"It only took a few days for the civilizations of the Old World to crumble."

  IS-131 marched through the halls of Damara's facility, a conflicted, shaky determination gracing her features.

  "A rumble that shook the entire world was the only warning for the madness that was soon to befall humanity."

  The string that her Expression had laid as her guide flowed freely ahead, leading her through the various twists and turns that the building had to offer.

  "Out of nowhere, earthquakes, tsunamis, storms, volcanic eruptions, and all other form of unnatural disasters struck worldwide with frequency and scale that had never been seen in recorded history, leaving researchers scrambling to find the cause and solution for the impromptu catastrophe."

  "None succeeded."

  Few bothered to pay her mind as she walked. She had yet to cross any sort of threshold that would draw attention, after all.

  "Within three days, roughly 60% of the human population ─ totaling around eight billion at the time ─ was wiped out, whether swallowed up by sudden fissures, or crushed under the force of flash floods."

  "As the disasters settled in their ferocity, some foolishly assumed that the worst had passed. However, on the fourth day began the second stage of The Rapture, which we now refer to as 'The Vanishing'."

  With each step she took, her chest tightened. Memories continued to claw at her mind, humming like mosquitoes as they buzzed incessantly in the corner of her perception, as much as she tried to keep her eyes on her goal.

  "The Vanishing, as the name would suggest, was an event wherein objects would vanish into thin air. While there were some instances where the object that disappeared would return, either at its original point or somewhere completely different, the large majority of what was swept up has yet to return to this day."

  "Initially, it only affected small, mundane, inanimate objects, such as cutlery, cellphones and things of similar size. But within mere hours of its beginning, it escalated."

  Somehow, with each step she took, the voices only got more grating, if that were even possible. She had half a mind to rip her ears off, as if that would bring her any kind of relief.

  No. All she could do was follow the string.

  Her Expression had yet to lead her astray. She just had to make sure she followed along.

  "The Vanishing began to affect larger items over time, transitioning from cutlery, to cars, to buildings in the span of a few hours. And by the end of the fourth day, it began to affect people."

  "Without any particular rhyme or reason in how it chose its targets, people would vanish as silently and suddenly as the objects before them, swept away as if they were never there to begin with. Naturally, panic rose globally. Law and order crumbled, and lawlessness took center stage ─ survival of the fittest, 'as nature intended'."

  Although, despite what she thought, a set of eyes trailed her, unfooled by the girl's best attempts to act natural in her pursuit.

  "The fifth and sixth days passed without any escalations in what the Vanishings decided to take. Most thought that there wasn't more that they could take. But that proved false once the seventh and final day came."

  "Once the global population was further run down through senseless, pointless bloodshed, thus began the last two stages of The Rapture, referred to as the "Great Shift" and the "Resurrection" respectively."

  Mechanisms silently whirred as the cameras in the facility followed along with her every move. However, preoccupied with going along with the golden string, that sign of misfortune soon to follow went unnoticed.

  "Thought to be the true beginning of the New World, the Great Shift was indicated by a sound that could only be described as static. A blaring screech, loud enough to be heard all over the world, its pitch shifting so erratically and drastically that some mistook it for the anguished cries of a higher being. And as that 'cry' rang out, thus began the Great Shift."

  "A grand escalation of the Vanishing, entire chunks of landmass were swept away. Cities. Countries. Continents. Few were returned to the world in different locations, but it was more than enough to bring about another wave of disaster."

  The string led her to a far end of the facility. Often untouched by anyone aside from the most important members of faculty, and the most curious and foolish of the Sprouts.

  Needless to say, she was the latter.

  She stood before a door, noticeably more fortified than the others within the building. The only point of vulnerability she could see was not only obvious in her line of sight, but pointed out by her Expression.

  A keypad.

  "For the most part, the landmass that managed to return to this world simply switched locations, vastly altering the geography. However, there were instances where large chunks of land would appear in more destructive circumstances. The upper atmosphere, for example."

  "What was once resting safely on the Earth's surface had appeared on the edges of the world's orbit, and began raining down as if trying to return to its rightful place. Meteors the size of entire cities came down, most of them landing in the suddenly more-vacant ocean, yet just as devastating as those that made landfall."

  She the door, for its apparent attempt at keeping what was behind it secure, wasn't much of an obstacle against her particular skill set.

  With a finger raised to the panel, all she needed to do was pay attention to what her Expression told her.

  Hovering over the first button on the keypad, "1", the string took a deep black. She quickly moved onto the next button, and that more appealing shade of gold returned. She pressed the button without question.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Eventually, things settled down, relatively. However, by the end of the week, the birth of the New World was complete, as the landmass had been altered into a single entity. The Pangaea; Suhonloa. Smaller than its namesake, but more than enough to accommodate the minuscule surviving population."

  "Thus was the end of the Great Shift, and the beginning of the Resurrection. An event which plagues us to this day."

  2-6-2-8-4-0.

  After entering those digits, the formidable defense put in front of her gave way, opening up a new hallway, dimmer ─ less sterile, and outwardly unassuming ─ than the rest of the facility.

  Regardless, IS-131 continued on.

  "The death toll in the billions, greatly outweighing the count of the living, the Resurrection was arguably the most influential event due to what it gave rise to: the Amalgamations, often shortened to Amalgams."

  Claw marks decorated the walls. Sparks flew from wires whose insulation had evidently withered against the passage of time. And, as she ventured deeper, she caught the signs of carnage long passed.

