Amaterasu, Uzume, and Izanami sat at the top of the shrine’s stone steps. The shrine used to be a wonderful place to catch a wide view of the suburbs and the skyscrapers towering from the heart of downtown Kyoto in the distance. Now, it was a front row seat to the sea of rubble and shredded steel where Kyoto used to stand. It was eerily quiet, so much so that the three goddesses wondered if they were the only three living things in the entire city.
The light of the eclipse tinged the haze of ash and smoke covering the city orange. The breeze carried the scent of smoke, blood, and the sour odor of charred flesh. Kyoto’s people became little more than smoke rising from the burning embers of their city, like the scented, gaseous trails flowing off a a stick of incense. The three goddesses were left to witness the aftermath of Osamu’s destruction, the solar eclipse sitting like a fiery ouroboros in the charcoal sky.
“Are Yuuto and Kiyoko safe?” Izanami asked.
Amaterasu nodded. “We brought them back to Heaven with us. The place is in shambles, but there aren’t any demons there.”
“That’s good…” Izanami sighed. “At least two of our kids are still alive.”
“We’ll keep watching over them. It’s the least we can do.” Uzume said. “He’s really going through with it. Is the whole world just going to look like this by the time he’s done?”
“Yeah.” Amaterasu said. “He’s beaten the whole world. Humanity will try its damndest to fight back, but it’s futile. All they can do now is wait to die.”
“And without humanity…there can be no reincarnation.” Izanami said, her head hung low. “The gods Osamu killed can’t come back. He couldn’t take away our godhood itself, so he did the next best thing; he killed everyone and then severed their lifeline.”
Amaterasu hugged her legs close to her chest. “Humanity and nations…the very things that caused all this grief in our family…will all be burned away.”
“Did you mean what you said earlier, Amaterasu?” Izanami asked. “Or were you just saying that to get me out of that rubble?”
Amaterasu raised her head and laid her legs out over the stone steps, grabbing Izanami’s wrist. Her golden eyes glistened with tears of desperation. She wore centuries of pain and sincerity on her frowning face for her mother to see. Her saddened gaze melted away any trace of doubt and apprehension in Izanami’s mind.
“I meant every word.” Amaterasu said. “I should’ve said it so many years ago.”
“No. I was the one that should’ve said it first.” Izanami said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to go through so much hardship all by yourself. I was a terrible mother to you. How could I let myself hate my own child? If I had been even half the mother you deserved, maybe things would’ve been different. Maybe the world wouldn’t be ending right now. I’m sorry, Amaterasu. I’m so very sorry.”
Amaterasu smiled as tears ran down her cheeks. Those words were all she wanted to hear. They set her free from the shackles of her long hatred for her mother, from all the horrors they inflicted upon each other. She realized that hatred isn’t something that is born alone. It comes with a bitter, heartbreaking pain. They both grieved the loss of their family. Mizuhame, Izanagi, and all that had died in the War of Kin would’ve never wanted for them to destroy each other.
“I forgive you.” Amaterasu said, wiping away her tears with her sleeve.
Izanami nodded as she broke down in tears. She couldn’t speak a word, but Amaterasu saw the surrender and forgiveness in her face. It was all she needed to embrace her mother with every bit of warm sincerity she had in her heart.
At long last, their family’s curse of hatred came to an end with a tender embrace. Uzume’s age-old wish of seeing Izanami and Amaterasu reconcile finally came to pass. The mere sight of it filled her eyes with joyous tears and put a radiant smile upon her face.
“Better late than never.” Uzume laughed, wiping her tear-soaked eyelashes.
“Thank you for watching over her all this time, Uzume.” Izanami said. “I’m glad you were there for her.”
Uzume shook her head. “No need to thank me. We’re family.”
Amaterasu held Izanami’s hand in her left hand and Uzume’s in her right. With all of their attachments severed, bad blood reconciled, and their nation in ruins, all that was left to do was watch as the world ended by Osamu’s command. It was time to let it all burn down, to let every construct and attachment be reduced to ashes.
And what a sight it was. Legions of colossal skeletons adorned with long, cosmic veils of starlight and nebulae marched across the molten remains of Southeast Asia. They stood above the towering plumes of raven smoke cloaking the decimated remnants of what used to be bustling, proud cities. The demons stomped on the piles of naked, contorted corpses of men, women, and children at their feet, marring the beauty of Mother Earth with their footsteps and desecrating the ashen graves of her people.
