The city had fallen quiet long before midnight. From the rooftop terrace, the world below looked like a dying constellation—streetlights flickering through mist, cars whispering along half-empty roads. Kartikey sat there alone, knees pulled up, a cracked phone beside him streaming a song he wasn't really hearing.
He liked the terrace because the stars still felt honest up here.
Tonight the sky glittered with unusual sharpness, each point of light cutting through the haze as if the universe wanted to be noticed. Kartikey leaned back on his palms and exhaled.
Why do bad things always find me?
The thought came like an old friend. He'd been feeding it for years.
Twenty years old, nearly twenty-one. Two years since school had ended and nothing had begun. College had slipped away in a fog of excuses—money, forms, the dull ache of not belonging. Jobs required confidence, and he'd misplaced that somewhere between exams and his parents' accident.
Khushi still tried to sound cheerful downstairs, humming while she cooked. She was twenty-three, steady, beautiful in a way that made him proud and guilty at once. Their parents' savings were almost gone, tuition bills came like tides, and all Kartikey could give her was silence. He could fix the fan, fetch groceries, pretend things were normal. Nothing more.
He ran a hand over his face. The skin felt rough, uneven. The acne scars had left tiny pits that never healed. He hated mirrors now; even his own reflection looked like it pitied him.
He closed his eyes and pictured his parents instead—the way his father's laughter had filled this same terrace when they used to watch meteor showers, the scent of his mother's cardamom tea drifting upward. Then the memory slipped sideways into the night of the accident: phone calls, rain, the weight of words like instantaneous. He opened his eyes quickly.
A gust of cold wind brushed past. For a moment, the stars seemed to shimmer harder, the entire sky tightening into focus.
"Maybe I'm just cursed," he muttered. His voice cracked the quiet like dry wood snapping.
He chuckled without humor. "Below average in everything, huh? Sports, studies, looks, luck—guess the universe just needed a spare part."
Below him, a light switched on in the kitchen. The faint smell of onions frying drifted upward. Khushi was cooking late again, probably for his sake. He almost called down to her but didn't. Words felt useless lately.
He turned his gaze upward again. The constellations looked different tonight, as though they were rearranging themselves into a new pattern he couldn't read. Something deep in his chest stirred—a subtle unease, a low hum beneath the bones.
Then the world exhaled.
It began as a vibration too faint to notice. A tremor passed through the railing beneath his fingers. The song on his phone cut out mid-note. Every streetlight below blinked once, twice, and died.
Silence.
Then—a sound, not loud but absolute. A boom that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, as if the sky had been struck by its own shadow.
Kartikey shot to his feet. The air thickened, pressing down like invisible water. Far away, dogs began to howl. He heard glass shatter somewhere below, a car alarm that wailed once and fell mute.
He looked up.
The stars were gone.
In their place spread a single vast ripple of darkness—no color, no light, just the absence of both—rolling outward across the heavens like ink spilled over glass. It wasn't cloud, it wasn't smoke. It was nothingness, pure and patient, devouring every shimmer it touched.
Kartikey couldn't breathe. Every instinct in him screamed to run, but there was nowhere to go. His knees buckled and he fell back, the cold terrace biting into his palms.
"Khushi—" he tried to call, but the word died halfway. The sound couldn't travel. Even air seemed afraid to move.
Somewhere in that black wave's center, a spark flickered—tiny, silvery white, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat. He couldn't look away. It was beautiful in a way that made his eyes ache, a beauty so close to terror that he trembled.
His vision blurred. The world tilted.
Down below, engines failed. An airplane far above the clouds began to dip, its lights stuttering like a dying pulse. Cars rolled to halts on highways, horns locked in frozen notes. In homes and forests, in dens and nests, every conscious being—human, animal, plant—shivered as something older than fear touched their souls.
For an instant, all creation held its breath.
In that instant, time stopped. Or maybe it didn't. Kartikey couldn't tell. The city, the air, his own heartbeat—everything vanished. All that remained was him and that impossible void.
And within it, he saw.
He didn't see with his eyes. He saw with something deeper.
He saw oceans of stars collapsing into storms of colorless light. He saw beasts of chaos roaring in a place where no sound existed. He saw two titanic structures rising in the distance—one forged from order, shining and still; the other a writhing pillar of chaos, shifting endlessly in form.