  Splatters of blood and piles of splintered bones. A common sight in the New World, and something the Sprouts were more than accustomed to. Nothing she would have to pause for.

  However, the further she went, the more oddities she noticed.

  What could only be thought of as blood ─ almost pitch black in shade ─ ran through the hall's broken crevices, seeping through the ceiling and splattering against the tile.

  Too viscous to be from an event too far in the past.

  Too thick and congealed to be anything natural.

  Regardless, it wasn't what she came here for. Even as it seemed to writhe and slither around, inching in gelatinous chunks in the same direction she was walking, she tried to push it to the side of her attention.

  She had one goal in mind. Anything else could wait until she found what she was looking for.

  "As if attempting to return to the land of the living, the sea of corpses that remained after the previous stages burst with movement, latching onto whatever physical material was in the vicinity of their inexplicably fluid bodies, in order to become something entirely inhuman. Disfigured. Mutilated."

  The corridor stretched longer than it would seem on first glance. Longer than any other hall in the facility.

  The sludge lining the halls only grew more abundant as IS went, slithering more abundantly. Wherever it was going, something about it made her hope it wasn't the same place she was hoping to go.

  That hope was dashed as she noticed a door down the way, less technical than any other in the building. Primitive. More akin to the door of a prison cell.

  That seemed like where the strange substance was being drawn to, wriggling its way through the paper-thin gaps in the entryway. It's source of origin was something she couldn't but wonder when it seemed so free-flowing.

  Light flickered through the spaced bars along the higher end of the door, high enough for her to reach and see through if she bothered to indulge her curiosity.

  But she moved on. There was a turn right past the door, and that was a far more pressing matter.

  There, she found what she was looking for.

  "Unstable, volatile, violent creatures from 'birth', the Amalgamations were quick to bare their fangs against anything that crossed their path. Human. Animal. Plant. One of their own kind."

  "Their instinct was to kill. And whatever they managed to latch onto and wring the life from became part of their twisted forms, straying further from anything that could even think to be called human."

  "For all the resilience humanity had put up, this seemed like the most impossible obstacle set in the way of their continued survival."

  A massive display of monitors of varying sizes was laid out before her, but her Expression only her to the largest of them, front and center, closest to eye level with her, with a keypad just below it.

  The screen lit up with a prompt for a security code, and once again, she found no difficulty.

  Her fingers quickly tapped at the keyboard to put in the right code.

  'G-O-D-E-A-T-E-R-S-Y-S-T-E-M-A-D-M-I-N-0-0-0-0'

  As easily as she had gotten through the door, she had gained access to an array of files which she was sure held the answers for her questions.

  "The conventional weaponry which had served well enough in defending people from the whims of the world proved worthless against the Amalgamations. Gunfire. Blades. Incendiaries. Explosives. All pointless when faced with the writhing masses of malformed flesh, serving only to aid in their growth."

  "However, like a gift from the heavens themselves, almost explicitly designed to allow retaliation against the new threat, a select few people across the mega-continent began manifesting unique, supernatural abilities, ripped straight from the fictional works of the Old World."

  "They're known by many names, few of which are still used today, interchangeable depending on the area. Blessings. Skills. Factors. Gifts. However, the most common, widely agreed upon term, is 'Expression'. A power shaped by one's soul."

  IS-131's Expression had halted its guidance for the time being. Its presence, though only visible to her in most cases, would only get in the way, waving around the screen.

  Instead, a few blind, vaguely purposeful clicks led her to a particular folder.

  'Sprout Registry'.

  She had expected only to find a handful of files within. There weren't more than 20 Sprouts within the facility. Yet, as she peered over the screen, she was presented with not dozens, not hundreds, but thousands of documents.

  Registrations for Sprouts she had neither met nor heard of, even in these inexplicable visions that had forced their way into her mind.

  Identification numbers she had never seen flew by endlessly as she scrolled.

  She had figured that, with the nature of the duty they were trained so vigorously for, day after day, there were bound to be those that didn't return to the facility for one reason or another.

  "Loss is inevitable in life." That was something all the Sprouts were told regularly.

  However, for this many lives to have been lost, and for the facility's overseers to never so much as mention any of them, as far as she could remember... Something wasn't right.

  Eventually, she scrolled to the bottom of the folder, where she spotted a file unique from the simple identification number used to name it.

  'Sprout Overview'.

  "With these abilities, as varied as the individuals wielding them, humanity once again had a fighting chance."

  IS-131 opened the file, a sense of dread welling within her with each line she read.

  'This most recent batch of Sprouts has proven to be the most resilient compared to any before. A fortunate result of us deciding against discontinuing the project, especially with the eventual creation of Marigold and Cypress.'

  "But, despite all the potential for good that was within them, just as is human nature, there were those that used them for their own selfish pleasures."

  'Although, despite their apparent compatibility with the procedures, and the phenomenal growth potential present in all of them, the major flaw within the Stockpile-Illusion Method remains. As of the current date; January 1st 200 AR; all currently available Sprouts are predicted to wither by the end of 206 AR without preservative actions.'

  "Known as Outlaws ─ savage, lawless parasites by nature ─ these individuals continue the senseless violence that plagued the world from the Rapture and onward."

  "With the population of Amalgamations greatly overwhelming that of the living, the already shaky balance created by the living is at risk of being torn apart by these lowlifes. That is why, as Sprouts, it is your duty to bloom into someone capable of preserving the world's peace."

  'Hopefully, before long, the God Eater will rise once again, if not from this batch then the next. Until then, we will continue to navigate the loop as we have from the beginning.'