Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Monday, October 7th, 2019. 18:45.

On an ordinary day, the firmament should be lazily spinning, hiding the sun to bring another night. Though it would still take half an hour for the sun to set over Eastern America, massive dark clouds of smoke rose from the burning world all around the small island of civilization saved by Verachiel.

Her tears eventually ended. Sara felt like she had just woken up from a dream. Yet the magnificent and oversized pinion was firmly held in her hand, proof that whatever happened, it was real. Proof she met a dying Seraph at the world's end. The golden blood on her also vanished along with Verachiel's corpse. Though her body ached, she felt nothing different from before. The memory of her ordeal imbibing the gem quickly faded to the background as she gazed upon the destruction of her world. With a heavy heart and dry eyes, she stood on the concrete roof.

Sara cast her gaze upon the ruined mortal world around her, burning the sight of a dead civilization to her memory like some sort of self-flagellation. To the northwest, downtown Atlanta looked like a war zone. The girl's nostrils burned with the smoke and the glare of angry fires shone against the few buildings still standing in downtown Atlanta, illuminating the dark clouds from below and making everything look hazy. Almost half the buildings were hit by the cosmic petards and the streets were covered in debris. On the freeways, the conga line of crashed and piled vehicles was endless. A few headlights still worked, giving the ghastly scene an eerie glow under the dark backdrop of the giant ominous smoke clouds.

Every breath she took reeked of smoke, burnt hair, charred flesh, and death. Ashes and cinders flew in the wind as clouds of smoke and vapor rose from everywhere to join the gloom canopy above. The haze and lingering smoke made everything feel like a blurred painting. She could hear the car alarms still going and pets lamenting the passing of their keepers, a cacophony that almost drowned the roar of a city on fire. No sirens from firefighters or the police. Street lights and any electrical lights in houses and apartments flickered and went dead. A power outage. Obviously, neither the transmission lines nor the power plants were spared.

Shifting away from the destruction, the girl spent a few moments staring at the feather. Why her? Verachiel spiel about mudererers and televangelists on the other side of the globe sounded fake, even if she assumed the Seraph couldn't lie. She wasn't a model citizen. Her life in the foster care system had its downs and very few ups. She's been beaten, ignored, robbed, and treated as an undesirable tenant most of the time. She spent two years living on the streets, begging and stealing to live. Then she was caught and almost prosecuted as an adult. A stroke of luck put her back on track. She didn't feel worthy.

"Chosen one. Take the ring to Mount Doom," she scornfully joked.

Sara licked her lips and tasted the soot. Darkness engulfed everything, and soon she wouldn't see an inch in front of her nose. That triggered the decision to rush down the fire stairs and back to her bedroom. She shut the window behind her, to keep more ashes from entering. Back to a familiar scenery, her stupefied mind started to work again, raising mundane worries to the fore of her thoughts. What of her foster parents? She wasn't sure the scream she heard along with her own came from them, the pain of having her whole body burnt numbed her. The house smelled like badly-overcooked barbecue.

She looked at her mother's picture. The only thing she had to remind her of happier times she had no memory of, to begin with. She entered the foster care circuit still a baby and she could only remember hopping from one home to the next. It was a mixed bag with more bad experiences than good ones. The photo was a gift from one of her caseworkers, something they kept for her from her mother's meager possessions. She placed the feather next to it, then out of fear it would vanish, produced a heavy block of metal from the drawer. She placed it over the quill to hold it in place.

She checked her phone. No signal. Turning on the LED lantern, she went to explore the apartment. Sara felt goosebumps as she imagined herself in a scary movie. She reached the master bedroom door and pushed it open just a bit. The air inside was damp and hot, not in small part a fault of the now-dead AC. She gagged from the strong stench of burnt flesh.

"Mom? Dad? Are you okay?" She called. No response.

Dreading what she would find inside, she pushed the door open. Moving the cellphone lantern around, she illuminated her foster parents' burnt naked bodies piled on one another, their faces were frozen in a rictus of pain. Sara screeched and dropped the phone. The device landed screen-side up and decided to turn off the lights on its own, plunging the room into utter darkness.

