.
Up ahead, a gargantuan star loomed in the distance—hundreds of times larger than any star he had ever studied—and he was hurtling directly toward it.
Panic took hold, and Alma clenched his eyes shut, bracing for obliteration, for heat, for death.
But it never came.
He opened his eyes again and saw that he was inside the star, yet completely unharmed, surrounded by more galaxies just like the ones before—seemingly trillions of light-years away, stretching infinitely in every direction.
Confused, he looked behind him and saw only a void where the star should have been. He moved toward it, reappearing at the star's center, and repeated the process several times, confirming that something was deeply strange.
Each time he entered, he encountered the same infinite cosmic space.
Then it struck him—his breath caught in his throat.
Every star… was a universe.
He darted from star to star, diving into each one like a diver leaping into oceans of reality, finding different time flows, different gravitational pulls, different worlds. In one, a single second felt like an entire year. In another, a hundred years passed in what felt like a blink.
He tested the limits by flying into a star within a universe that existed inside another star—and inside that star, there was nothing.
No galaxies. No space. Just warmth that didn't burn, and silence that didn't deafen.
What did it mean?
Was there a limit to these layers?
Eventually, he returned to his starting point and attempted to reenter the void that had initially brought him here, hoping it would return him to the hidden laboratory.
But it didn't.
Instead, it sent him to yet another universe—only this one was different.
It lacked the void. It was pure, unending cosmos, galaxies everywhere, with no sign of an edge or entry point.
In this new universe, he felt slower than before. His floating lacked its usual swiftness, moving with a noticeable sluggishness. Yet, despite the change, he was still traveling at remarkable speeds—just not as overwhelming as before.
He flew through it tirelessly, passing planets of all sizes—some so massive they dwarfed stars, others small and fragile.
And then, in the far distance, Alma saw something impossible: a planet that looked exactly like Earth.
But it wasn't Earth.
There were no familiar celestial landmarks. The sun it orbited was actually smaller than the planet itself, if only slightly. But it was bigger than any stars he'd passed.
Out of options and filled with cautious curiosity, Alma descended.
Though never one to believe in aliens or extraterrestrial life, not for religious or scientific reasons, but simply because it seemed implausible, he now found himself praying—that whatever beings inhabited this world, if any, would be kind.
As he entered the planet's atmosphere, flames surrounded him. But, as before, he felt nothing—not even heat—and his clothes remained untouched.
He was fine.
Perfectly fine.
And he was no longer in his world.
He was in another.
Alma gazed down and saw what resembled North America. Below it lay what looked like Africa. The familiar arrangement of nations was intact: the United States above Mexico, Canada above the U.S., and the seven countries that made up Central America. Even the Caribbean islands were in place.
But then—something unfamiliar. An island extended outward from the eastern edge of North America, seemingly connected to both New York and New Jersey, jutting into the North Atlantic Ocean.
It unsettled him. Had he truly returned to Earth? Or was this a mimic—a replica of the planet he once knew? What was that strange landmass? Was this Earth an illusion? A parallel world that happened to mirror his own?
Alma had no answers.
He continued descending through the atmosphere, his body still wreathed in fire. Whatever this place was, he was rapidly approaching it—now just 60 miles from the surface. He could only hope the beings here were friendly.
With a tremendous splash, Alma crashed into the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of the United States. He surged to the surface, instinctively gasping for air—then paused. He remembered: he had survived in space. Did he even need oxygen anymore?
His head broke the waves. Without hesitation, he began swimming toward the shoreline. He didn't know whether this place harbored human life… or a government that might send aircraft to destroy him.
As Alma neared the shore, he began to make out shapes moving in the distance. He narrowed his eyes—and then they widened in disbelief. People. Actual people. White, Black, maybe Hispanic? The crowd was a mix of races, but unmistakably human.
His heart leapt.
If he hadn't still been chest-deep in the ocean, he might've danced with joy.
Drawing closer, Alma dove beneath the surface, wanting to appear as if he were just another beachgoer who had taken a swim. He angled his body and swam toward the shallows, then emerged—head first, then shoulders, then the rest of him—dripping but composed.
So far, no one looked at him strangely—at least not too strangely. A few beachgoers murmured, casting brief glances his way.
