12: The fusion 2

4:15 PM.

Deep beneath the industrial outskirts of Rostia, Vivi Shepard looked at her phone and it read 4:15 PM.

The bunker was silent.

The emergency lights cast a faint glow across the concrete walls, illuminating the rows of neatly organized supplies she had spent days gathering.

Everything she needed to survive the apocalypse had been arranged in its proper place.

Vivi sat on the edge of her bed, staring at her phone. “By now, the earthquake should’ve stopped.

Still, she was curious about what was happening out there.

Her phone device had lost its network connection hours ago.

She had already tried calling emergency services, checking the news, and accessing the internet, but nothing worked.

The main earthquake lasted for eight hours.

Vivi spent eight hours of hearing the building above her groan and shudder while she remained locked inside her underground shelter, wondering whether the entire structure would collapse on top of her, turning her vault into an unrecoverable tomb.

At one point, a heavy object had crashed somewhere above the bunker, sending dust raining from the ceiling.

Vivi had spent the next several minutes crouched beside her bed, clutching her knees and praying that the concrete walls would hold.

Now, everything was finally quiet.

She slowly lowered her phone, mumbling, “Is it over? By now it should be.”

Vivi pushed herself up from the bed and walked toward the small ventilation monitor mounted on the wall.

The display was still functioning, but its external sensors had stopped transmitting reliable readings.

She frowned, feeling kinda bothered. “What happened up there?”

She had lived through the apocalypse once and she knew what the Day of the Rising would bring.

But she had never experienced the beginning from the safety of a bunker.

In her past life, she had been outside when the earthquake struck. She remembered running through the streets, stumbling over broken roads, and watching buildings collapse around her.

She remembered the screams, the blood, the corpses, the horrors, and the terrible realization that the world she had known was gone.

But this time, she had prepared.

She had traveled to Veridia to collect the golden crystals, returned to Rostia, and hidden herself underground before the disaster began.

She had done everything she could to survive, so why did she feel as though something was still terribly wrong?

Then a faint glow caught her attention causing her to turn toward it.

Her eyes widened as the gold crystals she had placed on her bed were shining.

She approached them slowly, her heartbeat quickening with every step.

All thirty of them.

Thirty precious crystals that would have made countless Hunters fight to the death in her previous life.

Now, all thirty were glowing.

The brilliant golden light grew stronger with every passing second, flooding the room.

Vivi stared, paralyzed by the sheer volume of power concentrating in front of her. “It’s time for the fusion,” she muttered, already expecting this to happen.

However, she suddenly felt wave of cold terror hit her gut. Thirty crystals at once? What if the collective surge overloaded her human biology? What if her body couldn’t withstand the concentrated energy output and she burned out from the inside out?

“No way in hell…”

She recoiled, raising an arm to shield her eyes as the light just kept growing brighter. On the bed, the crystals were starting to tremble.

Then they rose slowly into the air, floating above the bed as though gravity no longer applied to them.

Vivi stumbled backward, her heart pounding “What the actual hell?”

The crystals began circling one another.

Their light intensified, filling the bunker with a blinding radiance that turned the concrete walls gold.

Then, without warning, all thirty crystals shot toward her.

Vivi gasped, throwing her hands up. “WAIT…!”

The first crystal slammed dead-center into her chest. The impact felt less like a physical object and more like a high-voltage current driving straight into her sternum.

A searing, white-hot explosion of pain ripped through her core.

“AAAAAAAH!”

She dropped to her knees, clutching her chest as though someone had plunged a burning blade between her ribs.

The pain was unlike anything she had ever experienced.

It wasn’t simply physical.

It felt as though something had forced its way into her body and was tearing through every inch of her from the inside, searching for something buried deep within her.

She tried to breathe, but her lungs seemed to have forgotten how.

Another crystal shot through her head, then another and another.

“STOP! PLEASE, STOP!”