I don't know how I got to my feet, how I ran to the window. Maybe it was instinct, or maybe it was the heat surging through my bloodstream like a second soul. All I knew was that something ancient had woken in me… and outside, the sky wasn't blue anymore.
Above the Singapore Branch Headquarters, the clouds coiled into a vast spiral, like paint suspended in oil. Right in the center of it all, floating with her wings outstretched like a living monument, was her.
Sera.
Her veil shimmered in the windless sky. Her wings flared with divine pressure. Her visor burned with the glow of starlight. And when she spoke, the world stopped.
Her voice didn't echo. It didn't need to. It slipped into minds, seeped into bones, rippled across oceans and deserts and cities like it had always been there, just waiting.
"People of Earth," she began, her tone calm, commanding, and terrifying in its serenity. "The Ten Years of Grace are over."
"You were chosen to survive the First Thauma—the Ashven Blood Rain—not out of mercy, but for preparation. You endured, rebuilt, and dreamed again. And now, you must awaken."
The clouds above every continent turned the same glowing shade of cerulean blue.
"This world was long bound by ignorance and chaos. And so, seven calamities were decreed. Seven Thaumas. The first purged. The second, what begins today, will forge."
People everywhere fell to their knees, not from faith, but from force. Her presence was pressure incarnate. Every creature felt it—bird, beast, and man. Even those deep underground or hidden in bunkers felt the weight of her words.
"This second calamity shall not cleanse, but awaken. It shall burn through flesh and memory, and leave only the worthy standing."
I saw military satellites in the distance react, whirling to lock on her position. As if bullets or lasers could do anything to her. Some fool in a distant capital must have tried to fire.
She didn't blink.
"You call me Angel. I am not. I am Seraphim. I am Sera. And this is the will of your new gods."
The wind died. The sky dimmed.
And then, with the gentlest motion in the universe, she raised her hand and snapped her fingers.
The sound wasn't loud but the whole world heard it. From the frost-choked valleys of Canada to the sweltering jungles of the Congo, across every time zone, the snap cut through existence.
And then… the Rain came.
But this time… it didn't come alone.
The clouds ruptured like wounds. Blades of azure light fell in slow motion, slicing through the sky, carving their paths into the Earth. It wasn't just rain. It was a torrent of transformation. Entire forests lit up. Oceans churned with glowing tides. Mountains cracked as the ABR returned in its new form: a rain that pulsed with consciousness.
And something else came with it.
Creatures shaped like despair, loss, failure. Avatars of trauma, given flesh and breath. Some had wings. Others crawled. Some screamed as they descended with the rain, like the skies themselves were vomiting memory.
Panic spread like wildfire across the globe. And above it all, Sera remained, calm and unmoved.
Back in my apartment, I could feel the Flux surging in my chest. My skin lit up with faint cracks of cerulean light. My breath came out in plumes of heat. My vision sharpened until I could see the veins of a leaf outside fluttering on a building floors away.
But even with all that, I couldn't stop staring at her.
The one who started it all.
And her final words rang across the Earth like prophecy.
"This is the Second Thauma, Syntara's Descent. And from this day forward, no human shall remain unchanged."
The moment Sera snapped her fingers, the world broke.
It didn't even take a second.
I could hear it—no, feel it—in my bones, the way the sky fractured above me. One second I was standing in front of my apartment window, the other, I heard everything.
Screams. Metal ripping. Glass exploding. Flesh being torn apart. But it wasn't the chaos that made my stomach curl. It was the clarity. My senses were no longer human.
The moment the rain returned, my Flux surged. My ears filtered thousands of sounds at once. My eyes zoomed in like lenses on crack. I saw a man seven blocks away get dragged into an alley by a shape made of… hands.
My heartbeat wasn't racing. It was calm. Too calm.
I turned around, and through the walls of my high-rise apartment and saw the monsters.
They weren't all the same. Some looked like humans, but wrong; some too tall, skin wrapped too tightly, mouths wide enough to eat a man whole. Others had no form, just vapor and eyes that glowed with unbearable grief.
And others were so massive they blotted out chunks of the skyline.
The ground beneath me lurched. I lost my balance and slammed into my kitchen counter. The building groaned like it was alive and dying at the same time. I stumbled to the hallway, just in time to see a neighbor scream as the wall behind him exploded. A creature barreled through, knocking him into the void.
The building shook again and then it collapsed. I didn't even scream. The skyscraper, all 70 floors of it, gave out like wet paper and fell sideways.
I didn't black out.
I felt all of it.
But it was like… the world moved in slow motion. My body was glowing faintly, veins of cerulean light under my skin. As floors crumpled and debris hurtled at me, they missed. Or maybe they didn't. Maybe they hit but my body just didn't break.
I remember hitting something hard. And then nothing.
When I opened my eyes, I was inside a tomb of rubble. My apartment was gone. My entire block was gone. Everything was dark except for the faint light humming from my body.
And then…
I saw her again.
Sera.
Floating just above the debris, wings unfurled like a divine predator. She crouched beside me, brushing dust off my face like I was some kid that tripped on the playground.
"Hm. You are tougher than you look," she said with a smirk behind her visor. "Did not expect you to live through that."
I coughed, my lungs raw from the dust and smoke.
"I… thought I was dead."
"You almost were," she replied. She reached down, grabbed my wrist, and with barely a tug, yanked me out of the rubble like I was weightless.
My body ached. My limbs were shaking. But nothing was broken.
"Why… did you come back?" I asked, breathless.
She didn't answer at first.
Then she turned to the chaos around us.
From up here, I could see the city burning. Singapore was falling. Skyscrapers were on fire. Civilians were being dragged away. Explosions erupted like dominos. The streets were littered with blue-glowing puddles of ABR, but they weren't just rainwater anymore. They hissed and slithered like they were alive.
"Because I like you," she said simply, shrugging. "And you let me sleep on your couch. I Am sentimental like that."
I stared at her, dumbfounded.
"You survived the fall, because your Flux finally activated. You have had it all along, but your body was too stagnant. Now, it is reacting."
"Reacting?"
"To the end of the world," she said with a smile in her voice.
Then she stepped back, wings twitching.
"You want to survive, don't you?"
I nodded, too stunned to say anything else.
"Then unlock it. Your full potential is not out yet." She raised a finger. "A Flux has six stages. You are in the first. Weak, raw, untamed. But you are alive. That means something."
I was trembling, and not from fear. My body was humming like an engine warming up for the first time in years.
"What do I do?"
She smiled.
"You run. You fight. You live."
And then her wings snapped open.
"You are not dead yet. Let us see if you are worth saving."
She vanished and left me standing alone in the crater of my former home… while the city screamed.
Monsters were everywhere now. I could hear their feet pounding across rooftops. Their howls. Their whispers.
This was it.
The Second Thauma wasn't just a rain. It was a warzone.
And I was the last nobody standing.