The Recruiter resumed time with a snap of her fingers. Reality came blaring back all at once. Honking cars. Screaming bystanders. Crashing metal. A maelstrom of commotion arising all at once as Conquest's portal widened.
"Woah, woah, woah! What the fuck?!" Revan screamed as two cars collided feet from him. Looking to the Recruiter, he shouted, "I said I'd join you, lady! What are you doing?!"
Bodies dropped dead on the city sidewalks around him without provocation. So too did several drivers fall limp behind the wheel, adding to the cacophony of crashing and honking.
"You agreed, yes, but what kind of a Recruiter would I be if I didn't show you what you'll be going up against?" she giggled, twirling around like she was the star of some perverted Broadway play. She signaled at the ensuing chaos with open arms, then said, "Welcome to the Rapture, Revan. The beginning of the end, or as I like to call it, The Great Awakening! As you can see, God has whisked away his devout believers, leaving behind humanity's moldy morsels, such as yourself."
"You mean to tell me that those dead people…"
"Are in a much, much better place than you and I right now, yes," she cheered, as though she were genuinely happy for them. She saw the look of confusion on his face and asked, "Oh, come now, Revan darling! Don't tell me you're confused about being left behind with the rest of your species' reprobates."
"But you said so yourself," he said, trying to justify what was happening. "I mean yeah, I'm a nobody, but I'd like to think I'm a good person… I've always done the right thing, at least…"
"Ah, I think I see the disconnect. Heaven isn't a place for good people, silly Revan. He has reclaimed those whom he chose, those who were predestined to ascend!"
"I get that I'm not religious," Revan shouted over the groans of earth ending, "But that doesn't sound anything like the things I learned in Sunday School!"
"Debate all you want, my recruit, but it is written for all to see in the Bible. Romans 9:18–Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden… You didn't make the cut, Revan Kaiser. God didn't pick you for his team."
Before Revan could probe further into what the woman meant, a little girl caught his attention on the sidewalk. She was crying, standing there all alone beside a dead body—presumably a parent whose soul had left her behind. Her loose pigtails shook as her body sobbed. The girl was far too young to understand what was going on, and without her guardian…
Revan's body kicked into action without thinking as he saw a car throttling toward the girl, its driver unconscious behind the wheel. His gait wasn't athletic or pretty, but with an infant's life on the line, it was damn fast. She was too consumed in sorrow to appreciate her surroundings—her tear-filled vision blinded her from death's approach.
A split second before the car's front bumper made contact, Revan was there, pushing her away without any heed for his own safety. He felt his heel catch beneath metal before his knees slammed into concrete. The bumper pressed into his back and dragged his body several yards, scraping his front half like a block of cheese against a grater. With each millisecond, Revan felt a dozen different pains emerge. Shattered bones and torn ligaments. Torn flesh and internal bleeding. Ruptured organs and blunt trauma.
By the time the car came to a stop against a boutique shop, Revan's body had been chewed up and spit out past the point of return. Miraculously, he'd managed to retain consciousness, although that only meant he was cognizant for each and every second of soul-splintering agony he felt. He couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't fade from that hellish torment. All he could do was stare at the horizon, at the beam of light cast from the Heavens as something stirred within.
As the sound of a plane crashing into his apartment building boomed in the distance, he realized he'd been destined to die in this moment regardless of the path he'd chosen. Even if he'd rejected the Recruiter's offer, even if he'd chosen his own safety over that of the little girl's, death would have taken him in this moment regardless. In this universe, there exists an infinite number of ways any person could die, but rest assured, this was the end of the road for Revan.
Through blood-soaked eyes, he watched in numb terror as a white horse emerged from the portal nearby, its hooves shaking the earth with each step it took. The beast was enormous—larger than any natural creature had a right to be. Its mane fluttered in slow motion, each strand suspended in the static air like drifting silk. Its body glowed faintly, as though carved from moonstone, and where its hooves struck the asphalt, golden fire bloomed, not consuming, but sanctifying, leaving trails of scorched geometry—sigils of conquest—in the pavement.
Then, the rider came.