Between them stretched a vast domain—a sea of nothing, alive with silent thunder.
And in that instant, something clicked inside him. A fragment of understanding. A whisper of truth that had waited since the dawn of everything.
He didn't comprehend it with words or logic. It was like remembering something he'd always known but had forgotten. A truth both elusive and intimate, terrible yet comforting.
Something within his soul responded.
A soundless pulse spread from his chest, rippling outward. He felt his blood vibrate, his thoughts scatter, and then reform. The fear vanished, replaced by awe.
It was as if the universe had leaned down and shown him its core—and he had glimpsed the endless dance between existence and nothingness.
And somewhere in that impossible geometry, a whisper reached him.
Not in words, but in understanding.
> One swing at a time, and the path shall open.
Pain flooded his mind. His vision shattered into patterns: circles devouring lines, stars collapsing inward. He saw thunder chained by silence, wind caught in crystal lattice, light turning upon itself. The whisper became a roar and then—
Nothing.
He fell backward, striking the terrace hard. His eyes flew open one last time before darkness claimed him.
They weren't black anymore. For a heartbeat they burned a deep, unearthly violet, rimmed with the shifting black of the void—a color that did not belong to mortal skies.
Then the glow faded. The night sighed. The stars blinked back on as though nothing had happened.
From the kitchen below came the faint crash of a dropped utensil and Khushi's startled voice:
"Kartikey? Did you feel that?"
But Kartikey did not answer. He lay there motionless, breath shallow, face turned toward the newborn calm of the heavens.
Darkness did not feel empty.
It moved.
Kartikey floated inside it, weightless, his heartbeat a faint drum lost amid a thousand others. What he saw—or sensed—wasn't space or dream; it was unmaking, a slow swirl of colors that weren't colors at all: shards of violet, folds of gray so deep they became black, and between them threads of silver lightning that danced without sound.
Each flash carved a wordless truth into him. He felt the shape of thunder, the curve of wind, the silent laughter of chaos birthing form.
> Swing the weapon; let existence answer.
Comprehend by motion, not by gift.
Child of thunder , let chaos pave your way to summit.
He didn't know whose voice it was. It might have been his own soul.
Something warm and alive coiled around his right hand—a handle, rough and familiar. He tried to see it, but the darkness clung too tightly. When he swung it once, the void itself rippled. From that ripple a low, cosmic pulse rolled outward, a note that could split mountains if mountains still existed here.
He gasped. His eyes flew open.
---
He was lying on the terrace, chest heaving, breath returning in shallow bursts. His phone screen glowed faintly beside him, time frozen at 12:00 a.m. on the dot. The stars shimmered again—too sharp, too deliberate—as though they were watching him.
His body trembled, not from cold but from overflow. Lightning flickered behind his eyelids each time he blinked, yet no storm crossed the sky. A faint hum clung to his skin, bright and alien.
"What… was that?" he whispered.
Below, Khushi called again, her voice muffled. "Kartikey, are you all right? The lights just—flickered. It's working again!"
He tried to answer but only managed a croak. Every nerve in his body buzzed, alive and terrified. He sat upright slowly. For a heartbeat, the terrace seemed to breathe with him.
And somewhere far, far away, the universe exhaled in return.
---
Across the Void
Light-years from Earth, in a sea of shattered moons, a colossal figure knelt upon a plain of obsidian. His skin shimmered silver under the receding wave of nothingness. For an instant, all stars above him bent toward a single point before releasing their pull.
He laughed—a sound that seems like to crack planets.
"Ha! The veil finally stirs. The future emperor is coming," he said, eyes gleaming like twin novas. He pressed his forehead to the ground, still kneeling. "Cower, lowly beings. A new throne seeks its bearer."
The echo of his laughter bled through dimensions.
---
Another world, another sky.
A girl in pale armor knelt before a stone altar, a long spear laid across her knees. Her prayer froze as the air grew heavy. The moment the darkness passed, she lifted her head, solemn, trembling.
"Master," she whispered. "The void touched even the sanctum."
A blur of motion—her master appeared behind her, an old man draped in light that bent reality. "Some will crumble into dust and fear," he said softly, "while others shall rise higher than the false gods themselves."
The girl turned, eyes burning. "Then I will rise above them. Can I slay them all?"
The old man's gaze cut the air like a blade. "From now on," he said, "power will be the truth."
