The world did not end in fire.
It ended in misalignment.
The sky had forgotten how to hold its own color. Motionless clouds stretched like open scars, and between them reality wavered—not as something about to collapse, but as something that had already accepted the mistake of existing. The ground, fractured by wars too old to be remembered, trembled with a sound that came from nowhere. An inward echo. A mouthless lament.
Mana saturated everything.
Not as energy, but as excess. Like a thought repeated so many times it had become noise. Buildings bent at impossible angles, shadows stretched ahead of their owners, and time leaked in fragments—memories bleeding into the present, futures rotting before they could be born.
It was there that the remnants of the Other World touched the Earth.
Not an invasion.An overlap.
The Other World had no fixed form. It manifested as memories that belonged to no one, landscapes felt before they were seen, sounds that felt familiar without ever having been heard. Some claimed it had once been an ancient magical realm, destroyed by cycles of arcane wars. Others believed it was something far worse: a reflection of the collective mind, corrupted until there was no distinction between dream and ruin.
None of that mattered anymore.
Because the end had arrived.
At the center of that unstable nothingness, Maxinni Isla remained standing.
Her armor was shattered, coated in ashes born of no fire. Each breath burned—not in her lungs, but in her memory. She no longer knew how many days she had fought, or if days still existed at all. She only knew that moving forward was the last thing left to do.
Ahead of her, reality tore open.
Not like a gateway, but like a flaw. An error too deep to be corrected. The air there was dense, almost solid, as if the world itself were resisting anything that tried to pass through. Within that rupture, something watched.
That.
It had no defined shape—not because it changed, but because the human mind could not hold it. To look directly at it was to feel memories that never happened, losses that did not yet exist, and a weight too ancient to be named.
Maxinni fell to her knees.
Not in fear.
But because, in that moment, she understood.
The world was not being destroyed.It was being replaced.
The last structures collapsed in silence. There was no explosion. No light. Only the sensation of something being erased—like a name fading from history, like ashes scattered before anyone could mourn them.
And then… nothing.
—
Sound returned first.
A rhythmic, mechanical, insistent beep.
Then the weight of her own body.
Maxinni opened her eyes with effort. The white ceiling above her made no sense. The smell was too clean. Sterile. The air did not vibrate. There was no mana. No echo. No fracture in reality.
She tried to move—and felt pain. Real. Localized. Human.
Her heart raced.
The hands were hers. The scars too. Her name surfaced in her mind as an automatic reflex:
Maxinni Isla.
A distant voice called out to her. Someone said she was all right. That she had woken up. That she was safe.
Twenty years earlier.
She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the weight of a dead world pressing against her chest.
The Other World still existed.She knew it.
Because the end…had not happened yet.
The beeping continued.
Steady. Irritating. Too alive.
Maxinni tried to turn her head, but the movement was slow, heavy—like her body had forgotten the correct order of things. The white light stung her eyes, and she shut them tight, waiting for the world to dissolve once more.
It did not.
— Maxinni?
The voice was female. Close. Real.
She opened her eyes again, more carefully this time. A woman dressed in white stood beside the bed, holding what looked like a medical chart. Relief showed in her eyes—the kind that only appears when someone wakes after a long absence.
— Can you hear me? — the woman asked, offering a restrained smile.
Maxinni gave a small nod.
That simple movement confirmed something more terrifying than any ruin:
her body obeyed.
There was no resistance from reality. No delay. No distortion.
— You're in a hospital — the woman continued, her voice far too calm. — You were in a serious accident. You were unconscious for a while… but you're awake now. That's a good sign.
A while.
Maxinni swallowed. Her throat was dry, but functional. Everything worked. Every detail reinforced the same impossible conclusion.
— What… year is it? — she asked, her voice hoarse, unfamiliar even to herself.
The woman hesitated. Just for a second. A microgesture—too small to be noticed by anyone who hadn't learned to survive by watching for flaws in reality.
— Two thousand and six — she answered. — Do you remember what happened?
The number struck her like a physical blow.
Twenty years before the end.
Maxinni turned her gaze toward the window. Outside, the sky was… normal. Pale blue. No scars. No impossible glow. No sound that did not belong to the world.
People walked along the street.
They were alive.
— I… — she began, then stopped.
What could she say?
I watched the world die.I fought in a war that hasn't begun.I touched what should not exist.
None of it belonged here.
— My head hurts — she said instead.
It wasn't a lie. Just incomplete.
The woman nodded, satisfied with the expected answer.
— That's normal. You suffered severe trauma. There may be confusion, memory gaps… things like that. We'll take it slow.
She made a few notes on the chart.
— Your name is Maxinni Isla. Twenty-three years old. No serious medical history. — She looked up again. — Can you confirm?
Maxinni felt her stomach twist.
It was her name.The age was right.
Even the scars on her arms—the ones she remembered receiving after the war—were there. Older. Fainter. Like unfinished versions of themselves.
— Yes — she replied.
The woman smiled again, reassured.
— Good. We'll let your family know you're awake.
Family.
The word passed through Maxinni like something foreign, almost forgotten. At the end of the world, concepts like that had become… abstract. Fragments of another life.
The woman stepped away, and the room fell silent again, save for the insistent beep of the machine.
Maxinni closed her eyes.
For a moment, she almost believed it was all a dream. A final hallucination before death. But then she felt something that should not exist in this time.
An echo.
Not of mana.Not of power.
Of memory.
Images rose behind her closed eyelids: cities not yet built lying in ruins, people she did not know dying in her arms, symbols that did not yet exist carved into walls still standing.
And beneath it all, the same certainty.
She had not returned alone.
The Other World had not followed time.It had followed her.
Maxinni opened her eyes once more, staring at the white ceiling.
This time, there was no fear.
Only certainty.
The end still lay ahead.And she was the only one who remembered it.