The arrival of the twin-tailed ball of dust shalt signal the end of the crust.

Some will fight, some will reason, some will find hope in religion.

The bane of worlds shall be unbound.

Only in death shall respite be found.

In the flames—

“Flames…?” Lukas Aguilar hummed. His fingers flew across the keyboard as he scoured the online thesaurus. “Flames” and “fire” were a little too generic, with the whole Pit of Hell theme in Christianity. What he needed was something more uncommon. Something archaic.

Banefire?

That felt better.

Nodding to himself, he began typing again.

In the banefire of—

Lukas paused. Rubbing the tip of his nose, he pushed his chair away from the computer screen. Even from a distance, the Word document gazed back at him, the poetic prose making him feel stupider with every passing second.

Something was missing. Something…something…

“This sucks!” he groaned, raking his fingers through his hair. “What the hell am I doing?”

It was the third night in a row he’d stayed up late working on this nonsense. With less than a month left until the end of the semester, he should’ve been preparing for his finals, not writing shitty poetry. Yet here he was.

How can anyone take this crap seriously?

Lukas’s current task was to edit an article about an ancient Akkadian prophecy for a sensational news site. Edit being the keyword. Somewhere along the way, Emma had him not only research the whole thing but also write it down and rework the translated prophecy so that it rhymed.

As if translating the gibberish into readable English wasn’t Herculean enough of a task.

Ding!

Frowning, Lukas grabbed his phone. It was a text from Emma.

Speak of the devil, and she would text you like a jilted lover. Or so the saying went.

[ Where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to reach you for the last hour. ]

With everything going on, Emma’s constant phone calls were exactly the sort of distraction he didn’t need. One would think that after fifteen missed calls, she’d finally get the memo. Instead, she, in a strictly Emma-like fashion, wouldn’t rest until she got what she wanted.

The screen blinked again.

[ I need the article before noon, tomorrow. Coming over. ]

What the—

Lukas speed dialed her number. Emma picked it up on the first ring.

“So,” came a rich, feminine voice, laden with condescension, “your phone does work after all.”

“I was supposed to get until the end of the week for this, Emma,” he flatly replied, pushing himself off of the chair. From the sound of it, she was walking. Furiously. Maybe even climbing the stairs. He really hoped she was just joking about coming over. Hurricane Emma distracting him over the phone was one thing, but being in the same room as him?

He’d never be able to get any work done.

“What can I say? Things change. I fired the other guy, and we need this by tommorow evening. You’re all I’ve got.”

“Listen, Emma, you don’t need to—”

Knock! Knock!

“Open the door,” she said.

Lukas disconnected the call and hurled the phone at his bed. Deciding to take his sweet time, he walked over to his refrigerator and grabbed an apple first. Red Delicious, his favorite. He then went over to his laptop and saved the document. Twice. Ignoring the increasingly frantic knocks, he took a bite out of the fruit and stared patiently at his screen. Only minutes later did he finally walk to the door and crack it ajar.

He was greeted with a strained smile and a glare that could melt steel.

“Hey, Emma,” he offered, opening the door all the way.

Emma took a few calming breaths, though her fingers were still twitching. “I was wondering if you were going to let me in at all.”

Lukas shrugged. “A part of me hoped you’d get tired of knocking. Turn around and go home. Maybe let me get a good night’s sleep for once.”

She wrinkled her nose. “You need it. You look like a hundred miles of bad road.”

Lukas glanced toward the mirror in the corner. As he had pretty much confined himself to his room, his skin was pale and dark circles hung heavy beneath his brown eyes from one too many late nights working his ass off for a conspiracy website. It was hardly respectable work by any means, but his bills wouldn’t pay themselves.

“Still, that’s not enough to chase me away,” she exclaimed. “I still want the manuscript.”

He groaned and trudged back toward his desk, the half-eaten apple still in his hand. He’d known Emma ever since he began working for the website where she worked as an assistant manager. They’d recently begun seeing each other outside of the workplace, though both of them agreed not to label it.

Of course, that hadn’t stopped her from being a complete ass when it came to managing people.

“But I’m serious, Luke,” Emma said, stepping beside him. “You look like a radish.”

She wasn’t trying to piss him off. It was Emma-speak for I have so much regard for you that I went out of my way to create this insult so we could have a mildly adversarial but fun conversation. See how much I care?

“And you’re a massive pain in my ass.” Lukas sighed. “Come on in.” He held the door open as she stepped inside. She threw her handbag on the couch and crossed her legs, leaning against the fridge.

“So, what gives?” he asked. “Why is this article being tossed onto my shoulders?”

Emma sighed. “Chris quit last minute—”

“I thought you said you fired him.”

“—and you’re the only guy in like a thousand miles who’s a genius when it comes to mythology. How you manage that while pursuing a law degree, I’ll never understand. Seriously, look around you!” she exclaimed. “This room feels more like an anthropology museum than a college student’s apartment.”

“It’s not that bad,” he weakly retorted, wincing as he followed her gaze. One of the perils of growing up with his dotty grandfather was not batting an eye at seeing all sorts of worldly relics lying around the home. The man had been a collector of bizarre objects, most of which Lukas had taken possession of post his demise—an opal necklace from India, a talisman from the Native Americans, an actual human skull from Louisiana, and more. The wall of mahogany bookshelves contained over two hundred limited edition books, from modern law to mysticism. Color of Law and Hutchinson’s Case Histories stood next to Kybalion and Zohar.

