The key felt heavy in Aisling Davis's hand, a jagged piece of metal that weighed more than it had any right to. It was the key to the penthouse, to a life of supposed luxury, and to a cage she had spent the last two years convincing herself was a home.
She stood in the hallway, the plush carpet muffling the sound of her trembling breaths. Just do it, Sarah's voice echoed in her mind. Just walk away, Aisling. The world won't end just because you leave him.
Sarah had been the last friend Aisling had managed to keep, slipping messages to her through a shared veterinary forum before Craig had cut the internet access to "monitor her productivity." Sarah was right. The fear that churned in Aisling's stomach, making her feel nauseous and dizzy, was a lie planted by a man who thrived on her insecurity.
Aisling smoothed the front of her cheap coat. She caught her reflection in the hallway mirror—red hair pulled back in a severe, joyless bun, blue eyes wide and terrified, freckles standing out starkly against pale skin that hadn't seen enough sun lately. She looked like a ghost.
No more, she told herself. I'm taking my things, I'm leaving the ring on the counter, and I'm going.
She inserted the key. The lock clicked with a smooth, expensive sound.
She pushed the door open. The penthouse was quiet, save for the hum of the central air and a low, rhythmic sound coming from the master bedroom down the hall. Aisling frowned. Craig was supposed to be at a board meeting for Driscoll Industries. That was why she had chosen this time.
She walked softly, her sneakers making no sound on the imported marble. As she neared the bedroom, the door stood slightly ajar. The rhythmic sound resolved into voices. Or rather, sounds that didn't require words.
Aisling froze. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. She should turn around. She should run. If Craig saw her, if he knew she had caught him...
The world won't end, she repeated Sarah's mantra.
She pushed the door open.
The scene was almost a cliché, a tableau of betrayal so stark it felt scripted. Craig Driscoll, the man who demanded she wear long sleeves to cover her arms, the man who checked her phone logs daily, was tangled in the Egyptian cotton sheets with a woman Aisling recognized immediately.
Amy Struess. The "executive assistant" Craig had sworn was just a scatterbrained hire he kept around for charity.
Amy was on top, her brown hair cascading over her bare, buxom shoulders. She was laughing, a throaty, victorious sound, until the creak of the door cut the air.
Amy froze. Craig shifted, looking over Amy's shoulder. His green eyes locked onto Aisling.
There was no shame in his face. No panic. No scrambling to cover himself. There was only a cold, sharp irritation, the look one might give a waiter who brought the wrong order.
"You're early," Craig said, his voice flat. He didn't even push Amy off.
Amy shifted, pulling the sheet up slightly, though the smirk on her lips suggested she didn't actually care. "Oh, honey," she cooed, looking at Aisling with mock pity. "This is awkward."
Aisling felt the blood drain from her face, leaving her cold, but then, something strange happened. The terror—the paralyzing fear of Craig's anger that usually governed her life—didn't come. Instead, a hot, searing clarify washed over her.
Two years. Two years of being told she wasn't pretty enough, smart enough, or good enough. Two years of isolation. Two years of believing she was lucky he deigned to look at her.
"Get out," Craig said, finally sitting up. He looked at her like she was a stain on the carpet. "We'll talk about your punishment for interrupting later. Go to the guest room and wait."
Punishment.
The word hung in the air.
Aisling looked at him. Really looked at him. He was handsome, yes—blonde, chiseled, rich. But he was rotting from the inside out. And she had let him rot her, too.
"No," Aisling whispered.
Craig's eyebrows shot up. "Excuse me?"
Aisling reached into her pocket. She didn't pull out a weapon; she pulled out her left hand. On her finger sat the promise ring he had given her—a heavy, gaudy diamond that snagged on everything. He called it a promise of marriage; she knew it was a collar.
She wrenched it off. It scraped her knuckle, drawing a tiny bead of blood.
"I said no," Aisling said, her voice gaining strength, trembling not with fear, but with adrenaline. "I'm not going to the guest room. I'm not waiting."