The girl bit her lips, almost drawing blood. Sara tried to control her ragged breathing and keep from vomiting. She took a moment to recompose herself, then remembered the phone. Standing precariously on weak legs, she braced against the door frame, fearing she would never get back up again if she fell. Sara slid down and started to pat the floor in search of her smartphone. Not so smart right now, she bitterly remarked to herself. Her fingers touched the slick glass display and she retrieved the device. Sara struggled to climb back on her feet and turned the screen on, typing the unlock code right away. She used only the glow from the display.

The hand holding the device shook, her grip tightening out of fear of dropping it again. She shed light on the dead bodies of her foster parents again, only to regret doing so. Her vision spun, black dots appearing everywhere. Despite the sauna-like heat in the room, she had cold extremities and almost fainted. She tried to avoid looking at those faces locked in the pain of their final moments.

Sara remembered what Verachiel asked her. To interact with the dead. Help them finish their business. At least that was her interpretation. She frowned. She certainly wouldn't help these two finish THAT kind of business. But she didn't see anything out of the ordinary, the dead people notwithstanding. Summoning courage out of somewhere, she approached slowly and shook her foster mother's arm. It was still warm but the skin was very dry. She felt her wrist, searching for a pulse. Nothing. She shrieked again, dropping the arm and moving away as she confirmed they were dead.

"Hey, do you have any unfinished business? Something attaching you to the land of the living?" She asked the corpses in a frightened whisper.

A strange androgynous voice rang in her head.

She screamed loudly and dropped her phone again. This time, it tumbled under the bed. She dropped to her knees, yelped from the pain, then stopped herself moments before she hit her forehead on the dead woman's arm.

Sara feared for her sanity, now that she was hearing things. After fetching her phone and deciding to keep it dark, she waited, praying for her life. Nothing happened and she felt extremely stupid and embarrassed. Then the sadness hit her. These were some of the few decent foster parents she had, the best probably, and they were just gone. She would prefer to be haunted by their ghosts instead of being in the dark with their silent corpses.

Wasn't the gem supposed to help? After a wave of doubt, she thought if she was goaded into consuming the artifact. No. Verachiel was a Seraph.

Or so they claimed. It could be an alien messing with her perceptions.

Was she tricked? Was it a parasite? The doubt consumed her. Her body shivered as she considered the possibility.

In the dark, damp, and hot room, with the company of two dead people and one mysterious voice, Sara decided she could have her crisis of faith somewhere else.

*

*

Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Monday, October 7th, 2019. 20:17.

She didn't leave her room.

Sitting on her bed, Sara spent some time in the dark trying not to think about what she saw or heard in the master bedroom. What she witnessed. But now she had to move. Thirsty, she slowly made her way to the kitchen in search of some water, guided only by her phone's light. Sara noticed she had lost track of time.

Sara frowned. The fridge was dead, just like everything else. Without electricity, all the food would go bad in just a day or so. Shaking her head, she took the milk carton and opened it, pumping the cardboard sides to check the smell. Ever since she drank spoiled milk a few years ago, she made a point of checking every time. Satisfied, she poured herself a glass of cold milk and added a dash of bee honey. Sara still had her sweet tooth.

The familiar taste of honeyed milk calmed her frayed nerves. With clarity, her mind accepted her reality. The world has ended. Heavens and Hell crashed onto one another and then down on Earth. Her foster parents were dead. At least they died having fun, a dark, cynical corner of her mind quipped.

She gasped as a thought came to her. Somehow she was certain Verachiel was the last Celestial alive. Was she the last human alive? But she hadn't... had a boyfriend yet. A caring loving one who could make her forget what that monster did to her. Or even graduated from high school.

No, certainly more people survived.

the genderless voice returned as it replied to her thoughts.

"You're not real," she mumbled.

Sara made a point of ignoring the auditory hallucination. Instead, she focused on her base feelings. She felt peckish! Yeah, that's the hunger talking. Back to the fridge, the waspish brunette helped herself to a heap of cold food from the fridge as she went back to her thoughts.

She thought about going out to find more survivors. Then she remembered The Walking Dead, Mad Max, and other such movies. She wondered how people would behave in such situations. Every man for themselves, she concluded. And that meant finding survivors would be risky. She didn't care about people anyway but she wouldn't mind meeting Rick Grimes. Sara's cheeks burned.

Flustered, afraid, and ashamed, Sara took a chef's knife from the drawer. Her father liked to cook and he had this prized European steel knife. It even had its own leather sheath and everything. She thought about checking its sharpness but figured it would be unwise to play with sharp knives in the dark. She clipped the sheath to her sweatpants and found a sense of safety with it. Maybe she should get a gun. Sara dismissed the thought. Guns were dangerous and she had no training with them. So were knives but at least she knew the basics. She had used one on occasion, to get away from some groping hobos.

