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It's often said the world ends loudly. That, when it happens, people will know. They'll know by the balls of fire descending from the sky, leaving craters. They'll know by the screams of lost souls, a wall of darkness and terror fast approaching, by the armies of the undead rising, the sky a permanent crimson, much like the ground beneath their trampling feet.
People assume the world ends violently because the concept itself is so upsetting and disturbs the status quo beyond repair. But assumptions are just that, and these people do not know what they talk about, only speak out of fear.
The world doesn't end with a bang. The world doesn't end by fire or ice, or corruption or darkness coming over the empires. The world ends with a whisper, a breeze, a quiet shut-down that most won't notice.
Pixlriffs noticed the change. The breeze was a little colder, the world a little paler. He lifted his gaze to the Anthill, to one of Pixandria's defining landmarks, and watched its color be drained. To the naked eye, nothing changed. But the breeze felt different, the world paled and his head grew lighter.
He had little extra warning; only a couple of minutes as opposed to the seconds others may get. He ran back home, to his desk, and grabbed a quill. He flattened the piece of paper, magically linked to those of other rulers for faster, more urgent messages, and stared at it for a second. Then, in his careful neat handwriting, he wrote down one last farewell that would never be read and surrendered to this pale un-world.
The salmon stopped swimming. The people of the Cod Empire would celebrate if the cod hadn't stopped swimming, either. A confused child pointed at the pond from which the cod statue rose, where the fish floated dead, and his mother urged him away from the water that grew darker.
Jimmy didn't see it, didn't know. He knew the Codfather head, the traditional mask he wore, seemed to grow tighter around his head. He thought he heard the screams of Cods outside, he thought the water had grown darker, he thought the slime clung to him more than usual. He imagined the slime throne swallowed him whole, his thoughts like muddled water. He called out for help, for Lizzie, for Scott, for Sausage, and he floated. He floated and his body floated and he floated away.
While Jimmy floated, Lizzie swam. The waters had changed. The usual warm ocean current was different; it wasn't colder per se, but it was wrong. Like it came from the wrong direction, just a couple degrees too cold or warm, and it muddied before her eyes, though it had been clear before.
The change confused her, so she swam down. Away from surface currents toward the more steady temperatures and stable environment. And she swam down and found the water acted as irrationally as the surface water, same confusing temperature, just as dark and muddied and clouded as her mind, and she swam down, down, down until she was no longer conscious.
The terracotta golems and clones were hard at work under the hard, warm, beating Mezalean sun. Such work brought a lot of noise with it; the clicking, churning, stomping, turning of the gears - all over the place, wherever you went. A familiar background noise that never goes away.
It stopped. The golems fell silent in their current position, the clones fell to the ground. The sounds echoing all over Mezalea died down, leaving a terrifying silence in their wake. A silence that sent chills down the spines of those who had spines and were neither clone nor golem. Joel, used to these sounds, frowned when it suddenly fell away and left an uneasy silence. He looked out of the window to his kingdom below and noticed the carnage. His eyes were drawn to the sunset when a switch was flipped and he joined his people.
Sausage saw it all happen in his dreams. Everyone, in a matter of seconds, all gone. No warning, no chance for an organized attempt at evacuation and survival. There barely was time to register what was happening, what exactly happened to his allies and enemies, his people, his world.
And he was terrified. Terrified enough to pull the blankets over himself again in his bed, close his eyes, and make an attempt. When he opened them, he was in a strange new world; not in his Empire, but a world named Mythgard. He stayed here for a couple of days, thinking he could survive here. But it wasn’t the same as home; not even Bubbles, who sometimes didn’t seem to recognize him. This wasn’t a life. And it made him wonder; would he be the sole survivor if he returned home?
In an impulsive decision, he returned home, to a lifeless body, unable to carry his soul anymore. Sausage was greeted with darkness, an inability to move, and a dark force that pulled him under quicker than he could react or return to Mythgard.
Gilded Helianthia had no warning; the only sign that something was wrong was their beanstalk, the large plant looming over the kingdom, wilting away overnight. The green beanstalk grew brown, its firm structures now weaker, some parts even falling to the ground and causing great damage.
It had all happened so quickly, there was no time to consider anything else that might be foul. Citizens flocked to the withering beanstalk, unaware their crops were undergoing the same process, while the grass seemed to grow. Mesmerized by their pride, much like her citizens, Pearl stared at the beanstalk and was unaware of the growing grass that swallowed her and her people whole. She barely realized the blue sky was traded with thick green blades of grass.