"He wore that in the water?" someone whispered, confused by his strange outfit.
But beyond a few curious looks, no one stared. No one screamed. No one ran.
Alma couldn't hide his relief. He was back. Back on Earth. Somehow, after vanishing through a fabricated black hole, he had returned.
But something still tugged at him. He wasn't home yet—not really. He had landed on the opposite side of the country.
He'd need to make his way across the continent, back to North Carolina.
Back to the J.I.B.R.I.L. building.
This place looked like Earth. It felt like Earth. But that strange island, that subtle wrongness—something was off.
And Alma knew one thing for certain:
He would have to find out where he was.
And whether he was truly alone.
---
Alma stepped onto the sunlit shore, the warm sand sinking beneath his feet as he moved slowly up the beach. He passed several women lounging or walking along the coastline, dressed in bright bikinis that left little to the imagination. Their bodies were boldly on display—toned, confident, unapologetically comfortable in their own skin.
Alma's gaze lingered for a moment, not out of lust, but bewilderment. In his time, clothing like that wasn't just frowned upon—it was illegal. Especially in places like North Carolina or California. Yet here these women were, walking freely in attire that would've gotten them arrested where he came from. His eyes widened slightly as his mind tried to make sense of it. It wasn't just the clothing; it was the way they carried themselves—poised, proud, unbothered. Some had flat, sculpted stomachs. Others had softer frames. And yet all of them seemed empowered in a way he wasn't used to seeing.
And then something else caught his attention—white men with black women, and the reverse. Holding hands. Laughing. Relaxed, as if this were the most normal thing in the world.
Alma's heart beat faster. What is this place? In the America he remembered, even seeing something like this would have sparked outrage. Interracial couples, in public? That wasn't just taboo—it was dangerous. And he was certain only white passengers were allowed to sit at the front of buses.
Had things really changed now? Alma wasn't angry about it—in fact, he found himself genuinely happy. For so long, he had believed that diversity only highlighted differences and fueled division among people. In the era he came from, the concept of equality was still a fragile dream. Racial equality was barely acknowledged, and even equality between genders was far from accepted.
His perspective was deeply shaped by his understanding of the Bible. He believed that all people were truly equal through Christ. That truth resonated with him profoundly. In fact, he would even argue that equality transcended religious boundaries, that every human deserved respect and dignity regardless of faith. But he also held firm that genuine peace and forever lasting balance could only be found through the one true Master—the LORD, Jesus Christ.
After all this, he thought to himself, " Was this still Earth?" Maybe he had stepped into a dream masquerading as reality?
As he pushed forward, Alma noticed a line of houses set just beyond the beach. Their architecture made him pause. He tilted his head, trying to place their design. They weren't modern—not by his standards, at least—and yet they weren't old either. The clean lines, the sleek materials, the subtle curves—they looked futuristic, like something out of a science fiction serial. Nothing in all his years of roaming North Carolina had ever looked like this.
He stepped between them cautiously, weaving through the gap between two houses, until he emerged onto a highway. And then he froze.
Cars zoomed past him with strange grace—sleek, quiet, some with rounded bodies that shimmered like plastic instead of the heavy chrome and steel he was used to. Many had bright colors, retractable tops, or were plastered with stickers of cartoon characters he didn't recognize. Others hummed silently, gliding forward without exhaust or engine noise. A few, though, looked familiar—relics, maybe, from his time, now dwarfed by these alien machines.
His jaw dropped.
"What… in the world?" he murmured aloud.
A man strolled by, wearing what looked like large earmuffs. Alma squinted—no, not earmuffs. Headphones?
"Excuse me, sir!" Alma called out, his voice urgent.
The man turned, one side of the headphones sliding down. "Yeah?"
Alma blinked at the device. "Are those... headphones?"
The stranger gave him a look of confusion, as if the question itself was foreign. "Uh… yeah? Just bought them last month."
Alma's mind spun, but he forced himself to stay grounded. "Right… uh, anyway—what year is it?"
The man hesitated. "May 24th, 2032?"
And just like that, Alma's chest tightened. The number struck him like a blade.
Seventy-five years… He was still eighteen. His body hadn't aged a day. But the world had moved on without him.
