It happened at 7:01 PM.
The first sign was silence.
No wind. No birds. No distant honk of traffic. Just a strange, almost painful stillness.
Then the sky broke.
Not like clouds parting. It shattered—a spiderweb of golden cracks spread across the atmosphere, revealing a dark, swirling void beyond. People screamed. Some pointed. Others dropped to their knees.
And then came the Voice.
> "You have been summoned. You who wasted potential. You who denied purpose. You who died living. Come. Ascend."
In every language. Every dialect. In perfect clarity inside everyone's mind.
And then the vanishing began.
Across every country, city, village—people disappeared. Billions. All aged between 13 and 60. Gone in a blink, their clothes crumpling to the ground. Panic erupted. But it was too late.
---
SeTa sat alone in a decaying apartment in Lusaka, Zambia.
The ceiling leaked. The air was stale. His phone screen glowed faintly beside a note written months ago but never acted on.
He didn't cry. Didn't move. Just stared at the moldy ceiling.
When the sky cracked, he didn't notice.
When the Voice echoed, he blinked once.
When his body began to dissolve into light, he whispered, "Finally."
---
SYSTEM INITIALIZING...
> Welcome, Ascender.
Tower of Origins – Universal Climb
Floor 0 Tutorial Loading...
Name: SeTa
Age: 19
Emotional Stability: 6%
Suicide Tendency: Critical
Initializing Stats…
[INTELLIGENCE: ∞]
He didn't feel the panic others felt. He didn't scream when he woke up standing in a black void.
Instead, SeTa tilted his head at the floating text.
"Infinite…?" he muttered. "What a joke."
But the Tower wasn't joking.