The roar grew closer.
Vlad's decision crystallized in that moment of pure terror. He couldn't let humanity die—not again. Not when twelve thousand souls were all that remained of his species.
"I choose," he said, his voice cutting through the howling wind. "Show me the way."
[REGISTERED CHOICE]
[INITIATING POWER RESTORATION PROTOCOL]
[WARNING: TEMPORAL ANCHOR REQUIRED]
The system's text shifted, displaying a pulsating waypoint overlaid on his vision. Three kilometers north, through the skeletal remains of what used to be Memorial Park.
Vlad started running.
His body moved like a machine despite centuries of dormancy, muscle memory overriding the weakness in his limbs. Each step sent shockwaves of pain through his bones, but he pushed forward. Behind him, the shadows from the World Crack were spreading, devouring the landscape with hungry tendrils.
The waypoint led him through twisted streets where rusted vehicles sat like metal tombstones. Nature has reclaimed most of the city—vines strangled traffic lights, trees erupted through asphalt, and moss carpeted the abandoned storefronts.
But something was wrong with the vegetation. The plants were too dark, their leaves bearing veins of sickly purple that pulsed like infected arteries. The Void corruption had seeped into everything.
[CORRUPTION LEVEL: 67%]
[ESTIMATED WORLD VIABILITY: 12 HOURS WITHOUT INTERVENTION]
Twelve hours? The system had lied about the forty-seven days. Or maybe time was accelerating now that he'd awakened.
The waypoint pulsed brighter as he crested a hill of rubble. There, in the center of what once was Memorial Park, stood something that shouldn't exist.
A monument. Black stone carved with symbols that hurt to look at, rising fifty meters into the crimson sky like an obsidian needle. It hadn't been there before the Final War. This was something new. Something that had grown from the earth while he slept.
[TEMPORAL ANCHOR LOCATED]
[DESIGNATION: EXTINCTION MONUMENT]
[WARNING: PRIMORDIAL ARTIFACT DETECTED]
[APPROACH WITH EXTREME CAUTION]
Vlad walked forward anyway. Each step felt like moving through thick honey, reality itself resisting his approach. The symbols on the monument began to glow, responding to his presence.
They were familiar. Too familiar.
These are the marks from Elena's research. The forbidden texts she died trying to understand.
[GENETIC MATCH CONFIRMED]
[BLOODLINE AUTHORIZATION: ACCEPTED]
[PREPARING EXTINCTION PROTOCOL]
The monument's base split open with a sound like breaking glass. Inside, carved into the living stone, was an altar. And floating above it, suspended in a sphere of twisted space-time, was a beating heart.
Elena's heart. Still warm. Still alive after all these years.
"No," Vlad whispered, backing away. "There has to be another way."
[UNAVAILABLE ALTERNATIVE METHODS]
[VOID ENTITIES REQUIRED FOR OPTION 1: CURRENTLY HOSTILE]
[CRACKED WORLD CORES REQUIRED FOR OPTION 2: HEAVILY DEFENDED]
[ONLY VIABLE PATH: ORIGINAL POWER SOURCE RECLAMATION]
A new sound cuts through the air—not the alien roar from before, but something worse.
Human screams. Distant but clear, carried on the wind from the south where one of the larger survivor settlements had been marked on his mental map.
They were dying. Right now.
Vlad's hands trembled as he approached the altar. The heart pulsed faster, as if sensing its presence. Elena's heart, preserved by the same temporal magic that had brought him back. The source of his power. The reason he'd become the Destroyer of Worlds.
"Promise me you'll find another way."
"I'm sorry," he whispered into the memory of her face. "I'm so fucking sorry."
He reached for the heart.
The moment his fingers made contact, the world exploded into sensation. Elena's memories flooded through him—her last moments, her desperate research into the Void Realm, her discovery of the Extinction Protocols buried in humanity's genetic code.
She hadn't just been trying to stop the war. She'd been trying to prevent something much worse.
[BLOODLINE FUSION INITIATED]
[POWER LEVEL RISING]
[DESTROYER CLASS → EXTINCTION CLASS]
[WARNING: REALITY STRAIN DETECTED]
Power crashed through Vlad's body like liquid fire. His bones restructured themselves, his muscles expanded and contracted, his nervous system rewired itself to handle energies that could crack planets. The pain was indescribable—dying and being reborn a thousand times in a single second.
But with the power come understanding. The Rift World weren't random tears in space. They were surgical incisions, placed with precision by something that had been watching humanity for millennia. The Void Realm wasn't just another dimension.
It was a prison. And humanity had just broken the lock.
[EXTINCTION PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
[ANALYZING THREAT CLASSIFICATION...]
[DESIGNATION: THE DEVOURERS]
[ORIGIN: UNIVERSE-07742 (CONSUMED)]
[CURRENT OBJECTIVE: UNIVERSAL CONSUMPTION]
[ESTIMATED ARRIVAL: 11 HOURS, 47 MINUTES]
Vlad staggered away from the altar, Elena's heart now fused with her own. He could feel her presence in his mind, her love and her terror intertwined. She'd known this would happen. She'd seen it in her research.
The Final War had not been humanity's end. It had been the opening act.
[POWER INTEGRATION: 23%]
[UNLOCKING EXTINCTION ABILITIES...]
[AVAILABLE SKILLS:]
[- REALITY FORGE: MANIPULATE UNIVERSAL CONSTANTS]
[- VOID WALK: TRAVERSE DIMENSIONAL BARRIERS]
[- EXTINCTION FIELD: ERASE MATTER FROM EXISTENCE]
[- TEMPORAL LOCK: FREEZE LOCAL TIME STREAMS]
The abilities scrolled past his vision, each one more terrifying than the last. With this power, he could indeed save the remaining humans. He could seal the World Rift, push back the Devourers, maybe even restore the planet.
But he would cease to be human in the process.
A new roar echoed across the wasteland, different from before. This one was answered by dozens of others, creating a symphony of alien hunger that made his bones vibrate. The first wave of Devourers has arrived.
[IMMEDIATE THREAT DETECTED]
[RECOMMENDATION: ENGAGE EXTINCTION PROTOCOL]
[WARNING: PROTOCOL ACTIVATION WILL INITIATE IRREVERSIBLE TRANSFORMATION]
Vlad looked at his hands. They were already changing, his skin taking on a metallic sheen, his fingernails extending into claws that could tear through steel. The transformation had begun the moment he'd touched Elena's heart.
There was no going back.
But maybe... maybe he could find a middle path. Use just enough power to buy time, to find those twelve thousand survivors and get them to safety. Maybe he could resist the full transformation long enough to—
The monument behind him began to crack.
Not just crack. Splinter. Reality itself was breaking down around the Extinction Protocol, unable to contain the energies he'd just unleashed. Fissures spread outward from the altar, each one bleeding violet light into the world.
[CRITICAL ERROR]
[DIMENSIONAL STABILITY COMPROMISED]
[REALITY COLLAPSE IMMINENT]
[ADVISORY SYSTEM: "THE WORLD STARTED TO CRACK WHEN THE CONTRACT WAS SEALED"]
The cracks spread faster, racing across the ground like living things. Where they passed, the laws of physics simply... stopped. Gravity reversed in patches, time moved backwards in spirals, and the boundary between thought and reality began to blur.
Vlad had made his choice. He'd signed the contract in blood and power.
And now the world was coming apart at the seams.