It stunned him to realize that, technically speaking, he was older than the man standing in front of him. In fact, the only people in this generation who might match or surpass his age were the elderly—and even then, some of them could still be younger. After all, eighteen years lived before being thrown seventy-five years into the future made him, chronologically, ninety-three.
That would mean… his parents would be 132 years old by now!! If they were alive, but still, they have been dead, in this time period, for almost 78 years now...
"Th-thank you…" he whispered, turning away, stunned.
The man shrugged and pulled the headphones back over his ears, walking off without another thought.
Alma drifted along the sidewalk, aimless. His thoughts were loud, racing. Seventy-five years? How? How could that much time have passed in what felt like an hour—two, at most?
He had fallen into the black hole. That much was certain. But had it really thrown him this far into the future? What if he told someone he was born in 1940? They'd think he was insane—or worse. That wasn't an option. Then again, he thought bitterly, neither was falling through a black hole.
The only thing he could do now was return to North Carolina—if it even still existed the way he remembered it. But flying would be expensive, and driving would take too long. More importantly, he had no money. No ID. No records. No digital footprint. He didn't exist. And he himself wasn't that fast, so he couldn't run there.
Alma glanced around at the bustling town, its unfamiliar rhythms, its glittering machines, and its people glued to handheld screens. Where do I even begin?
Alma walked down a busy Los Angeles street. People bustled past him in both directions, and dozens of vendors lined the sidewalks, selling all kinds of goods.
One stand caught his attention—a middle-aged woman selling fruit. Apples, oranges, pineapples, mangos, plums, even dragon fruit were neatly arranged on the table. Alma stepped closer and picked up a bright red apple, turning it slowly in his hand.
"What kind of apple is this?" he asked, examining it closely.
The woman squinted. "I think, uh... Malus pumila?" she said uncertainly.
That was all he needed to hear.
"The average weight of one of these apples is 110.14 grams," Alma began, raising the apple to eye level. "Which is 3.9 ounces—just shy of half a cup in volume. If I drop this apple, assuming this is Earth, with a gravitational acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared, then it should fall at exactly 6.17 meters per second and hit the ground in 0.63 seconds from this height."
The vendor stared at him blankly. "Listen, man, are you gonna buy the apple or not?"
Without answering, Alma let the apple fall. He counted in his head: one one-thousand... And right on time—thud—the apple struck the pavement.
He nodded, satisfied. There was no precise way to measure the speed, but he didn't need one. The timing alone was proof enough.
---
May 31st, 2032.
A full week had passed since Alma arrived in this strange new world. And each day felt like wandering through a dream that refused to let him wake up.
He hadn't eaten in almost two days.
Not because food wasn't available—it was everywhere: gas stations, corner stores, glowing machines that dispensed snacks at the press of a button—but because he didn't have a penny to his name. Worse than that, he had no legal identity. No driver's license. No birth certificate. No social security number. He was a ghost.
That first night, he slept on a bench near the beach. People stared, some with curiosity, others with mild concern. But no one called the police. The second night, he found a 24-hour laundromat with a bench in the back corner and slept in fits, wrapped in the warmth of machine-dried air.
Alma knew he needed money. Fast.
While walking through town, he passed a small convenience store with a "HELP WANTED" sign taped to the window.
He hesitated… then stepped inside.
Behind the counter stood a tired-looking man with sagging eyes and a name tag that read Greg. He looked Alma up and down, immediately noting his tall height—his clothes were still salty and sand-speckled, and his style was at least a decade behind the times—but there was something in his posture. A quiet seriousness. Greg tapped his fingers on the counter.
"You got ID, son?" he asked.
Alma paused, then shook his head. "No, sir. Lost everything. I'm just… trying to get home."
Greg studied him, eyes narrowing. Then, without a word, he reached behind the counter, pulled out a mop and bucket, and pointed to the back room.
"You know how to mop?"
Alma blinked. "Uh, yeah...? Is that a trick question?"
Greg grunted. "Then get to work."
No forms. No questions. Just quiet understanding.
By the end of the night, Alma had swept the floors, mopped up sticky soda trails, stacked inventory boxes, and hauled out garbage. Greg handed him a crumpled twenty-dollar bill.
"Come back tomorrow," he said. "If you're hungry."
