9: The rumbling

07:00 AM.

Ward and Susan were busy pounding on Vivi’s door when they suddenly felt a slight tremor beneath their feet.

“What was that?” Ward muttered, looking at Susan in confusion. “Did you feel that?”

Susan looked around, also feeling it.

“Probably a minor tremor,” Ward said, trying to make sense of it and went ahead to knock on Vivi’s door. “Why the hell is she not answering? She's not even picking up her calls!”

Susan stomped her foot with a sharp, pained frown of frustration.

Meanwhile, they were far from the only ones who felt it. Millions of people across Rostia experienced the brief, unsettling twitch of the Earth.

Glasses rattled on tables, ceiling lamps swayed gently, and a few light sleepers stirred in their beds before rolling over and drifting back to sleep.

Down in the lobby of a luxury hotel, a security guard glanced up from his desk toward the heavy crystal chandelier spinning above him.

“Huh? An earthquake?”

He waited for a few seconds, but the trembling stopped almost as quickly as it had begun.

He shrugged and returned his attention to his phone.

Across the city, a little girl sleeping beside her mother opened her eyes and looked toward the window.

“Mommy?”

Her mother hummed lazily into her pillow.

“The bed is shaking.”

“It’s nothing, sweetheart. Go back to sleep.”

The woman kissed her daughter’s forehead and closed her eyes.

At exactly 07:10 AM, the ground shook again, and this time, the tremor was stronger.

The floor lurched upward with a violent jolt, and the buildings began to shudder. Windows rattled violently in their frames. Cars parked along the streets began rocking from side to side, and alarms sounded from several nearby vehicles.

Ward and Susan froze in the hallway, grabbing the walls as the corridor tilted beneath them.

Terror flashed across Susan’s face. “Okay, this isn’t minor. This is a real earthquake!”

Up and down the hall, apartment doors flew open. Neighbors stumbled out, eyes wide with confusion and panic.

“What the hell is going on? An earthquake?!”

“Quick! Get back inside! Get under a table, it’ll pass!”

Ward’s expression hardened as he made a split-second decision.

With a rough, urgent grip, he grabbed Susan’s hand and pulled her away from Vivi’s door. “Let’s get out of here. I’ve got a really bad feeling about this!”

Susan nodded frantically, her face pale. “Me too! Move!”

Before they could reach the elevator, a sharp, metallic screech echoed from above, followed by a deafening crash and a single, piercing human scream that was cut chillingly short.

They froze dead in their tracks.

“W-what was that?!” Susan shrieked, her voice cracking.

Ward’s eyes were bloodshot as he dragged her forward, stumbling over the bucking floorboards. “We’re taking the fucking stairs. Now! Let’s get out of this building!”

“Wait, aren’t we safer staying put at this height? It’s just an earth…” Susan choked on her words as the overhead light fixture shattered into a million pieces, crashing down right in front of their feet.

Her heart hammered wildly against her ribs in terror.

“It’s getting worse,” Ward muttered, casting a wild look back toward the corridor. “After yesterday's unnatural sky… it’s the end of the world. It’s really happening! We need to find a place to hide. And fast!”

Susan bobbed her head, completely panicked, and immediately followed his lead.

In an apartment building in Rostia’s commercial district, a man stumbled out of his bedroom, rubbing his eyes as he made his way toward the living room.

“Honey, did you feel that? I think we should…”

His words died in his throat as a deafening crack tore through the building.

Then the floor beneath his feet split open.

Before he could react, the entire living room tilted at a brutal forty-five-degree angle, throwing him hard against the wall. The ceiling groaned, and a massive section of concrete came crashing down on top of him.

His wife screamed from the bedroom.

“DARLING!”

He tried to crawl toward her through the wreckage, his body bruised and bleeding, but another violent jolt sent the remaining walls crashing inward, burying him.

“Ahhhhh!!”

Across the city, the same tragedy played out in a thousand different variations.

The earth had begun to turn against humanity and by 08:00 AM, the earthquake had turned into a global catastrophe.

It wasn’t confined to a single country or continent. From the busiest metropolitan cities to rural settlements, the ground beneath humanity’s feet had turned into a death trap.

Highways split apart, bridges buckled and collapsed into rushing rivers below, skyscrapers swayed dangerously back and forth before their foundations gave way, sending entire blocks crashing down into each other in a domino effect of destruction.

The noise and the screams of people inside was indescribable.

There were explosions, the screeching of twisted metal, the shattering of glass, and the thunderous roar of collapsing buildings. Beneath it all were the screams of people desperately trying to escape.

In a crowded residential district, a mother ran barefoot through the swirling grey dust of the street, clutching her four-year-old son against her chest.

“Somebody help us! Please!”

Behind her, a five-story apartment building pancaked downward, sending a massive wall of debris and ash rolling across the street.

The woman stumbled but managed to keep her son in her arms.

“Mommy, I’m scared!” the little boy cried, burying his face in her jacket.

“It’s okay, baby. Mommy’s here.” She tried to keep her voice steady, but tears streamed down her face. “Everything will be fine. Just hold on to me.”

Then a second tremor struck.

The ground lurched sideways beneath her, knocking her off her feet. The impact was too hard and her son slipped from her loosening grip, rolling several feet away from her.

“MOMMY!”

She scrambled frantically toward him. “Baby! Don’t move!”

A deafening crash sounded directly overhead and she looked up, her blood running cold. A massive section of a nearby building was breaking free, falling straight toward them.

For one terrible second, she could do nothing but stare.

Then, driven by pure instinct, she lunged forward, throwing her body over her son just as the wall of grey dust swallowed them both whole.

Many people were busy in the streets, running for their lives.

Out on the battered main avenue, Susan and Ward watched the horror unfold before their eyes.

Susan stood frozen, trembling violently as she stared at the rising clouds of dust.

“It’s really the end of the world,” she kept muttering, her voice entirely hollow. “It’s really the end of the world.”

Ward kept his head on a swivel, fighting off the panic clawing at his throat, searching for a path forward. But before he could pull her away, the ground beneath them shifted with the terrifying impact of a giant iron hammer striking the earth.

The shockwave knocked everyone in the street off their feet. People slammed hard onto the concrete, crashing into one another, groaning in pain as the asphalt jolted beneath them.

“WARD!!” Susan screamed, crying out in terror as she slipped away from him.

Ward forced himself back to his feet, lunged forward, and grabbed her hand, yanking her upright.

Together, they turned and ran, dodging massive chunks of masonry crashing down from the skies, narrowly missing falling debris that crushed fleeing pedestrians just yards away.

It was total chaos.