The sky had darkened with clouds, as though the very heavens themselves were afraid to see the earth.
The air hummed with an energy that felt foreign, twisted, and raw—like the earth itself was groaning in agony. The people, no, the demon race in the capital city, oblivious to the revelation that was about to hit them, continued with their lives.
Of course, that statement was not applied to Tom.
And soon, the others as well.
There was a loud resounding boom—people from every direction looked up to the sound's source and they gasped, truly experienced a shock.
The high wind ruffled her hair, Tom shivered.
Her hat gone with the winds.
Tom looked around for god knows how many times, but her reality did not changed.
She has been, somehow, shifted—teleported from the rooftop she and her client just few minutes before, to the top of the Demonland's national statue.
If that was all, she could still accept it somehow.
After all, this is a world of magic.
But the thing was, she doesn't simply got there; the statue, always white and pristine like jade, was now partially destroyed. Especially the head, the statue was headless now, and Tom was there—not on the neck, but she stood on blackish, clear surface.
"What is this?"
Her situation aside, her curiousity was piqued by this tower like that jutted out of the statue.
She instantly reminded of her clay statue she once made in childhood; just like this big King of Babel structure, she also used big twig as a foundation, to hold the statue tall.
But she used twig, a wood you can find anywhere.
Meanwhile this?
Compared to the material used to built the statue, it was too stark contrast—Tom wasn't some rich pants or researcher, so she didn't know many exclusive or rare meterial. But even so, she could still tell at a glance that this material was especially special.
"They staring at me! They staring at me!" she felt like crying, "I'm done! I will never make it out of the prison with crime like this!!"
The giant statue's head was destroyed, and when its fragments fell to the green ground, the sound they made obviously wouldn't be so small. And the statue was the heart of the capital city, so everyone were basically staring at her by now.
The national treasure is now half destroyed with her being on top of it like a cherry on a birthday cake.
Literally.
After all, she was red skinned demon—
"No joke! It's no time for JOKES!" she looked around in panic, "What should I do?! What should I doooo!"
But in that instant—
"Ruinous Moon."
—She heard the voice and shivered.
And it was not just her.
The voice reverberated through the entire Demonland, cold and commanding. Everyone heard the voice and shivered despite the heat. Peoples had varied reaction afterwards; confused, indifferent, wondering, but probably only Tom who held her breath in terror of the unknown.
Because she knew who the voice's owner was.
And before anyone could make sense of it: the world moved in one word—SHIFTED.
The earth itself, it shifted.
Tom stumbled forward, barely catching herself on the wall—"Wait, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!"
She was literally hundred meters above ground on that blackish surface, with nothing but winds and debris from the statue's destruction. So what was that? What she's leaning onto in front of her right now?
She couldn't perceive it, but it was a wall.
Or at least something akin to one.
And it was not only in front of her; she threaded with her hands in fear, only to found that while she couldn't see it, she was basically trapped in a box.
"...."
Her heart raced in confusion as she tried to keep her balance, "What the hell?!!!"
Then, the ground below was starting to float.
"What the—?!"
Tom's mouth went dry as the entire garden seemed to leave the ground, rising into the air like some bizarre nightmare. Her pulse quickened, her legs trembling as she looked around in sheer panic. The whole city, she couldn't comprehend it, but it was rising. Literally.
Buildings she was familiar with.
Complicated streets she spent years to remember.
Stranger and people she knows.
Everything.
As if they're trying to fly away, everything was floating. And they're not just floated aimlessly, but…
"What is that…?"
Surely it wasn't always there, or else old citizen like her would have noticed it. So it can be only something that had just appeared—a Black Dot. No other words fit the description but these two words.
It was like a small hole in the skies.
And everything was moved towards it—LITERALLY.
In fact, not only the things on the ground and the land itself that floated as if getting pulled in, but the clouds were also closing in from all directions into a vortex.
Tom wasn't even sure how to process it.
Her mind tried to comprehend, but it was like her brain couldn't make sense of it.
But she was freaking out!
Her breath came in short, her face paled as she realized that while everything around her slowly fall into madness, she was the only one who's not.
It felt like idea of gravity itself had just... revised.
Rewritten for all but her.
The city, the whole city, was rising into the air, and she was on the tallest building in it.
Tom's feet wobbled, almost gave up as she leaned back on the invisible wall, staring down at the bustling city, now so far beneath her that they looked like tiny specks of dust. She blinked several times, unable to tear her gaze away from the chaos unfolding below.
—People were running, shouting, screaming…
The ground began to crack open, as though some invisible force was ripping it apart.