The pounding thunder of their march was unbearably loud, like a powerful earthquake that shook the planet to its core. With its unending drone of crunching earth came a terrifying rumble and shaking that could be felt hundreds of miles away. Combined with the frenzied screams of tens of millions of winged shikome soaring through the blackened sky, the cacophony of destruction served as an audible warning to the people of the Middle East and Souther Russia that death was coming to them.
The horde broke off into several prongs. The main group went on to approach Nepal and India. A secondary group split upwards to destroy Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, after which it would rejoin the main group in destroying Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the rest of the Middle East. A third group of tens of millions more demons split north, heading towards Mongolia and Southern Russia.
(…I dreamt for so long…)
The Tajik people fled from their villages with nothing but the clothes on their backs and their loved ones beside them as the shadowy silhouettes of the colossal skeletons crept over the horizon, starred by their glowing, scarlet eyes. The stampede of fleeing and terrified people raced towards the jagged mountains bordering their towns. If they had any hope of surviving this, they had to reach higher ground.
Brave mothers and fathers ran towards the mountains with their young children in their arms. The elderly, too old and slow on their own, were carried on the backs of young, virile men through each step up the mountains. None of them wanted to die, or for their colorful dresses and floral garbs to become the clothes their funeral robes. Each and every one of them wanted to live to see tomorrow.
(…About saving that little girl I saw die before my very eyes. Who would she have grown up to be? Would she have had a happy life? Would she remember me for saving her? Would any of this had happened if I simply saved her? Or even if I just never saw it?)
To the terror and dismay of the Tajik people, the demons were coming over the mountains. As those horrifying beings marched closer to the towns and villages of Tajikstan, the people began to realize just how titanic they were. The mountains were little more than stepping stones, and the clouds smoky veils for their skeletal heads. Trees that stood for centuries were turned into raging bonfires, spewing forth dark, orange embers and ash into the air and onto the heads of fleeing people. The terror of Dark Dawn stole away every vestige of hope and courage that otherwise invigorated the human spirit. In the face of such insurmountable horror, the Tajik people were utterly helpless.
Anyone could see there was nowhere to run, no escape from the agonizing deaths Osamu Ashikaga had wished upon them. Even so, they ran down the mountains in the vague hope that everything would be okay, that they’d survive this apocalyptic disaster. They didn’t want to resign to their fate until every last shred of hope was lost.
When the demons encircled their towns and cut off any possible escape from certain doom, the Tajik people stopped in their tracks. A litany of terrified voices screamed out from every direction as the people realized they weren’t going to survive.
“There’s…nowhere to go!”
“Can we at least save the children?”
“Dad…are we going to die?”
“It’s okay, honey. Don’t look at them. Just hang onto me and close your eyes. No matter what happens, just hang onto me, okay? When you wake up, we’ll be in a beautiful place together. There’ll be no scary monsters. We’ll be safe. So, just…hang onto Daddy, okay?”
The rumble of the skeletal march drowned out the legions of screams and pleas. Seeing no hope in running anymore, some people simply fell to their knees and beseeched God to spare their lives. Utterly dazed by the sheer size of the demons about to kill them, some people fell onto their bottoms and looked up with their mouths agape and tears staining their faces.
All of them were ground into the dirt as skeletal feet the size of Manhattan came down upon them, casting shadows over their land that grew darker and darker as their feet closed in towards the ground. People covered their heads as they sobbed and screamed for their lives, only to be flattened and silenced beneath the skeletons’ apocalyptic steps.Their bones were crushed into dust, their flesh burnt into an unrecognizable pile of charcoal, and their blood seeped into the smoking soil of Tajikstan.
Anyone who wasn’t caught beneath their feet was swept up in their astral veils and burned alive along with their homes, family, and animals. The fluid in their eyeballs evaporated, every strand of hair on their bodies were singed away, their skin and facial features all reduced to a putrid, black char. Every trace of their race’s existence in this world was crushed and burned away.
(The dream never fades. It just…changes form. It keeps repeating, beginning and ending the same way, no matter what I try. The same shock…the same despair…the same regret. Each time, the girl’s face is different.)
