The screen suddenly exploded into life, and I was hit with a rush of color and sound so sharp it punched straight through my half-awake brain.
It wasn't just animation. It felt like my phone had ditched all pretense and turned into a full-blown portal.
Onscreen, chaos.
A battlefield stretched endlessly beneath a storm-lit sky. The ground cracked with each step of charging warriors—young warriors. No older than me, maybe even younger. Teenagers, really. Their armor gleamed like polished glass and carved silver, but their faces were raw with fear, fury, and fire. Some still had baby fat clinging to their cheeks, barely old enough to vote—if voting still mattered in a world like this.
An elf boy no older than sixteen loosed an arrow with trembling fingers. A centaur girl—barely past the age where you'd think about crushes instead of casualties—bucked and slammed her hooves into a hissing wall of shadow. The humans looked like first-years in military academy—lanky, wide-eyed, and already drenched in blood and ash.
And then there were the monsters.
If nightmares could sweat, bleed, and scream—they'd look like this.
They weren't just made of shadow. These things writhed like oil slicks forced into shapes—too many limbs bending the wrong way, heads splitting open to reveal rows of teeth like glass shards, and empty faces that stretched and pulsed as if trying to remember how to be human.
Some crawled on spider-like legs. Others hovered, bloated with twitching tendrils and whispering in a language that sounded like wet paper tearing. The worst were the ones that mimicked people—grinning with faces that flickered like broken screens, wearing expressions just a bit too familiar to be random.
Every time a young warrior fell, the black mass swarmed, shrieking—not roaring, not growling—shrieking, like a choir of broken violins dragged through metal.
But the kids didn't back down.
They fought with a desperate, brilliant fury. Spells arced across the battlefield like shattered stars, shields clanged, blades screamed against monstrous hide. It was brutal. It was insane.
It was beautiful.
I didn't even realize I'd leaned forward, elbow digging into my thigh, phone inches from my face. My fingers tightened around the edges, knuckles white.
The warriors moved like a perfectly choreographed storm—swift, graceful, brutal. Arrows sang through the air like high notes in a war song. Spears jabbed with mathematical precision. Magic flared—brilliant blues bursting like comets, fiery oranges ripping through the sky like solar flares.
Every strike lit up the battlefield in flashes. Every clash screamed defiance.
The black masses recoiled, shrieked, dissolved—but never stopped. For every monster felled, two more slithered out from the dark, pulsing like tumors on reality itself.
It wasn't just chaos.
It was survival.
It was hope, teetering on the edge of annihilation.
And then… the sky cracked.
Not thunder. Something deeper. Like glass breaking across dimensions.
I flinched as the clouds above the battlefield twisted into a swirling vortex of violet and pitch, and from within that swirling void—they came.
Eyes.
Red.
Not glowing—burning. Molten, ancient, wrong.
Dozens at first, then hundreds, each one different—some with vertical slits like serpents, some spiraled like whirlpools, others round and blank, but all of them searing into the battlefield below. They didn't blink. They didn't move.
They just watched.
No sound. Just that awful silence, loud in its weight. A silence that made your skin crawl.
And even though I was watching from the safety of a phone screen, my breath hitched.
Those eyes weren't just looking at the heroes.
They were looking through them.
Measuring them.
Judging them.
Feeding on something I couldn't name.
A shiver ran down my spine. The kind you get when you feel like something ancient just noticed you existed.
"Okay. So either I downloaded the greatest game trailer ever made… or I'm about to be cursed by a Lovecraftian ad pop-up."
Because seriously—what kind of free app has red-eyed god-things watching centaur teenagers get yeeted across a battlefield in 4K?
My phone vibrated gently, like it was trying to warn me.
I ignored it.
"...Yep. Definitely cursed."
But I didn't look away.
Not even once.
Because this?
This was exactly the kind of weird, epic fantasy mess I lived for.
But then the stars appeared.
One by one, they blinked awake—bright, pure light in the endless dark.
"…Okay, now we're getting somewhere," I muttered, scooting up on the bed like I was watching a movie I didn't know I paid for.
The stars began to fall, showering down like silver rain onto the warriors below. It was beautiful, in that spine-tingly, 'I'm about to witness the birth of a prophecy' kind of way.
As the starlight touched each hero, phantom images rose behind them—ghostly silhouettes of gods, ancient and terrifying.
Zeus stood behind a centaur warrior like a lightning-charged bodyguard, his golden eyes blazing under that iconic beard.
"Okay, classic Zeus. Big storm dad energy. Respect."
Athena's calm gaze followed an elf archer. She looked ready to lecture and obliterate someone at the same time.
"I'd let her judge me. I'd thank her for it."
Odin towered behind a sword-wielding human, that glowing eye practically radiating homework assignments and disappointment.
"Dude looks like he drinks despair for breakfast."
Then Ra appeared—literal solar flare for a head—blazing behind a mage who was already melting everything in sight.
"Oh sure, let's just add the sun to the party."
The gods weren't just watching.
They were empowering. Fueling. Lending strength to their chosen champions like they were handing out cosmic energy drinks.
I grinned, barely blinking. "Alright, mystery app. You've officially earned five stars."
The music swelled—epic and haunting, a perfect blend of orchestral power and modern intensity.
I found myself leaning closer, my phone forgotten for a moment.
This wasn't just a video. It was a story—a world I wanted to dive into.
The screen went black.
Just… black.
I blinked. Tapped the screen. "Did it crash?"
Silence. Not even a buffering wheel. Not even a skip ad button to rage at.
Then—
BOOM.
A deep voice rolled out from my phone's tiny speakers, clear and commanding, the kind of voice that makes you want to sit up straighter even though you're just in boxers on a bed.
[Welcome, new Divine.]
I squinted at the screen.
As if on cue, sleek lines of light slithered across the darkness, forming a floating system interface with all the drama of a sci-fi movie intro. Minimalist font. Ethereal glow. The works.
Your journey begins now.
I stared.
Then I blinked again. "...Okay, so definitely not a banking app."
There was no option to close it. No back button. Just that one sentence, pulsing gently in the center of the screen like it knew it had my attention—and wasn't planning to let go.
"Yup," I muttered, setting the phone down like it was made of plutonium, "definitely a virus. A very well-funded, mythologically-charged virus."
But even as I reached for the power button, I couldn't help glancing back at it.
It was stupid. It was weird.
It was exactly the kind of thing that made my nerd-brain spark like a firework.