He did not ride the horse so much as descend with it, as if they were one celestial being. The Horseman of Conquest was draped in robes of white and gold, not flowing fabric, but living cloth that shimmered with a holy brilliance, pulsing with unreadable scripture that crawled endlessly along the hem. A crown, simple and elegant, sat upon his brow—a circlet of woven thorns plated in divine silver, as if mocking humility.
His face was obscured by light, but Revan could feel it watching him—scrutinizing his soul, weighing his will. Not with cruelty, but with the cold precision of a god too distant to love, and too ancient to hate.
Strapped to his back was a bow—not wooden, but crafted from some divine alloy, its string humming with tension despite being untouched. A quiver of radiant arrows hung at his hip, each one inscribed with a single word: Obey.
As he crossed into Earth, the portal behind him howled shut, collapsing with a thunderclap that shattered nearby windows and shook birds from the sky.
And then, silence.
The First Horseman looked over the still city, the crown glowing ever so faintly as his gaze passed through skyscrapers, through monuments, through Revan.
And the world felt smaller.
Like it had already lost.
"I am Conquest," said the rider, his voice tearing apart the atmosphere with ethereal thunder. Revan's lips trembled—not in fear, but in wrath. Wrath directed toward a God he did not know, rage from the injustice of it all. Still, as people screamed and fled for their lives, the rider continued, "The age of doubt has passed. The will of Heaven rides, and it rides with me! There is nowhere you can go that I won't find you."
Conquest slowly removed the phantom bow from his back, holding it with a level of expertise that proved his marksmanship. He retrieved a single arrow from his bottomless quiver, notching it, then taking aim at the nearest pedestrian who fled. As if disappointed in the reaction he'd received, he sighed stoically, "My demand is simple—complete Obedience. But if you will not kneel before me, I will take away your ability to kneel altogether." With that said, he loosed his arrow, and it left behind a jet stream of golden light in its wake. The shaft moved so fast that Revan lost sight of it the moment Conquest released the bowstring.
But Revan watched in terror as a single projectile became a dozen, and a dozen became a hundred, as if the metaphysical arrow splintered itself in midair and diverted course from the intended target. Within a fraction of a second, the initial shaft divided itself into an entire volley of targeting missiles, descending on the fleeing crowd with perfect aim. Not a single shaft clattered to the ground before piercing some form of flesh. Blood-curdling screams filled the air as all who'd survived Rapture fell dead from something much worse. The divine arrowheads savaged their bodies, exploding on impact like hollow point bullets, as if the property they were composed of had some form of chemical reaction with flesh and blood.
Though Revan couldn't see her from the awkward angle he was laying, he heard the little girl he'd saved let out a shrill cry. Like the rest of the crowd, an arrow had found her. Revan's final attempt at bravery was in vain. He'd merely traded one death for another.
And then, before Revan bled to death or faded to unconsciousness from pain, a shadow blotted his view of Conquest. With a tremendous amount of agonizing strain, he peered up at the figure who loomed over him.
It was the Recruiter, still smiling indifferently as if this were all some great big joke to her. Unlike the hundreds of innocent people who'd fallen under Conquest's volley, her body remained unscathed, as if the arrows had failed to target her completely. "Well, what do you think?" she asked, her voice disturbingly excited considering the circumstances. She continued, "After getting a front row seat to watch the world end, do you think you have what it takes to become the Fifth Horseman?"
Revan couldn't see the extent of his injuries, but it was evident from his gurgling that his jaw was either dislocated or broken. He wasn't sure when it had happened, perhaps when the car had pushed his head into a nearby curb. All he knew was that whatever answer the Recruiter wanted from him wasn't something she'd get. A jolt of pain lanced at his jaw hinges the moment he tried to utter a reply, and a zombified moan was the only acknowledgment he could muster.
"I'd show you the other Three Horsemen, but I'm afraid it only gets worse from here. In this state, you wouldn't last a second against War or Death! Fret not, Revan darling! With the Void as your master, we'll get you in tip top fighting shape, of that I'm sure! Now, follow me."
Then, without another word spoken, reality faded to darkness.