Looking at the empty food containers and milk carton, she was amazed that she still felt a little peckish. The food in the fridge would go bad anyway so she started to take everything out.

"Why am I eating it cold?" She asked to nobody in particular.

She turned the gas stove on. Thankfully, the vintage appliance still worked. She felt stupid again for not trying it. With the fire, she didn't need to waste her phone battery to light up the room. She put some food in a pan and heated it.

Sara ate and ate, never feeling full. The fridge food was gone when she felt she had enough. Dazed, she didn't question it and kept shoveling stuff down her pie hole. Her stomach didn't bulge either.

*

*

Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Monday, October 7th, 2019. 21:55.

Only after eating enough for ten meals did she feel sated. Sara took a moment to consider her choices. Outside, everything sounded the same, cars and dogs apparently never running out of power or getting hoarse throats. She opened the window, it was pitch dark outside. She couldn't see the street two floors below. Soot and smoke blocked the view. She never put much thought into how the world would look after the apocalypse, but she figured it wouldn't be much different from that.

Sara opened the broom closet and fetched a flashlight from her father's toolbox. She turned it on and the bright light stung her eyes. "Stupid," she cursed. She felt she was not in her brightest state of mind. But again, the world was ending outside. And she was oddly okay with that. Something was amiss inside her head but it also made her not care. The girl was sure she would fail at basic addition, so befuddled was her mind.

Next, she checked the circuit breakers but no flipping of switches brought power back on. Giving up on electricity, she went back to her foster parents' room and set the lantern on the floor, the light reflecting off the roof and giving her full sight of the scene. They hadn't moved an inch.

The odds of giving them a proper burial was close to zero. She would need to drag them down the stairs now that the elevators were dead. The apartment complex had no backyard, everything was either cement or asphalt. Maybe she could bury them in the backyard of one of many suburban houses filling the space between Jonesboro Rd and the interstate. Sara took the duvet from the armchair and unfolded it, covering the dead couple. 'They died making love to one another,' she comforted herself. She could think of worse ways to go.

The girl put a hand over her chest. "Thank you for everything. I hope you don't mind if I help myself to your things. I promise I'll take good care of them."

They didn't have close relatives, and no children she knew of. Sara thought about searching the room for money but held back. Not only money would probably be worthless now, but she also felt bad for taking the knife already. Unless things weren't as grim as she thought, money would be nothing but useless.

The girl went back to her room. She set her new knife on the nightstand next to the feather and adjusted the pillows to support her back. She sat against the headboard and pulled the blanket over her legs. The house was getting eerily cold. That or she was sick.

She would eventually doze off and wake late in the morning.

*

*

Sara's Bedroom, Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Tuesday, October 8th, 2019. 09:23.

Yesterday, the world ended at rush hour. Today, roughly fifteen hours later, a girl overslept quietly in her bed. On a school day, Sara usually woke up before six in the morning, to get ready for the school bus. Today, she was worn, battered, stressed, and tired. Her brain refused to let consciousness settle back in, clamoring for more time.

She woke up anyway, startled. She looked outside and found only faint diffuse light coming from the sky. It was almost as dark as a moonlit night. In a drowsy panic, Sara took her phone and checked the time. She looked out her window and saw only a dark foreboding overcast sky. Pitch-black clouds covered everything from one side to another. She smelled wood smoke and burned tires. Motes of ash floated in the soft breeze and everything seemed to be in grayscale. Tinnitus rang in her ears, so quiet everything was. Without motor vehicles and electrical appliances, not even birds flying in the sky, the city was 'dead' silent. She decided that 'dead' was quite the proper term for how the world was.

As she reminisced what happened, she sighed with the dread realization that yesterday wasn't a dream. What she witnessed at rush hour couldn't be forgotten. Those images, those feelings, they were etched on her very soul like permanent scars. She stretched and felt her body caked in dried sweat and tears. She also had a funky smell of smoke and... she couldn't identify the acrid scent but it was bad.

Armed with a towel and the usual toiletries, Sara braved a cold shower and felt she was still stupid. And definitely sick. The girl felt the mother of all heartburns climb up her throat, along with warm saliva. Her stomach churned and her eyes stung and watered.