The people of India felt the same rumble rattling their homes and shaking their streets side to side. Sirens blared across every city in the country as the Indian Armed Forces organized to evacuate everyone out of the urban areas and into rural, higher ground. With their jaws locked and their teeth gnashed together, the fleeing populace looked back at the cities and towns they left behind, seeing the horde of veiled, colossal skeletons, their numbers stretching from one end of the horizon and down the other. They were like a massive wave sweeping over the world and purging everything in their path. There was no hope of stopping them. Even delaying them would take more than a Herculean effort.
The Indian people still trying to escape the cities and urban areas packed themselves into cars, trains, cargo planes, anything they could to try and escape the coming wave of death. Tens of thousands of men, women, and children were trampled by their neighbors and countrymen in all the chaos, their necks and ribs breaking beneath the frantic, terrified steps of the populace. The desperate cries of those trying to escape was gradually drowned out by the sound of the horde’s constant, unending rumbling.
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“Go! Go! I don’t wanna die!”
“They’re getting closer!”
“Why won’t they start this damned train! Get us out of here!”
“We’re overpacked! They can’t start!”
“My son! Has anyone seen my son? He’s nine and has long hair! Please, I can’t leave without him!”
The Indian Armed Forces fared no better in fending off the demons than any of the world’s armies did. Artillery batteries rained salvo after salvo of high-explosive hellfire upon the demons, to no avail. Tank shells bounced off their yellow-tinged bones like drops of rain and firebombs went cold against their astral veils. The unending artillery and accompanying heat produced a bright, red glow in the darkened sky of India as the eldritch eclipse aimed its condemning gaze upon the nation’s people. The Indus River became a boiling hellhole that blanched and melted the thousands of people that desperately tried to cross it to escape the horde. Their blood and gelatinized flesh suffused with the waters beneath the hellish, red pall that fell upon the country.
Seeing that their weapons were useless, the men of India’s army abandoned their fortified positions and ran for their lives, unable to halt or even delay the horde’s approach upon their cities. People gathered in prayer inside the nation’s Hindu temples, the tremors rattling the buildings like violent earthquakes. The once tranquil, Hindu temples were filled with people sobbing into their hands, hardly able to focus on their prayers for mercy.
The twinkling light of the skeletons’ astral veils poured in through the windows and skylights of homes, temples, shops, and banks across the nation, the screams of the Indian people echoing for miles as they were trampled upon and set alight, while the stragglers were torn apart by winged shikome. Millions of people were reduced to paste and ash in their homes, cars, and overpacked trains.
(I’ve always been able to see the beauty lying beneath the ugliness of the world. I saw the beauty in Izanami and Tsukiakari, even in Inari. Even now, I still see it in the world. It’s…more than I can take. The more I burn away, the more beautiful it is. Destroying this world…eradicating all these people…it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.)
The Hindu temples of India, the ornate mosques of the Middle East, the Mongolian Steppes, the Orthodox churches and old, Soviet-era homes of Russia were all destroyed in the global wave of destruction that spread like wildfire. No military could halt or delay it. The demons shared Osamu’s tireless resolve to destroy the world and annihilate nearly all of mankind. They wouldn’t stop until he was satisfied.
The horde reached the Levant and set their sights upon Israel, Egypt, the Balkans, and all of Africa. Beneath the blackened sky and under the ireful watch of the raging eclipse, billions of humans all across the world were slaughtered, their nations flattened, their bloodlines ended, and their entire race wiped away. As the demons trampled and immolated their civilizations, all that was left behind were graveyards of ash, disfigured and flattened corpses, and eerie silence, as though no human even inhabited their corner of the world at all.
(The future I saw…of the world ending because of ceaseless, human ambition will burn away. The conflicts my powers would’ve caused will all end before they break out. I’ll have completed my penance. I’ll have righted my first wrong and eased the world of all its burdens…
(I love this world. I love the people in it, the people yet to be born into it. That’s why…that’s why I have to destroy it, so they don’t inherit the mess we made. This clean slate will be their birthright.)
Within days, the horde marched upon Africa, decimating the countries of Egypt, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan. At the same time, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Greece shared the fate of East Africa. Despite all military attempts to curtail the destruction, the demons carried out Osamu’s wish with undying fervor and brutality.