Above, the sky twisted and churned, swirling into a violent vortex. A gravitational pull—unstoppable, immense, and crushing—began to form. It was as though the very weight of the universe had turned against the city, and all of its inhabitants were caught in its suffocating grip. Buildings groaned, crumbling under the immense pressure, as massive chunks of earth were lifted from the ground. People screamed in terror as the streets buckled beneath them.
Citizens began to flee in panic.
But there was no escape.
The pull was too strong, too all-encompassing.
A woman, clutching her child in her arms, flapping her wings frantically. Her legs has long gave out, so she must only navigate through the floating mess.
The child whimpered bloodless in her grasp, tears streaming down her face. "No... no, please!" she cried, her voice cracking. "Not like this! Not my baby...!"
Around her, everything was collapsing.
The buildings groaned as they were ripped from the ground and sent into the air, forming a massive area of debris. People's faces were filled with dread, eyes wide with horror as they watched the destruction unfold.
—The whole damn city was in despair.
"Help me! Someone! Please! Help us!"
Scream and beg? But peoples are too terrified to help, too consumed by their own survival instincts.
The city was becoming nothing more than a floating mass of debris, rushing into the sky. Pieces of broken stone and steel spun around the gravitational core, crashing into each other with deafening impacts. The people caught in the pull were helpless. Some were crushed under the weight of falling debris; others were simply pulled apart, their bodies shredded by the sheer power of the force. As the vortex grew, the sun disappeared behind the massive sphere of clouds and earth, the world seemed to fall into shadow.
A naked little girl, eyes wide with terror, clutched her father's hand as they tried to run.
But the pull was too strong.
The father who's also naked stumbled and fell, his grip on her daughter slipping as she was dragged upward. The girl screamed as she was hit by floating steel, and then, her world shattered in an instant.
—And Tom was trapped up there.
A planetary orbit was formed in between the heaven and earth; deformed building, debris, rock and lands, bloody gore, headless corpses, and so on formed the horizontal vortex ring around the black dot.
It was truly a majestic sight.
If one can ignore all the screams and blood obviously.
The capital was gone, and the lands were still being uprooted by the inverted gravitational force.
Meanwhile, the gravitational force' reach itself only growing wider with each passing seconds. In no time, it had pulled up everything in more than a hundred kilometers radius, and it's still growing.
Dead object had it better since they were dead.
But what about the living?
It was fortunate for them who has enough horn, they can utilize magic to protect themselves. But those who are weaker had it just as bad as animals. Demons may try as hard as they could to flap their wings, attacking the center of the gravitational force with strength or magic, yet they are bound to despair.
Tom didn't know whether to scream or throw up.
"Wha-what's going on?" her voice was hoarse, horror already creeping into her chest.
Yet—She is fine.
The earth my shattered, the building may turned to dust, peoples impaled in stick and stones, but she was all but not okay. In fact, while the heaven and earth shook and sucked by that black dot, the surface where she stand on was stood calm as if it was not a part of this world, practically immovable, unfazed.
And this fact only made Tom more confused.
Even more scared.
She was not a smarty pants, but she don't need to be one to know that all of this were orchestrated by her client just now. The question is, why?
"Hey!" she shouted, screaming at the sky.
She obviously couldn't see him with all of that mess, but she knew he was there. He should be.
"What the hell is happening?! Who are you?!"
It's obvious, but there's no answer came.
"Answer me! What is this?!"
But then, her world rumbled, and she almost lost her footing again. She looked around, her stomach turning as the buildings continued to rise.
It was... it was painful to watch.
She couldn't understand it.
And she didn't need to.
Under her pale gaze, the vortex formed by the black dot seemed to warp, and changed; if before it was only pulling everything to it by pure gravitational force—clearly has taken enough time to prepared itself—now it began using vacuum force and began sucking everything into the vortex. The city, the buildings, the people—if just now they're only being levitated, right now they were being pulled towards one point by an unseen force above.
The entire capital was drawn toward the hole that had appeared in the sky, the pull of it inescapable.
Tom screamed.
But her voice was drowned out by the roaring winds.
Around her, the buildings began to fold inward, floating toward the growing black sphere in the sky. The ground itself seemed to disappear, everything drawn into the black hole above.
The city was being sucked into the void. And Tom...
Her thoughts raced. She tried to make sense of it. Why was this happening? What was he doing?
She had no idea what to do.
The clouds are the first to be sucked in, and thus, for a briefest moment, she saw him; he was floating above the clouds like a deity, the indifference in his breath send a chill down her spine. There was no anger. No emotion. Just cold, detached observation.
"You..." Her voice cracked. "What the hell... are you?"