The first thing his talent tree had told him was that magic existed, and he could learn it.

|| Spellforged Body - Iron - 0% - Residual mana bolsters your vitality, allowing the mind to fuel the body. Each spell you cast or ability you fuel with Mana increases your regeneration by 12% for 5 minutes. Stacks up to five times. ||

While what the ability implied excited him, he passed on actually taking it. It was interesting, but useless until he actually learned some magic - something he was immediately determined to do.

|| Grim Eyes - Bronze - 0% - Your brush with mortality has attuned you to the energy of life and death, allowing you to sense a foe’s closeness to death.||

The second ability seemed to be mainly for utility, and he felt comfortable ignoring it until his situation was less dire. If there was anything good to say about it, it was that it seemed to be a rank higher than the other options. The third though…

|| Desperation - Iron - 0% - Refuse death. No matter how tempting surrender becomes, refuse defeat. When your health falls below half gain an additional 12% strength for five minutes. ||

Bayler had selected it without hesitation. If you thought about the highest level of competition, wins were often eked out by a hair, a fraction of a second, but that fraction of a second cost days and years of training to achieve. The difference between top athletes was well below ten percent.

But with a thought, the other nodes blacking out as he spent his single point, Bayler felt that strength surge into his body. It felt like a burning needle was forcing its way into his heart, and from there splintering into thousands of tiny fires that raced down his individual nerves.

The weird thing was, it wasn’t ‘painful’ exactly. Pain made you stupid, confused your senses. This was the feeling of having his body cracked open and made stronger.

Was it strange that it left a crooked, vicious smile on his face?

---

A creature in a red hood wandered through the city, casting handfuls of jet black seeds into the cement sidewalks and asphalt roads. They were no larger than grains of rice, but where they landed they sizzled and smoked, eating their way through the stone-

And as he walked on, the streets broke apart, heaving up as roots burst from below, black trees climbing into the air in moments. Where he walked, the city gave way and a midnight jungle ruled.

In the air above, a runic circle floated, strange interlocking designs written in light providing a solid surface for seven dark-haired women to stand on. They all had the same face, the same delicate features, the same cruel smile.

At the circle’s heart was a scar of light, strobing through shades of red and purple as it vomited out endless black birds, each the size of dogs, flying down with claws outstretched; wherever they descended, screams rang out as another life was ended.

In these first hours of the new world, people were panicked, hiding and running, letting the fear think for them. They were behaving like prey, and the hunters were here.

---

Bayler Shrike entered the hallway clutching his IV stand like a spear, ready to bash and poke at whatever horrors awaited. He put his foot directly into a wet, pulpy smear of blood, and cursed in silence, primal revulsion nearly making him double over as he desperately tried to scrape the mess off.

A body lay against the far wall, half-consumed. Bayler put effort into seeing as little of it as possible. The hallway was wide open, without cover, lit by stark hospital lights. It made the skin on the back of his neck prickle to be so exposed with a monster wandering around.

He couldn’t pretend to have a clue what to do, or what he was up against, he could only be sure that he needed a better weapon than an ungainly, blunt metal pole, better clothes than a hospital gown, and to get away from whatever monster was prowling the hospital. All around him, doors had been battered down. Glancing through the wreckage, he saw blood on the sheets within, pooling under the bed.

It seemed he really had been spared when the rest were culled. But there had to be someone alive out there.

He reached the metal doors of the elevator and hammered the button, glad to see it still lit up. It almost felt like things would be that easy. And then the ding of the elevator arriving rang through the silent, still air.

“Fuck.”

The creature came bursting around the hallway’s corner in a blur of black fur-- a six legged panther, long, blade-tipped arms like a praying mantis’ claws stretching from its shoulders and slashing the ground to give it traction as it turned. He could hear the plastic tile being torn apart, sliced through by those claws like hot butter.

“Fuck!”

