Before the world ended, Magnus Devlin was already a man obsessed with control. As the regional manager of a shipping company, he thrived in an environment built on precision. Spreadsheets, schedules, supply chains—these were the languages Magnus spoke fluently. He didn’t just meet quotas; he exceeded them. To his superiors, he was indispensable. To his subordinates, he was a tyrant.

Magnus believed in rules. Rules kept the world moving. Rules separated the strong from the weak, the capable from the incompetent. But what Magnus despised most wasn’t weakness—it was chaos. Chaos undermined order. Chaos was inefficiency, waste, failure.

And in the weeks before the collapse, chaos was everywhere.

The first signs were subtle. A delayed shipment here, a missed deadline there. Then came the news: supply lines were breaking. Crops were failing. Riots were breaking out in distant cities. Magnus watched it all unfold from his corner office, his jaw tightening as he scrolled through reports of missed deliveries and panicked cancellations.

When the shelves at the grocery stores emptied, Magnus didn’t panic. He had already prepared. He’d stocked his basement with enough canned food, bottled water, and emergency supplies to last a year. He didn’t do it out of fear—he did it because he knew the system couldn’t hold.

But what Magnus hadn’t prepared for was people.

It started with his neighbors. They came to his door, desperate, pleading for food, for water, for help. Magnus turned them away.

“I’m not running a charity,” he told one tearful mother clutching her young daughter.

When the power went out, Magnus stayed in his house, rationing his supplies and waiting for the chaos to burn itself out. He listened to the screams in the streets, the shattering of glass, the roar of fires as they consumed homes.

Then the looters came.

They broke into the house next door first. Magnus heard the crash of wood splintering, the muffled shouts, the sobs. He sat in the dark, gripping the baseball bat he’d kept by his bedside for years.

When the looters came to his house, Magnus didn’t hesitate. He struck the first man in the head as he stepped through the broken window, his skull cracking like brittle ice. The second man lunged at him with a knife, but Magnus sidestepped, swinging the bat into his ribs with enough force to shatter bone.

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The third man ran.

Magnus stood in the wreckage of his living room, the bat slick with blood, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He looked down at the bodies at his feet and felt... nothing.

They’d brought chaos into his home. He had removed it.

The weeks that followed hardened Magnus into something else. He left his house, taking what he could carry, and ventured into the wasteland that had once been a city. He avoided crowds, avoided settlements. People meant unpredictability. People meant chaos.

But Magnus soon realized he couldn’t avoid people forever. The world had changed, and survival required adaptation. He needed control—not just over himself, but over others.

The first group he encountered was small—four scavengers holed up in the ruins of an office building. Magnus approached cautiously, his baseball bat slung over his shoulder, his eyes sharp and calculating.

They were suspicious at first, but Magnus offered them something they couldn’t refuse: leadership.

“You’re wasting your time here,” he told them, his voice calm but commanding. “This place is picked clean. If you want to survive, you need a plan. You need someone who can see the bigger picture.”

They hesitated, but Magnus was patient. He watched, waited, and when a group of raiders stumbled upon the scavengers a few days later, Magnus seized the opportunity.

He took charge, barking orders with the authority of a general. He led the scavengers into an ambush, outmaneuvering the raiders and leaving their bodies in the dirt. By the time the fight was over, Magnus was no longer a stranger—he was their leader.

Over time, Magnus’s group grew. He imposed structure where there had been none, assigning roles, rationing supplies, and enforcing discipline with an iron hand. Those who followed him were rewarded. Those who disobeyed were punished.

Magnus didn’t tolerate dissent. He believed in rules, and rules meant consequences. When a man was caught stealing food, Magnus made an example of him. He gathered the group and branded the thief with a glowing piece of iron, pressing the crude symbol of an eye into his flesh.

“This is what happens when chaos takes hold,” Magnus said, his voice steady as the man screamed. “We cannot allow it to spread.”

The branding became a ritual. Every member of the group bore the mark of the eye, a reminder that Magnus was always watching.

Magnus’s philosophy evolved into doctrine. Chaos, he believed, was a disease. It had destroyed the old world, and it would destroy the new one unless it was eradicated. Order was the cure. Discipline was salvation.

He began calling himself the Watcher, a symbol of vigilance and control. His iron mask, forged from scavenged metal, became his face. To his followers, Magnus was more than a man—he was a force of nature, a savior in a world drowning in chaos.

To those who opposed him, he was a tyrant.

Years later, as Magnus stood atop the ruins of another fallen settlement, he looked out over his growing empire and felt nothing but satisfaction.

Order had been restored.

And under the eye, chaos would never reign again.