Feeling the tremors of destruction from miles away, the people of Eastern and Central Africa fled from their cities with their loved ones and necessities. Entire capital cities, livelihoods, and dreams were left behind in a desperate exodus for survival. Cars, vans, trucks, and buses filled with terrified people congested the roads, with some even going off-road and into the African wilds. Port cities across the continent, such as Abidjan, Freetown, and Dakar utilized every single boat available to them to ferry evacuees off the continent.
Scared for their lives, people pushed, pulled, fought, and even shot their way onto the safety of the boats. Common decency and courtesy made way for selfish barbarism and savagery among people. Hundreds of boats set sail from the Northern and Western coasts of Africa, and as overpacked with people as they were, millions were still left behind in their cities, leaving them no choice but stay and await their doom. Determined to fight for life until the very end, hundreds of people swam after the sailing boats and screamed for them to wait, to take them and their families on board with them. They swam until they exhausted themselves, many of them sinking below the violent tides of the ocean and drowning.
Those who missed their best chance at survival fell to their knees and screamed in agony as they watched the boats sail off without them. Their terrified children questioned where they would go, if they were going to be okay, and if they were going to die. Each and every parent had to endure the devastating agony of knowing they could do nothing to keep their sons and daughters safe. All they could do was clutch their crying children tightly and hope that someone, be it a hero or a god, hear their mournful sobs.
(This world can be made peaceful and beautiful…but not while humanity exists as it is. If only they could all see the Eden that comes after all of this, the paradise that rises from the ashes. They wouldn’t mourn. They wouldn’t flee. They wouldn’t fear. The lives of the future are worth so much more than my own, than any of ours. Killing everyone for their sake…is an honor.)
With half the city evacuated, the Senegalese people of Dakar had very few options left to them. They could hurry North or travel South down the Western coast, but if Dakar had already evacuated as many people as it could, then the other cities were sure to have done the same. Many of them decided to gather in places of worship, seeking refuge under the majestic and hallowed roofs of the various mosques and churches across the city.
What were once places of worship filled with music, prayer, and confessions, were now overcrowded dens of sobbing men, women, and children waiting for Osamu Ashikaga’s demons to end their lives. Asked for a final service, one of the pastors in Dakar faced the hundreds of people crammed inside his church. He stepped up to his podium, his hands shaking as he flipped through the pages of his King James Bible.
Despite his years of servitude to the Christian faith, he found there was no verse in his bible that could adequately prepare the people for him for what was coming. All he could do was open his heart to them, take in their terror, and speak the words that came to him.
“God hears our cries. Our fears. He hears the thoughts racing through our heads in this very moment. He hears our children, our parents, our siblings, our friends, and our spouses. He hears the pained cries of all humanity, and he is making a place for all of us in Heaven. I do not know why humanity must endure such dismal devastation. I don’t know why we all must die like this. But…death is nothing to fear. Osamu Ashikaga can kill our bodies, but he cannot kill our souls. He cannot rob from us that which was paid for by the blood of Christ.
“Take this time now to pray. Pray for forgiveness. Every wrong you’ve ever committed, every selfish thought or action, pray for it all. Realize now that none of it ever mattered. All that matters right now are the people that are close to you in humanity’s darkest hour, the people that want nothing more than to cling to you at the end of life.
“Do not fear it. Fear for the man whose soul is so clouded by hatred that he resolved to do this. Fear for the agony he’ll have to endure when he is left in this world all alone, with no one to love or acknowledge him. We will all be together with God in paradise and comforted by his boundless love.”
The tremors rocking Dakar grew stronger, knocking chandeliers off of ceilings and making it nearly impossible just to stand up. Osamu’s demons made their apocalyptic march across Africa far more quickly than they could’ve ever realized. The people fleeing across the forests were trampled and crushed beneath the ivory feet of giant skeletons, their astral veils turning the lush, vegetated environment into a hellish inferno. Those who weren’t crushed were completely consumed by the red flames left in the horde’s wake. They screamed in gut-wrenching agony as they were burnt to char in a sea of sparks and fire.
(Are you watching, Amaterasu? Inari? Isabella? There’s so much beauty unfolding before us. There’s so much hope and promise lying in the rubble of our civilization. All I have to do is kill them. All of them. As many as I can.)