Apparently, all the food she ate decided to get out the fastest way, back from whence it came. Naked, she knelt under the showerhead and heaved. She felt her stomach gurgle, then something rush up to her throat and jump out of her mouth. The taste made her body decide to hurry up and expel whatever that was. With watering eyes, she saw an impossible amount of black goop splatter on the floor tiles with each round of retching and heaving. She felt nausea, heartburn, and her throat and nostrils burned. Each dollop of the black stuff made her want to puke more.

The drain clogged and the water started to mix with the black stuff. An iridescent film formed on the water surface and she feared it would flood and drown her. She felt under the goop for the drain and removed the cover, allowing gravity to pull the stuff and the water down the pipes with a horrendous sucking sound.

She had no strength to stand up. Dizzy, dazed, and disoriented, she shivered under the cold water until her body decided enough was enough. Sara scrubbed her body one last time and crawled out of the shower, her dignity gone with the black stuff she vomited.

*

*

Kitchen, Lakeview Apartments, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Tuesday, October 8th, 2019. 09:23.

Clad in her bathrobe, shivering in front of the gas stove trying to dry her damp hair, she tried to get warm. The knife was within reach, on the kitchen countertop. It had followed her to the bathroom too. Before she could warm-up, her stomach growled.

"Fuck, no," she replied to her stomach, wishing it would stay quiet.

Forget peckish, this time she was starving. And nauseated. What was that black stuff? She didn't want to find out. To Sara, that never happened and nobody should talk about that again under the threat of stabbing.

Regardless, her body demanded food. Using the (true) excuse that the food in the pantry (the fridge was emptied last night) would go bad if she didn't eat it, she made breakfast Two dozen eggs, a pack of bacon, an entire loaf of bread sliced and toasted, and a whole jar of jam. Then she wolfed it down like the world was ending. Sara stared at the plates she cleaned up as if waking up from a dream.

She touched her stomach and didn't find the bulge she expected. Where did all that food go? And why did she feel like she could go for more? Would the thing nobody should talk about happening again? Was there anyone to judge her for overeating? To fat-shame her? Her stomach said no and Sara went for seconds. Long story short, she wouldn't need to worry about food in the apartment going bad. She ate it all. The girl covered her mouth as she let out a soft lady burp. Her seemingly endless hunger had finally been temporarily quelled.

As she slouched on the kitchen chair and struggled to sort her memories and feelings from last night, she recalled the strange disembodied genderless voice. As if waiting for a cue, it came back along iwth a spike of migraine.

Sara feared she had gone completely bananas. Also that she could eat some bananas. "What is going on?" She asked out loud.

The image of the RCA Indian flashed in her sight for a moment. "Eek!" Sara almost freaked out.

The voice was cold, impersonal, neither male nor female. It reached both her ears at the same time, making it impossible to pinpoint direction. It felt it was coming from within. Though it was different from the Seraph, maybe...

"Verachiel?" She wondered. "Is that you?"

Sara covered herself protectively. Nobody was taking anything out of her body.

She remembered her mission. To awaken the big crystal allegedly sleeping deep underneath Lake Stonecrest. "Are you the key to complete Verachiel's mission?"

"What is a System Core?" Sara wondered.

She understood barely nothing. The fairy was wrong in thinking they could overload her more than she already was.

"Run me through that again, please?"

She felt another sharp headache that vanished in a few moments.

"Yes, I did," She felt patronized anyway.

Sara just raised a skeptical eyebrow. The entity didn't need words to understand her mood.

they explained.

"You lost me," she huffed exasperatedly. Something about that statement made her uncomfortable. "Did that make you my relative?"

The voice said without much certainty.

She felt bashful for that portion of her childhood. One of her many foster families was Japanese culture enthusiasts, or otakus as they were called nowadays. And yes, she liked those magical girl animes back in the day.

"Are you..."

The fairy protested as it read her mind.

Sara pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling her vision spin. "So you are halfway between a pet, a symbiote, an assistant, a sidekick, but a notch above all those. Is that right?"

The girl cringed. She was feeling so dumb and overwhelmed! At least the voice seemed to be picking up some hints of emotion. The Celestial Sprite was learning at breakneck speed.

The fairy sounded like it was giving up on its pride as they explained, It admitted in defeat.

"What kind of superpowers? I don't feel any different," Sara skeptically remarked.