The spear vibrated once, resonating with the far-off pulse of the girl's awakening.
---
In an ancient alleyway where time walked barefoot, a being neither male nor female stared toward a golden palace glimmering under twin suns. Jewels sparkled across its towers like trapped stars. The figure smiled faintly.
"The jungle returns to blood," it murmured, voice layered with centuries. "And the game begins anew."
Its shadow rippled—and then it was gone.
Across Countless Realms
Somewhere deep within the blackened core of a dying star, a child with eyes like molten glass stirred. Elsewhere, in a world where mountains floated, a hermit broke his meditation and whispered, "It begins."
Everywhere, seeds awakened—some in fear, some in ecstasy, some simply in recognition. The multiverse had been seeded anew
---
Back on Earth
Kartikey staggered to his feet. His vision swam with afterimages: rivers of lightning and symbols burning across endless skies. When he raised his right hand, sparks crawled over his fingers—violet shot through with black edges, lightning threaded with wind. They hissed softly before sinking into his skin.
His heart hammered faster.
> Great affinity… with thunder, a whisper surfaced from memory, something his mother once read from a horoscope, half a joke.
But this wasn't thunder anymore. This was something else.
He looked at his hand again. For a heartbeat, the faint purple glow returned, the edges dark as void. It was beautiful and frightening. He could feel it waiting, coiled like a storm behind his ribs.
"Kartikey?" Khushi's voice floated up, nervous now.
"I'm fine," he managed to call back, though his throat felt scorched. "Just… dizzy."
A pause. "Come down soon. Food's getting cold."
He nodded, though she couldn't see it.
Downstairs, life still moved—gas stoves, spoons, the hum of ordinary existence. Up here, the night looked changed forever.
He turned once more toward the sky. The stars had returned, but they were no longer random. They pulsed faintly, forming shapes only his new senses could grasp—circles nested in spirals, a pattern alive. His gut told him he had seen this before, somewhere beyond dreams.
And far across the universe, more eyes opened.
---.
---
Somewhere away from earth another Multiverse
A landscape of titanic jungles stretching beyond galaxies; beasts with eyes brighter than suns; mountains carved from divine metal. At the summit of the greatest peak, a creature sat—a lion-faced beast with a fiery mane, dragon horns curling toward storm clouds, and vast batlike wings folded across its back. Its gaze turned toward a distant point in the void—toward Earth.
ninety-eight other figures: gods, demons, titans, and entities whose names had been erased from history. They stood across their own universes, each atop their domain, watching, silent.
Then one spoke.
"The last universe is assimilated."
Another replied, voice like the clash of stars.
"The era of peace is over."
"The tower of Chaos grows restless," said a third. "The seals weaken. Soon it will break."
A human releasing scalding hot divine energy with every breath said . "Let it. The city of Order still stands. When the war begins, the balance must be tested once more."
The lion-beast rose to its full height, spreading wings that eclipsed the light of its world. "Let the era of slumber end," it roared. "Let the chosens seeds rise."
Its voice echoed through realms, reaching places where even light refused to go
And then, as if sharing a single heartbeat, all ninety-nine beings spoke together—voices merging into one that shook the unseen planes.
> "We will wait for you… until the war begins in the Domain of Nothing—"
"—the Hundredth and Last Seat."
---
On Earth, Kartikey gasped awake again, heart racing. The stars above flickered once, then steadied. The night looked deceptively calm, the world quietly resetting itself.
He sat there for a long time, trembling, unaware that a mark—a faint violet sigil edged in black—now pulse on his very being and soul, hidden by something unknown . Shimiring with purple thunder strikes black void forming it's edges.
Far above, the heavens whispered, almost tenderly:
> Rise, THE THUNDER The multiverse watches.
Morning came quietly, as if the world was pretending nothing had happened. The streets bustled again, news anchors spoke about a "brief global magnetic pulse," scientists argued over data that made no sense, and people went back to their lives, grateful that the strange night had passed.
But for Kartikey, it hadn't.
He awoke on the terrace with the first light of dawn stinging his eyes. His body ached, his throat was dry, and his right arm tingled as though he had slept on it too long. When he sat up, a faint hum filled his ears—a vibration more felt than heard, like distant thunder hiding behind the clouds.