Speeding cars weren’t even able to outrun the massive skeletal steps. Hundreds of vehicles were pancaked with people still inside them, most of them exploding under skeletal feet. Millions of fleeing, screaming people were stepped on and turned into red puddles in Africa’s soil. Some were only stepped on partially, leaving them to scream and sob in agony as their legs or arms were crushed into paste. The frantic breaths and screams of millions rushing towards the shore filled the air like a nightmarish, dissonant choir. Those who ran for their lives saw their countrymen lie on the ground with their ruptured intestines in their hands, while others tried to crawl across the ground with only their arms after their legs were crushed flat.
Then came the ghoulish, humanoid demons whose bellies were engorged with corrosive gas. They stood half as tall as the massive skeletons stomping upon Africa, their exposed flesh and tendons reeking of rot and carrion. They opened their arms and fell on top of the fleeing people, their stomachs exploding and unleashing inescapable clouds of gas that melted the skin, flesh, and eyes off of everyone it consumed. The first to get caught in it was a little boy and his twin brother, who ran from the horde hand-in-hand. Their tormented screams as their flesh melted like sludge off their bones were drowned out by the millions of others who shared the same fate just seconds later.
(After we all leave this world, those that come next will never have to know the burdens we bore...)
For those hiding in the church of Dakar, the tremors quickly evolved into an unimaginably violent shaking. The screams of fleeing people grew from distant background noise to a deafening cacophony just outside their church door. Knowing death was coming, the people in the church cried out in fear, their faces soaked with tears. Looking to his left, the pastor saw a woman screaming in terror for what was to come as she tore out locks of her own hair with her bare hands. To high right, he saw a teenage boy sitting in the fetal position against the church, rocking back and forth as he gnashed his teeth and stared ten thousand yards away without even blinking.
The pastor closed his eyes and clasped his hands, thinking only of his love of god, of his fellow man, and of the live he had lived until that very moment. In an instant, the astral veils of one of the skeletons brushed over the church, completely immolating it. The flames caused the windows to burst, spewing hot shards of melting glass onto the people inside. The fiery roof collapsed inward, crushing most of those inside. Those that were left to witness the hellish horror were crushed either completely or partially beneath the steps of the colossal skeletons.
Only a single, little girl survived the destruction of the church. She was pinned beneath the body of her dead father, who shielded her from a falling support beam. The girl had barely any strength left. She couldn’t stand or even sit up. All she could do was move her head left and right. Her final view of the world she lived a few short years in were of the winged shikome soaring high in the sky and of the ireful eclipse watching her from above.
The final things she heard were the agonized, dying screams of people all around her, of the deafening crunch and rumble of buildings being stepped on and reduced to rubble, of flames consuming the trees and homes that made up her neighborhood.
Finally, one more skeleton came to stomp upon the remains of the church. Its skeletal foot lifted high in the air, right above the little girl. Her face twisted and contorted in fear. She wished desperately that she was anywhere other than that church. Her eyes widened and her pupils shrank as the skeletal foot came down upon her, crushing her entire body flat beneath it. All those people were alive just minutes ago. All of them had hopes, dreams, and loved ones to cling to. No matter what problems they had in their lives, no matter how unbearable their circumstances might’ve seemed before, all they wanted was to cling to life in their final moments.
The people of Africa shared the fate of the rest of the world. They died violently, hopelessly, horrified out of their minds. They died without knowing why they were being killed, without understanding what they even did to deserve such hellish deaths. All it took was one man’s broken faith in humanity to foster peace. It was the wish of a single person that brought such doom upon the world. Osamu Ashikaga was a name they’d remember in their final moments, for he was the man responsible for destroying the world.
Osamu’s wish to end the world was unfolding perfectly. Humanity had already passed the point of no return. Every race, every nation, and every culture would be wiped away, all of them victims of the Third Great Holy War and Osamu’s desire for peace.
Within the ashes of human civilization lied the seeds for humanity’s second chance, for Amaterasu’s and Izanami’s reconciliation, and for the world to someday flourish anew, its inhabitants shackled by Osamu’s vow to abstain from war.
(Izanami…what you said to me that night when you saved my life was true. You were right. I’ve finally found beauty in this world.)