---
Over the next few days, Alma survived on dollar-menu fast food, sleeping in laundromats and bus stations. He spent his waking hours observing the world. Watching. Learning. He read every flier, every newspaper left on benches, every sign posted in shop windows. He quickly realized the smartphones everyone clutched were central to this world—and though he couldn't afford one, he studied how people used them, tapping, swiping, speaking into them as if they were alive.
He didn't ask many questions out loud, but his mind was always racing.
Sometimes, curiosity slipped through:
"What's a credit score?"
"Why do people talk to their dashboards?"
"Why are women allowed to walk around like that now?"
The answers were varied. Some people laughed. Others looked at him like he was joking. A few gave him wary glances. But Alma didn't care. He needed to understand this world if he wanted to survive it.
---
One day, while hauling garbage out behind the store, Alma spotted a man hunched under the hood of a car—a 1949 Fleetline, unmistakable in its curves and chrome.
Alma's heart skipped. Something familiar.
"You need a hand?" he asked, walking over.
The man looked up. "You know engines?"
Alma nodded, a ghost of a smile forming. "I grew up around them. Helped my father fix one just like this."
The man chuckled. "Well, c'mon over. My son thinks a carburetor is something you order at a coffee shop."
And just like that, Alma found his first real connection in 2032.
Something human. Something real.
Something that made him feel—just for a moment—like he still belonged. Back in his time period.
Alma worked quietly, his voice steady and measured as he explained each step—how he cleaned out the gunked filter, loosened the rusted valves, and adjusted the engine's airflow. The man beside him nodded slowly, clearly impressed. For someone who looked no older than eighteen, Alma's mechanical knowledge was remarkable.
That was how he secured his second under-the-table job—part-time work at a local garage, paid in cash, no questions asked.
---
Each night, Alma lay on an old mattress tucked into the far corner of the garage, staring up at the corrugated metal ceiling above.
The world he once knew—its rules, its customs, its boundaries—was gone. Swept away by time.
And yet… he remained.
He didn't know the reason for his survival, nor the mechanism by which time had abandoned him. But this Earth—this vibrant, disordered, unfamiliar Earth—was his to walk now.
And Alma Daedalus Alastor had no intention of walking it silently.
---
June 3rd, 2032
10:07 AM | Back of the Garage
Seated on a worn milk crate beside a cluttered workbench, Alma held a notebook open across his lap. The pages were smudged with oil and fingerprints, but his handwriting was precise—neat, square, and aligned with military discipline. A small stack of worn bills sat beside him, sorted by denomination.
"Three hundred and seven dollars... sixty-eight cents," he muttered, laying the final twenty on top of the stack. "Enough for the bare minimum: one-way ticket, no luggage, no seat choice, no meals. Just the ride."
He flipped to the next page in his notebook, reviewing his budget:
---
Item: Cost:
One-way Flight $198.22
Bus to Airport $3.50
Food + Extras $10.00
Emergency Buffer $96.96
---
He gave a small nod of approval. "Not bad."
---
2:32 PM | Public Library
Alma sat at a public computer terminal, hunched slightly as he squinted at the screen. The mouse was awkward at first—strange in its movement—but after a few minutes, he navigated the airline booking sites with quiet precision.
He read everything.
Fine print. Cancellation policies. ID requirements.
And that's what stopped him.
"Identification required," he read aloud, voice just above a whisper.
His fingers paused on the keys. He opened a second tab and typed: "Can you fly without ID?"
TSA, as it turned out, had procedures for that. He could still fly—with extra screening and the right answers. They might ask for former addresses, birth dates, physical descriptions. Alma knew all of them.
But there was a problem: the machete.
A weapon—even concealed—was a liability. After a moment of silent deliberation, Alma disassembled it and packed the blade separately into a hidden compartment. Just in case.
He booked a flight for June 4th. The earliest available. The cheapest ticket.
---
June 4th, 2032
4:51 AM | California Airport Terminal
Alma stood in the long TSA line, a cane in his right hand—the machete's hidden form now part of his disguise. He limped convincingly, eyes calm, his clean shirt tucked in and his face freshly shaven. He looked presentable. Controlled.
Yet his fingers twitched at his side, barely noticeable.