"Aisling, don't be dramatic," Craig scoffed, reaching for a glass of water on the nightstand. "You have nowhere to go. You have no money. You have no friends. You're nothing without me."
"Sarah said the world wouldn't end if I walked away," Aisling said, stepping into the room.
She reared back and threw the ring.
It wasn't a graceful throw, but it was effective. The heavy diamond struck Craig square in the chest, leaving a red mark against his pale skin before bouncing onto the mattress between him and Amy.
"It's over, Craig," Aisling declared.
Craig stared at the ring, his face darkening with a rage that usually made Aisling cower. He opened his mouth to roar at her, to unleash the verbal flaying she knew so well.
But the sound never came.
Instead, a sound like the snapping of a cosmic cello string reverberated through the room. It wasn't a sound heard with the ears, but felt in the teeth, in the marrow of the bones.
The floor lurched.
Not a tremor. Not an earthquake. The entire room, the entire building, seemed to heave to the side. Aisling was thrown against the doorframe. The heavy oak armoire on the far wall toppled over with a deafening crash, shattering the vanity mirror.
"What the hell?" Amy screamed, clinging to Craig.
"Aisling!" Craig roared, as if she had personally shoved the building.
Aisling scrambled to her feet, grabbing the doorframe for support. She looked out the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the city skyline.
Her breath hitched.
The horizon was... wrong. The line of the earth was tilted at a sharp, sickening forty-five-degree angle. The sky, a moment ago a hazy urban blue, was bleeding into a deep, bruised violet. Clouds were swirling in unnatural, geometric patterns, spiraling inward like drains in the sky.
"Sarah was wrong," Aisling whispered, her eyes wide. "The world is ending."
Before Craig could shout again, a blinding blue light flashed in the center of the room. It expanded rapidly, a digital construct that looked like a hologram but felt heavy and oppressive.
Text scrolled across the air, glowing in neon blue.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE.]
[PLANETARY AXIS SHIFT CONFIRMED.]
[INTEGRATION WITH GALACTIC PLAYGROUND: SUCCESSFUL.]
A voice boomed—not from speakers, but from everywhere at once. It was high-pitched, mocking, and sounded like a child tearing wings off a fly.
"Greetings, meat-sacks of Earth! Congratulations on being selected for the Entertainment Cycle!"
From the blue light, a figure materialized. It floated in mid-air, looking for all the world like a cartoon black cat, roughly two and half feet tall. It had oversized yellow eyes, a grin that stretched too wide, and a tail that twitched with malicious delight.
"My name is Sus," the cat said, hovering over the bed where Craig and Amy were cowering. It winked. "But I'm not suspicious, I promise."
Craig, regaining his composure through sheer arrogance, pointed a finger at the creature. "What is this? A projection? Who are you working for? Do you know who I am? I am the CEO of Driscoll Industries!"
Sus the cat tilted its head, its grin widening to reveal rows of needle-like teeth. "CEO? Oh, that's adorable. You think your little titles matter here."
The cat spun in the air, addressing the room, though its voice clearly reached the whole world.
"Here are the rules! The Galactic Council is bored. Your world is... quaint. So, we broke it! Half of you are boring, so we're going to do a little cleanup. The rest of you? You get to play the Game."
"Game?" Aisling whispered.
"Survival!" Sus cheered. "Monsters, dungeons, loot, and glory! But first... the Cull."
The cat snapped its paws.
Aisling felt a wave of cold pressure pass through her body. It was an invasive sensation, like being scanned by an MRI machine that judged your soul.
Outside the window, screams erupted from the city below. Aisling watched in horror as people on the streets—commuters, pedestrians, children—simply... dissolved. They didn't die; they unspooled into shimmering blue dust, vanishing into the wind.
"Fifty percent!" Sus announced happily. "Gone! Perfectly balanced, as all things should be... wait, wrong franchise. Anyway, the survivors get gifts!"
Blue boxes popped up in front of Craig, Amy, and Aisling.
[SURVIVOR: CRAIG DRISCOLL]
[TRAIT DETECTED: NARCISSISM, RUTHLESSNESS.]