For a moment, he wondered if he had dreamt it all: the darkness, the spark, the voice that had promised… something. But when he looked at his hands, the faint shimmer was still there, invisible in daylight yet impossible not to sense.
Khushi's voice floated up from the kitchen again.
"Kartikey! Are you awake? I made tea!"
He tried to answer, but his voice rasped. He stumbled downstairs, every step echoing louder than it should. The house felt different—sharper, heavier, as if some invisible weight now lived in its corners.
Khushi was pouring tea into chipped cups when he entered. She looked tired, her eyes shadowed by worry, but she still smiled when she saw him.
"You scared me last night," she said, handing him a cup. "There was a blackout everywhere, then everything came back like nothing happened. You fainted, didn't you?"
Kartikey hesitated. "Maybe. Just dizzy."
He took a sip. The warmth steadied him, but the taste of electricity lingered on his tongue.
She frowned. "You're pale. You should rest. The whole world's weird today—birds flying in strange patterns, the news talking about gravity fluctuations."
He smiled faintly. "Yeah. The world's always weird."
Khushi studied him a moment longer, then sighed. "Just don't scare me again, okay?"
"I'll try."
She turned back to the stove. The sound of the kettle whistling filled the silence, and for a fleeting moment, everything seemed normal again—until the lights flickered once more.
A spark danced along the metal edge of the counter. Kartikey blinked. The spark leapt toward him, vanished into his skin. No one else noticed.
---
Later, standing on the terrace again, he tried to breathe the morning air.
The sky was too bright. Each cloud seemed alive, shifting in slow, deliberate movements. He closed his eyes and felt it—the hum beneath the wind, the rhythm of something vast sleeping under the surface of reality
Kartikey suddenly staggered as thunder rolled across a perfectly clear sky. The sound had no source—it simply was. He looked up to see clouds forming patterns that mirrored the symbols from his vision, curling into spirals that dissolved the instant he noticed them.
A single raindrop struck his hand.
It glowed faintly violet.
He stared at it, half afraid, half entranced. The drop sizzled, releasing a spark of wind that circled his wrist and vanished. For an instant, he could swear he heard distant laughter—like the universe testing his courage.
Khushi called from inside. "Kartikey? You okay out there?"
He smiled faintly, eyes still on the sky. "Yeah," he whispered. "I think… something's starting."
The wind rose, carrying the scent of ozone and rain. Far beyond the horizon, in realms unseen, thunder and chaos intertwined for the first time in eons.
He seems to hear the words
The storm that would one day consume worlds had begun with a single boy staring at the morning sky.
Thunder and wind whispered at the edge of his thoughts.
When he opened his eyes, for a heartbeat, the world around him flickered—the terrace, the sky, everything becoming translucent, lines of energy running through matter like veins. He saw how fragile it all was.
> You are bound now, whispered a voice he could not place.
The hum beneath his skin still hadn't faded; it pulsed like a second heartbeat, whispering secrets his mind couldn't grasp
He rubbed his temples, trying to shake off the dizziness—and froze.
Something shimmered faintly at the edge of his vision, as if the world's colors had twisted for a fraction of a second. He blinked. The illusion didn't vanish.
In the upper-right corner of his sight, words burned into existence—not written, not seen, but known.
[Countdown: 23:59:59]
The numbers pulsed in an eerie crimson light, slow and deliberate, like the beat of a dying heart.
He stumbled back, nearly dropping his cup. "What… what is this?" he whispered. But the world didn't answer. The glow remained, carved into the fabric of his perception, no matter where he turned his eyes.
Each second that ticked away seemed to echo inside his skull.
The clock wasn't part of any screen, phone, or device—it was inside him, projected against reality itself. With every passing moment, the red glow deepened, and a wave of dread rolled through him, cold and suffocating.
His heart pounded. He could feel what that timer meant, even if he didn't understand it.
Something was coming.
Something catastrophic.
Twenty-four hours. That was all the time left before the world changed again.
Kartikey clenched his fists, feeling the faint spark of violet lightning coil around his fingers. "Then I'll be ready," he whispered to the empty air. "Whatever it is… I'll be ready."
The countdown flickered once—almost as if it acknowledged him—and kept ticking.
23:58:44… 23:58:43… 23:58:42…
The clock kept burning in his vision, and somewhere far above the sky, the storm of chaos began to stir again.