"No ID?" the TSA agent asked, giving him a hard stare.
Alma shook his head. "It was stolen last week. I filed a report."
The agent frowned, then called for a supervisor. Questions followed—date of birth, old addresses, parents' names, scars. Alma answered each one with clarity, no hesitation. He didn't fumble. Didn't stutter. He treated the interrogation like a riddle to be solved, a challenge to overcome.
"Medical?" one agent asked, gesturing at the cane.
Alma gave a tired nod. "Yeah. Right leg's bad. Accident years ago."
Eventually, they let him through.
---
6:03 AM | Gate A21
Alma sat near a tall window, the cane balanced between his knees. Outside, the airplane loomed. The wings spanned wider than the street he grew up on. Its engines hummed softly, even idle.
"This flies?" he whispered, awestruck.
He watched the luggage crew methodically load bags into the aircraft's belly. Every movement was smooth, deliberate, like choreography.
A voice crackled overhead: "Flight 743 to Raleigh-Durham now boarding. Group A, please proceed to the gate."
Alma rose to his feet, his steps steady but measured. He gripped his ticket in one hand, the cane in the other, and walked toward the future.
---
6:21 AM | Onboard
Settling into a narrow seat, Alma fastened his seatbelt and looked out the window. The rising sun glinted off the tarmac. His heart pounded with anticipation.
The plane rumbled, vibrated, then surged forward. The sound built—a crescendo of roaring power. His body tensed instinctively.
And then it lifted.
The ground vanished beneath him. Roads. Cars. People. All melted into patterns of color. The clouds rolled beneath the wings like drifting mountains of mist.
For the first time in weeks, Alma smiled.
"I've never flown before…" he whispered to himself, barely believing the moment.
He leaned his head against the window, watching the sky brighten. He didn't know what North Carolina would hold—what remained of the world he once knew—but he was going back.
Or, at least, back to whatever was left.
---
8:11 AM
Alma awoke to a strange rattling sound. The seat beneath him jolted. The entire cabin vibrated.
He blinked. Turbulence?
Suddenly, the plane jerked violently to one side. Passengers who hadn't fastened their seatbelts flew upward, some smacking their heads against the overhead compartments.
A woman beside him—blonde, maybe in her mid-30s, wearing a pink polka-dot shirt and denim jeans—unbuckled and leaned over, shielding Alma with her body while looking out the window in terror.
"Ma'am?" Alma asked, startled. "What's happening?"
She didn't respond—just kept staring out the window.
From behind, another woman stood up. She had dark eyes and chestnut hair. "Haven't you heard?" she said urgently. "The Beasts of Ruin?"
Alma looked up at her, confused. "Beasts of what?"
Before she could explain, a violent, tearing sound ripped through the fuselage.
The plane cracked open—split in half with terrifying force. Air pressure vanished. Screams were silenced instantly as passengers were sucked into the sky, their bodies thrown to the wind.
Alma, somehow, remained.
He clung to his seat, weightless and stunned, his eyes wide as the wreckage fell around him.
He didn't know how or why—but he had survived. Again.
And below him… the Earth waited.
Alma blinked rapidly, the confusion in his eyes barely catching up to the chaos around him. "Well... is this fine?" he muttered, unbuckling his seatbelt.
The instant the latch clicked, the vacuum of air took him. He was flung from the torn fuselage like a ragdoll, spinning violently into the open sky. As he tumbled, he managed to look up—his eyes widening, breath freezing in his throat.
"WHAT IN TARNATION IS THAT!!?"
Something enormous eclipsed the sun, blotting it out in a way that made the entire sky dim.
It wasn't a bird.
It wasn't a plane.
It was something that defied explanation. Something that should not—could not—exist.
The creature slithered through the clouds with an unnatural grace, like smoke swimming through the still waters of a drowned world. Its entire form was pure black—so dark it didn't reflect light, it consumed it. Within that darkness, lines of glowing veins pulsed in patterns, revealing internal organs and a tangled nervous system that shimmered like fireflies struggling inside obsidian tar.
It had no bones. Its movements were too fluid, too amorphous—like a whale sculpted from rage, sorrow, and a century's worth of unspoken nightmares.