His favorite item, however, was the grainy polaroid photo hanging above his desk. It was a picture of him and his grandfather, taken after they’d visited a local museum when he was a kid. The caption underneath was simple, and something the old man used to parrot from time to time.

“THE KEY TO OUR FUTURE IS HIDDEN IN OUR PAST.”

“Lukas?”

“…Sorry, just lost in thought.” He softly sighed. Memories of his grandfather made him oddly conscious of the familiar presence on his chest. It was a pendant—tendrils of blended gold and copper converged around a lapis lazuli orb in the center, ending in a blunt tip at the bottom. It was a most curious thing to wear as a pendant, but it had been a gift from the old man for his thirteenth birthday.

His fingers slid up and touched the pendant. It felt cold as always.

“Eccentricity comes with the territory, I suppose.” Lukas grinned, turning toward his…friend. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten. I have yet to hear one good reason for this rush job. I’ve got exams, you know.”

Emma smirked. He liked her smirk. It did interesting things to her lips. Letting her purse slide off of her arm, she sauntered toward him. “Perhaps a favor?” she offered. “Something shared between two people who are attracted to one another?”

“Oh? Like what?”

She plopped down onto his bed and propped her chin in her hand, studying him through long lashes. Her skirt rode up to her knee, revealing the soft, pale skin hidden underneath. Her other hand played with an errant lock of hair, twirling it around a finger.

Lukas took another bite out of his apple.

“Oh, come on!” she complained. “Most men would be putty by now.”

She wasn’t wrong. Emma was someone who used her charm relentlessly to get things done her way.

“I guess I’m just pure of heart and mind.” He half shrugged, ignoring her loud scoff. “Now if you’re quite finished, I’ve got some exams to prepare for. Those cases aren’t gonna read themselves.”

Emma stared at him in frustration for a moment—

Before tilting her head back and laughing. It was a good laugh, rich and refined.

Emma was a known quantity. She was attractive, bright, and appealing. Her motivations were simple, and she was honest in pursuing them. She spent her free nights attending Instagrammable parties with her friends downtown. He hadn’t been joking when he’d called her a hurricane.

“Tell you what, Luke,” she said. “You get this done for me, and I’ll take you to a new Japanese place I found. The teriyaki there is to die for.”

“And you get me a raise. A good one.”

Her eyes glittered with cheerfully malicious ambition. “Sure. If you take over Chris’s work for the rest of the month.”

“Nope.”

“Just this month!” she pouted. “I’ll get you your raise and even some paid time off during your semester exams. No work then, I promise.”

“No,” he stubbornly repeated.

“I have two tickets for Saturday night. Maybe we can share a joint afterward?”

“No—” He paused. “Wait, what? Yes, but that’s—”

“Super!” Emma kissed him on the cheek, dangerously close to his lips. “It’s a date. Now get this article done and email me by noon tommorow. See you on Saturday.”

With that, she grabbed her purse and walked out the door, leaving him staring in her wake.

Sighing, Lukas closed his laptop screen. It was late, and his bed was looking far too inviting for him to do anything but sleep. Life could wait until morning to kick him in the pants.

The floor is shaking.

There is no fire, simply heat and wispy fumes. The earth beneath his feet parts open. Alien images and sensations overwhelm him, along with the presence of heat—so, so much heat—but no light. Only darkness, accompanied by the groans of something titanic, yet…aware. Conscious. It’s like—

Like what?

In a single moment, he sees the ponderous dance of continents clashing against one another to form mountains. He feels everything slowly seep into the deepness of the crust, feels the waves rise and fall and heavenly bodies move and twist and smash into each other while blades of grass—

Grass?

He sees gold. Minerals. Lava. A potted plant. Ants marching.

What is—what is happening? What is all this?

Images overwhelm him like the unstoppable force of a raging river. They come and go, flickering across his eyes. There is light, darkness, and brown, dewy soil. He sees lightning in a sky of stars, with the moon utterly black and opening a hole into the molten stone atop the—

Lukas’s eyes snapped open.

His heart pounded within his ribcage. His eyes were teary, and gooseflesh had erupted all over his body. What a weird dream, he told himself, trying to calm himself down.

It didn’t help.

His body felt cold and clammy, and he was shaking.

The glass of water on his table fell to the floor and shattered.

“…”

And then he realized. It wasn’t him who was shaking. It was the bed. And the floor. And the room. And every other freaking thing in it. As if on cue, the tremors intensified.

That got him moving.

Jumping off the bed, Lukas quickly tossed on a shirt and grabbed his shoes. He almost fell over as the large grandfather clock came off the wall and broke into pieces right in front of him.

A fucking earthquake?! Now—this is just—

Everything around him began to tremble. Dust and debris fell to the floor in solid clumps as the tremors became unbearably violent. What was going on? There hadn’t been any warnings of earthquakes.

Just as he dove underneath his desk, his laptop slipped to the ground. Lukas reached for it, but a broken piece of plaster from the ceiling fell right onto it, breaking the screen apart from the bottom half. He howled at the loss of his precious data, about to reach for the broken pieces in hopes of getting at least the hard drive out, when—

Cracks appeared along the walls, and shelves crashed to the floor, followed by dozens of Thumps! This—this couldn’t be happening. This had to be some dream. It had to be.

The ground beneath his feet roared to life like an enraged animal. Any more, and what remained of his room would fall upon him. He wasn’t safe. He wasn’t safe. He wasn’t—

Lukas lost it and bolted for the door—

And all he knew was darkness.