Abandoning the slowly opening elevator, Bayler threw open the stairwell doors and ran for it, shooting over the steps, leaping four or five at a time. A corpse in a hospital gown all but flying up the stairway, wild hair trailing behind him.

And barely a second behind, already closing the distance, the unholy hellcat, tearing down the door with a crash that echoed up and down the turns of the concrete stairwell. It let loose a hideous, bloody growl as it came bounding after him.

The moment he saw it move - a body made of pure, lithe muscle in lightning-fast motion - Bayler knew he couldn’t outrun it. Even on the stairs, where the constant turns gave him an advantage, he was going to be run down.

So it was time to do something stupid. Swinging up onto the edge of the balustrade railings, Bayler took a second to look down, regretted it, and jumped. He felt his arm nearly rip out of his socket as he caught hold of the railing on the floor below, his own full weight tearing through the muscles and bones. Letting out all his breath in a horrible, groaning exclamation, he hauled himself up.

Above, the beast was considering. He’d only opened a little distance, but he might slip away if it went the long route.

“Do it, you stupid cat.” Bayler grinned as he stared the cat down, watching it eye him, hoping it would make the dumb, dumb choice. With a sudden decisiveness, it grabbed hold of the railings with its paws, bending them down. Its hindlegs tensed.

“Do iiiit.” And the beast lunged for him. It was like a black bolt of lightning, and Bayler had no time to judge, only move on blind reflex as he stabbed out with the IV stand and struck home into its chest. The metal groaned, bent, his foot skidded against the cement flooring but he held on, and all that force went the other way too, pushing the giant cat back as its scythe-arm whipped out and barely missed Bayler’s cheek.

And then the momentum of the jump was gone, and the creature went tumbling down, down, down-- its enormous claws ripping at the railings in the minute before it fell out of sight. Bayler rushed forward in time to see it rebound off a lower level, flailing like a ragdoll.

A smile spread across his face as he heard it crunch against the ground, red blood spilling out slowly from the mangled mess of black fur.

---

Reaching the top of the stairs, Bayler pushed the door open and stepped out into the night. A stinging, cold rain battered against the hospital rooftop, coming pouring out of a night sky full of strange clouds, a swirling maelstrom colored the green of the sea before a storm.

When he looked below, dark water covered half the streets, washing away cars as it swept between the buildings.

The world as he’d known it really was over. He leaned over, his hands on his knees, settling down on the edge of the rooftop. It was slowly sinking in that he’d slept through the end of everything. The last years of the Earth had simply skipped over him. Bayler wasn’t sure how to feel about that-- it was so big it left him vaguely numb, unable to comprehend just how afraid or sad he should be, in the wake of this much tragedy.

Instead, he simply watched the skies. Shimmering lines of light were beginning to trace themselves through the darkness, dividing the hazy, spiralling clouds into a neat grid.

As another window buzzed into existence in front of him and was swatted away, the light began to fall, cascading down in half-transparent veils. The world was being segmented up. As he watched, the lower edge crashed into the highest skyscrapers, and the buildings were split open, dust and debris roaring down as the the light cut right through.

With growing horror, Bayler looked straight up and saw a thread of light descending towards him like a guillotine. He rushed back into the stairwell, leaping more than running down, but it was too late. Above, the ceiling rained dust as it was cut into. Slow but steady the light came raining down, the lower edge of a translucent barrier that rippled with dim, oily colors.

Tenth floor. Ninth. The lower he could get, the less chance he’d be buried alive. Eighth. His body was still corpse-like, but he moved like a sprinter, fueled by sheer adrenaline and will. The railings blurred beside him, dust clinging to his sweating face as chunks of cement began to waterfall down from above, clanking and bouncing down the shaft between stairs.

Seventh. He had made it down to the seventh floor when the world lurched underfoot, and darkness came rushing down from above in an avalanche of crashing, echoing stone, hitting him with a force that drove the wind from his gut and the lights from his eyes.