[ASSIGNED CLASS: PUPPETEER (MANIPULATION).]
[SPONSOR INTEREST: HIGH.]
Craig stared at the screen, his fear instantly replaced by a greedy calculation. He felt power surging through him, a dark, twisting energy.
[SURVIVOR: AMY STRUESS]
[TRAIT DETECTED: DEPENDENCY, SELF-PRESERVATION.]
[ASSIGNED CLASS: BARRIER MAIDEN (SAFE SPACE).]
Amy gasped as a shimmer of golden light formed a bubble around her on the bed.
Aisling stared at the empty space in front of her. There was no box. No message.
"Where is mine?" she whispered.
Sus floated over to her, sniffing the air. The cat's eyes narrowed. "Oh? You... you're interesting. Broken. So very broken." The cat laughed. "The Sponsors love a tragedy. Let's see what the Algorithm gives the girl who ended the world."
A box flickered into existence before Aisling. It was red, not blue.
[SURVIVOR: AISLING DAVIS]
[TRAIT DETECTED: REPRESSED RAGE, SEVERANCE.]
[ASSIGNED CLASS: PYROMANCER (INFERNO).]
Heat.
It started in her chest, right where the heartbreak had lived for two years. It wasn't the gentle warmth of a hearth; it was the fury of a star. It rushed through her veins, burning away the cold, the fear, the trembling.
"Aisling!" Craig's voice cut through the haze. He was standing now, clothed in a robe he had snatched. He looked at her, and for the first time, he looked wary. But the arrogance quickly returned. "Whatever this is... it's clearly technology. Power. And you work for me. Get over here. We need to figure out how to leverage this."
He reached out his hand. A subtle, purple vapor extended from his fingers—his new Manipulation ability manifesting instinctively. "Come here, Aisling. You need me. You can't survive out there. Look at you. You're weak."
The purple vapor coiled toward her.
Aisling looked at his hand. The hand that had bruised her arm when she burned dinner. The hand that had deleted her contacts. The hand that was now reaching out to chain her again, even as the world fell apart.
"I'm not weak," she said. Her voice sounded different. Echoing.
She looked down at her hands. Flames were licking up her fingers, bright orange and searing white. They didn't burn her skin; they felt like extensions of her own pulse.
"Aisling, stop that," Craig barked, stepping back. "You'll ruin the carpet."
Aisling laughed. It was a jagged, hysterical sound. "The carpet? Craig, look outside. The sky is purple."
"I said come here!" Craig lunged, trying to grab her wrist to assert dominance, to extinguish the sudden defiance that threatened his control.
His hand touched her skin.
WHOOSH.
A blast of fire erupted from Aisling's body. It wasn't a precision strike; it was an explosion of two years of silence.
Craig was thrown backward, crashing into the wall. He shrieked—a high, undignified sound—as the sleeve of his robe caught fire. Amy screamed, huddling inside her barrier as the heat scorched the expensive wallpaper.
Aisling stood amidst the flames. The fire swirled around her like a living thing, caressing her, protecting her.
"I told you," Aisling said, her eyes glowing with the reflection of the flames. "It's over."
She turned to the door.
"You can't leave!" Craig yelled, batting at the flames on his arm. "There are monsters out there! You'll die in five minutes without me!"
Aisling paused at the threshold. She looked back at the man she had wasted her life on, now cowering, burnt, and small despite his new power.
"Maybe," Aisling said softly. "But at least I'll die free."
She stepped out into the hallway.
As she walked toward the elevator, she realized the elevator wouldn't work. The power was flickering. She kicked open the stairwell door.
From the shadows of the stairwell, a small goblin-like creature with green skin and a rusted knife lunged at her, screeching.
Aisling didn't hesitate. She didn't flinch. She simply raised her hand.
A stream of fire engulfed the creature before it could touch her. It turned to ash in seconds.
Aisling Davis stepped over the pile of ash and began her descent. The world had ended, and for the first time in years, she felt like her life was just beginning.