Earth. June. 2022. CE.

  Tesilim was relaxing and enjoying the afternoon in his end-of-the-world camp. He had taken a refreshing shower and eaten a deluxe canned meal before finally sitting down on his mound of pillows to wait for the end of the world.

  The end of the world began with a slight tremor that Tesilim barely noticed because he was engrossed in his book. It also didn’t help that Tesilim had imagined the world would end in one giant explosion, effectively taking him out of the picture before he could even blink.

  Of course, his expectations were wrong, but he couldn’t be blamed for that. After all, he didn’t have any prior experience on the topic. This was why the next tremor took him by surprise, as the earth shook so hard that the trees and everything else around, including Tesilim, shook with it.

  Tesilim finally snapped to attention with this new tremor, only to feel another tremor run through the Earth. As he got up from his pillow pile, yet another quake shook the Earth again, knocking him off balance and causing him to land on his bum.

  “Dammit!” Tesilim yelled as he crawled back to the tree he had been leaning against.

  Using the tree to get himself up, he managed to stay up even with the constant tremors that now shook the Earth. Honestly, Tesilim was at a loss at this point. He expected a quick and pleasant instant planet explosion. However, now he wasn’t sure whether to run or stay. Running didn’t do anything for him, as he was dead no matter where he went, but staying felt odd and made him restless.

  Luckily, the decision was made for him when a powerful tremor nearly shook him back to the ground. The tremor also made a small crack in the earth, which then began expanding with every passing second. So, without much thought, Tesilim grabbed his magitech rifle and a water bottle before hastily leaving his camp.

  Even if he was going to die, Tesilim didn’t want to be squished to death, or more like, he couldn’t allow himself to stay still and fall through a crack. He was going to fight for his life.

  After all, no one ever knew what could happen.

  It was far-fetched, but there was a slight chance that a magitech ship from another part of the universe would drive by and pick him up. And boy, would Tesilim be mad if he missed that experience because he let himself fall through a crack.

  As Tesilim walked, the tremors continued at around the same rate as before. Occasionally, bad ones created cracks in the Earth around him, but nothing he couldn’t avoid. Tesilim was trying to get to a nearby road that connected to the town he had just left, hoping that avoiding pitfalls would be easier if the environment were flatter.

  Reaching the road took him around 30 minutes, and the tremors only worsened. However, just as he hoped, the road allowed him to see further ahead, revealing the cracks in the ground and enabling him to plan ahead.

  Making his way on the road, but with no particular spot in mind, he knew it was only a matter of time before his end came. Either he would make it until the Earth exploded or until the earthquakes created too many large crevasses, and he fell into one. Either way, he would fight till the end.

  An hour later, Tesilim was jogging along the road, moving and jumping around existing pits or newly made ones. The road he was currently on passed swaths of forests and grasslands, making it easy to see the destruction created by the earthquakes as whole sections of woods and roads disappeared in the distance.

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  Tesilim knew he had been lucky so far, as the flat terrain let him see pits well before he got close. He also had yet to encounter any massive holes that he couldn’t just go around.

  This changed an hour or so later when Tesilim found himself sprinting through a forest area. He was thirsty and felt more vulnerable than ever before. His bottle of water had run out quickly, and he had been forced to drop his rifle in a scramble.

  Then, during the last 30 minutes, things had gone from bad to worse as the earthquakes intensified. It was honestly a mix of pure luck, quick thinking, and planning that had kept Tesilim going so far. However, it looked like it was all coming to an end as Tesilim barely managed to stop before falling headfirst into a huge crevasse that had essentially appeared between blinks.

  Yet, as Tesilim backtracked, the situation got worse. It seemed this so-called Eldritch God had finally made it to the Earth's core, or at least Tesilim guessed that was what was causing the random tears in reality.

  Tesilim had made this intelligent guess through a mix of random fantasy knowledge gained from video games and a bullshit mix of sci-fi movies about a planet's core dealing with space and gravity or whatever.

  Either way, Tesilim was not fond of going through one of those tears as he was pretty sure he saw some trees get sucked into one of them, and he had no wish to go where those trees had gone.

  So Tesilim ran as fast and nimbly as he could. Thankfully, he wore his running shoes and shorts, and he had also done a lot of walking and running throughout the years as he escaped a multitude of threats, which helped prepare him for his current situation.

  In all honesty, as scared shitless as Tesilim was, he had to admit he never thought he would be in this situation, and he liked to imagine he looked pretty badass.

  He was running and jumping over crevasses like a ninja warrior. Now, all he needed was some explosions and epic music, and he could star in his own action movie.

  Sadly, his epicness came to a falling climax as he jumped over a pit, only for the edge on the other side to crumble under him as a tremor widened the whole thing by ten feet.

  “Shiiiiiiiiiitttttt!” Was all he could exclaim as he began to fall to his death.

  At this moment, his brain went into ultra-speed mode as it tried to figure out how to survive. Ledges, roots, or anything he could hang on to. Sadly, there was nothing.

  As his mind moved from trying to survive his fate to accepting it, his life flashed before his eyes.

  He remembered growing up and all the friends he had made. His life hadn’t been amazing, but it could have certainly gotten worse, which he guessed it did. The war with these invaders had changed everything. Everyone he had known before the war was dead, and he was about to join them.

  His thoughts then turned to the nicer times in his life since he wanted to go out while thinking happy thoughts.

  Looking down at the empty abyss below one last time, he closed his eyes and waited for the end to come as his mind moved to a serene calmness.

  His calmness shattered when he felt a chill go down his spine. The chill was followed by a sense of premonition so intense it forced him to open his eyes.

  He knew he was still falling, but as he looked down, he was shocked to see light. It was a tiny dot, but with his speed, it grew much brighter as time passed. For a moment, he even thought he had somehow fallen across the Earth and to the other side as the light seemed similar to the sun's.

  As he finally got close enough to see it, he saw that the light was emanating from one of those weird tears. A tear that he was currently on course to fall right into. With this new bit of information, his heart began racing as possibilities spun in his head. If the portal's other side contained sunlight, it might be somewhere livable.

  Which meant he could live.

  The word “live” seemed to grow in his mind as it echoed across the far reaches of his mortality.

  He could live.

  He had to live!

  As he was filled with the joy of someone suddenly gaining a second chance, he laughed and yelled out into the darkness.

  “Haha! Screw you, world! Screw you, aliens! I am going to live!"

  Yet, a few seconds before he fell through the portal. He felt a burning sensation in his chest that grew at such a rapid pace that it was as if his heart was pumping liquid flames. The burning intensified, and he felt what had to be his soul ignite before everything went dark.