"What is a Celestial Sprite? Do you have wings or sprinkle magical dust or something?" She could tell her question irritated the fairy.

She understood almost nothing of it. Sara would have this conversation again later on. But the way the System Core got all that detailed information about popular media was a huge problem. She felt irritated by it. No, actually she was already very irritated by everything, but the fairy became the scapegoat for everything.

"Are you reading my mind? Stop it!" She protested, her voice rising in pitch.

The first sentence from the fairy's retort passed over her perception like water on a duck's back.

"Stop it!" She demanded and cradled her temples in her hands. Then she shouted, "Keep out of my head!"

"I don't care!" She rose up and put a hand on the knife's handle. The gem fairy read her intent.

"Get out of me!" She hollered.

Sara felt her temples about to burst. She took deep breaths as her hands became clammy. She felt like fainting. Had Verachiel tricked her?

She shouted with her mind. A terrible headache assaulted her as ordinary human minds were not meant for telepathic communication.

"Wait, mental?" She latched on that. "Are you in my brain?"

"How are you talking to me then?"

"Damn right," she snorted and wheezed, her muscles twitching from all the adrenaline rushing in her veins. "Stay out of my brain." Anything but the brain, she thought. "So, how am I hearing you?"

It was almost as bad. The fairy was giving her hallucinations. What else… oh, wait a minute. "That black stuff in the bath, was it your doing?"

Never mind that this fairy saw her naked. At least it didn't seem to be a male or to have a gender altogether.

"Mana? Like in the bible?"

She sighed. "Only the ones related to that." Another spike of headache. At least she could tell if the fairy was messing with her mind, unless it was a ploy... ugh.

Sara sensed some kind of sarcasm in the fairy's assessment of the story. "So what is mana, with one N?"

The girl rubbed her temples, "Wait do you mean the whole universe fused?"

She felt like if he explained too much, she would understand nothing. "Gotcha, only our planet got the 'rocks fall, everyone dies' treatment. You were saying, starting from 'which you call Heaven and Hell'..."

"Tesse-what?" She double-took.

Though she was curious, Sara was thoroughly overwhelmed by everything the fairy dropped on her metaphorical lap. She tried to follow but didn't pick much from the fairy's next lesson in metaphysics.

Sara gasped as her mind only kept the end of the statement. Armageddon not only wrecked the whole planet and the infrastructure humanity built but also cooked everyone. She remembered the sensation of being cooked alive. "Why did some of us survive, then?"

"Aos Si?"

"Stop, please. I fear my brain will blow up if you keep talking. That's too much exposition for a single morning."

She covered her ears and shouted, "No! I want you to go silent! Do not talk to me anymore, or mess with my mind!"

the fairy said with a hint of disappointment, then went completely silent.

...

All alone in the building, with tinnitus filling in the silence of the dead world outside, Sara's brain took a few moments to, for the lack of a better term, reboot.

...

The girl recognized her mistake and despaired, "Wait, no! Talk to me! Please!"

She felt ridiculously stupid. She hadn't even asked about the mission Verachiel imparted on her. Obviously one golden crystal was related to the other. What was the key she had to use?

No, fuck that.

Whatever that thing, System, mascot, or, dunno, alien parasite was, it was still INSIDE her no matter how many times she tried to fall into denial. Sara stood up and lowered her head over the kitchen sink as she summoned her will and tried to vomit the thing out. Nothing happened. She put a finger inside her throat and gagged as she tried to heave. She got a minor heartburn but no vomit. She had just eaten a breakfast for a dozen people. Why wasn't she throwing up? People threw up all the time for the most stupid reasons, why... Right, the thing inside her. The parasite or whatever that crystal was. It said it needed the food. Defeated, Sara slumped back on the chair. She held her lowered head with her hands. After a long while, she decided not talking to the thing was worse than accepting it.

"Hey, Fairy? System Core? Are you there? Please, come back."

No answer. She tried, begged, and asked for forgiveness. But the thing, if it ever was one, didn't reply. Sara cackled manically. She was going insane. That's it. Nothing of that was real. The world wasn't ending, angels didn't fall from the sky, and she didn't have a hungry parasite inside her.

She stood up and went back to her room. As usual, she spent a moment gazing at her mother's portrait, ignoring the city in flames outside. Just like the meme dog, she was fine with it. That was just a hallucination.

The feather on her desk was also a hallucination, she decided.