Scott had a bad feeling – he’d had it for a few days. Now the recent snowstorm was growing in size and the cold became unbearable, he knew this wasn’t right. Scott fled to the church, the only location he could still safely go to, and prayed to Aeor, begged for help.
Aeor didn’t respond. That wouldn’t be worrying, but there was no time for the usual latency between Scott’s prayers and Aeor’s response. Scott prayed and begged, hoped for a miracle, could feel the cold seep into the church, where it should never reach him. But Aeor wasn’t there; not in the way Scott saw it. He caught his breath, blinked a couple of times, tried to stay in the moment, unaware Aeor was pulling him out of it. Scott couldn’t protest as Aeor took away Scott’s need to understand and fight back. The man sitting in the church was no longer Scott, but a shell of the man he used to be; Aeor saw it as a mercy that his Champion didn’t know his life was ending. He didn’t have to live with those seconds of fear as the world’s end caught up with him and the body fell over.
The flowers started to smell funny. Katherine made it no secret that she enjoyed walking around her kingdom, sniffing every flower and thanking them for the nice smells around her empire. Today, however, they smelled a little funny. Katherine couldn’t place it, but something wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t quite wrong either, just weird. Just strange.
But she sniffed every flower, hoping to find one that didn’t smell as strange. And she sniffed every flower, finding they smelled just as funny, albeit all a different kind of funny. And she sniffed every flower again, unaware she’d already passed them, light-headed, losing herself a little more with every sniff she took. They numbed her, could feel the end coming, and wanted for their leader not to feel the end. The flowers succeeded and Katherine couldn’t feel a thing.
fWhip had been mining for redstone; his empire could always do with more redstone. The whole supply under his kingdom had already been depleted and he found he had to stray further and further away to tap into the redstone veins he hadn’t yet found, and to bring it to the surface, to his people. But he found today was exceptionally hard on him.
The walls seemed to close in on him. He’d never experienced such a feeling before, but he recognized it for what it was. He placed a trembling hand against the wall, to hold it back, to tell himself it wasn’t moving. He frowned – what was happening to him? He sweated, lost his footing, fell, and thought the walls caved in on him, slowly crushing him until he ran out of breath.
The dragons had been restless since this morning. Gem didn't think it was anything to worry about until they flew away. The people ad her students whispered, wondered where the dragons had gone. Gem had told them they had to return home every once in a while, they needed to return to special hatching grounds to lay their eggs and give birth to new dragons. It eased their minds; Gem became restless.
And the world got an inexplicable purple hue; one Gem could not get rid of. It grew quickly, and before she could decide to study it and deal with it, she could feel the pull on her soul; something had hooked her and tried to pull her out. She had no time to react. No exercises could save her, and her soul was torn from her body, into darkness and oblivion.
Joey flew around the Lost Empire when his vision blurred. He thought it was his eyes at first, as everything was slightly out of focus. But he realized he couldn't see too far, the trees fading into the coming mists and obscuring the view of his beautiful empire.
The lost emperor frowned - was it that time of the year? It was early for the mists to come. Maybe he should fly to the ground, stay there. These mists were deadly to avians.
He flew around and the mists surrounded him. A couple of turns later and Joey had lost his way. The mists clouded the skies and clouded his mind. Up was down and left was right. He had to find his temple. He had to get to the ground, and he was sure he was going the right way. He had to be going the right way. He was not making a mistake, and failed to pull up in time before he crashed into the ground.
Shrub could feel a shift in the weather; a change of pace. Something in the air that didn't feel quite right. Almost like corruption; not quite like corruption. The calm before the storm, familiar enough for Shrub to recognize. She regretted not having enough time to warn her lords and ladies. But she had to get away from here. She was a survivor, and she was going to survive this, running through the Nether portal, looking at the second world she had to leave behind.
The Nether was extremely hot, the air thinner than usual. Shrub thought it was her nerves; she had no idea the end of the world meant the end of the Nether as well. So she breathed the air, noticed it was thinner, and tried to find a way to work around this problem. But the air grew thinner and thinner and Shrub never realized the Nether was scarily quiet, and she joined the silence.
And the world fell silent. The breeze had flown through every empire. In a matter of seconds, all life was wiped out. The world ended with frowns, quick whispers of confusion while the breeze passed them. A quick and easy process.
And it brought silence to the world.