A colossal tail trailed behind it, equal in length to the rest of its body, ending in a massive, fan-like appendage—jagged and organic, shaped like a spiked leaf. It flexed and opened like a lung inhaling the sky itself, distorting the air around it with every breath.
Then Alma heard it.
Not a roar.
A scream.
Dozens. No—hundreds of screams. Men, women, children—crying out from within the creature's core as though their souls were still trapped inside, still alive, still suffering.
Alma's eyes lit up—literally—as he activated his Evil Eyes, and the truth struck him like a tidal wave.
He saw them.
Souls. Thousands of them. A roiling mass of the damned—unfinished lives, abandoned dreams, hatred, sorrow, and regret—all compressed into one titanic amalgamation of suffering and ruin.
This wasn't turbulence.
This wasn't even an accident.
This was a Beast of Ruin.
The creature let out another scream, so loud it distorted the air like a sonic shockwave, and then it lunged—covering ten miles in less than two seconds.
Alma raised his hand and aimed it directly at the incoming mass, his instincts sharpening into battle readiness. Could he kill it? There was only one way to find out.
"The Greatest Offense: Spear."
From his palm, a faint shimmer flickered, then launched forward—a nearly invisible spearhead, shaped from the wall of the Endless Labyrinth, something he loved, for it reminded him of the era he was in. The weapon screamed through the air and struck the Beast dead-on, tearing into its core like a burning blade through rotting flesh.
It ruptured organs, broke the flow of the creature's glowing veins, and for the first time, Alma saw souls peel away—freed, escaping.
The amalgamation began to unravel, its shape distorting, collapsing, liquefying into vaporous, black sludge. It evaporated into the atmosphere, fading like a bad memory.
Alma exhaled a long, steady breath. "Whatever that thing was… it sure as heck wasn't human." He narrowed his eyes at the shrinking remains in the clouds. "This planet really is just a cheap knockoff of the real one…"
Then he twisted midair, looked down, and realized something.
He was still falling.
"Oh, man," he groaned, sarcasm creeping into his tone. "I can't believe I'm falling… again!"
But Alma didn't bother to use Shield to soften the impact. There was no point. If he could survive falling from orbit straight into a body of water—and he had—then this descent, at a much lower altitude and at only sub-terminal velocity, was nothing.
---
Somewhere in Shoshone National Forest, Wyoming
A massive thud echoed through the valleys, shaking snow from the nearby mountains. A plume of dirt and dust rose high into the air, marking the epicenter of an impact crater now embedded in the forest floor.
From its edge, a hand shot out—gripping solid ground.
Alma pulled himself free from the crater's center, groaning as he stood and casually dusted off his clothes. "Phew. That was…" he paused.
A rumble stopped him mid-thought.
One of the nearby mountains began to crumble, boulders falling like dominoes. Alma turned his head.
"…Uh oh."
Then, a voice—ancient, calm, but unwavering—rang out behind him.
"Who… are you?"
Alma jumped slightly and turned to see an old man with brown eyes sitting on a flat rock, his legs crossed, his hands clasped gently in his lap. His long robes, simple and flowing, hinted at Chinese origin, and his expression was unreadable, as though carved from stone. The man was bald and had a white, long mustache.
Even without activating his Evil Eyes, Alma could feel him.
His spirit wasn't confined to his body—it radiated outward, into every tree, every rock, every windblown leaf. This man was the forest.
Alma narrowed his eyes. "That's my line," he replied evenly.
The old man stared deep into Alma—searching, probing. And then he saw something. Something indescribable. At first, it was light—beautiful, pure, transcendent.
Then the light was swallowed by a darkness so overwhelming, so fundamental, that the old man's breath caught in his throat. A chill swept through his spirit. He gasped. Then screamed—falling backward off the rock in terror.
Alma's eyes widened. He stepped forward instinctively, reaching out.
But the old man reacted on reflex, forming a seal with his hands—one palm up, the other facing down—and drove it forward into Alma's chest.
The impact launched Alma backward like a cannonball, crashing through a patch of trees with violent force.
Dirt and leaves shot into the sky.
The old man stood trembling, his eyes wide, glassy with tears.
Never in his long, disciplined life had he known fear like this.
Never before had he seen such…
Evil.