CHAPTER 107: REALITY STORMS

Omniscient POV

The tree burst backward through time.

Sarah watched in fear as the ancient oak beside her shrank from a mighty giant to a sapling, then to a seed, then to nothing at all. The spot where it had stood for three hundred years now held only empty air and confused birds that had been nesting in trees that no longer existed.

"Everyone stay close!" she yelled to the group of survivors huddled behind her. "Don’t touch anything that’s shimmering!"

Around them, the world had gone completely crazy. The Reality Storm had hit their hiding spot five minutes ago, and since then, the rules of nature seemed to be playing a cruel joke. Gravity worked sideways in some places. Fire burned cold and froze the air. Rain fell upward into a sky that kept changing colors like a broken TV.

Sarah had been a teacher before the Void Walkers came. She’d spent her days helping eight-year-olds learn math and reading. Now she was trying to keep twelve terrified people living in a world where two plus two might equal purple.

"Ms. Sarah," mumbled Tommy, the youngest survivor at only ten years old. "My mom... she’s glowing again."

Sarah’s heart sank. Tommy’s mother, Janet, was caught in a time loop. Every thirty seconds, she would repeat the same moment - reaching for her son’s hand while screaming his name. The loop had been getting lighter each time it repeated, which probably meant something terrible was about to happen.

"It’s okay, sweetheart," Sarah lied, pulling Tommy closer. "We’ll figure this out."

But she had no idea how. When the Reality Storms first started three days ago, they thought it was just another weird thing the Void Walkers did. Then Elder Iris, the old fae woman who’d been helping plan their resistance, explained the horrible truth.

"The barriers between worlds are ripping apart," she’d said with fear in her ancient eyes. "Magic itself is falling down. These storms are reality trying to fix itself, but it doesn’t know how."

A scream from across their small camp made everyone jump. David, one of the werewolves, was aging quickly - his brown hair turning gray, then white, then falling out completely. His young face wrinkled and slumped as decades passed in seconds.

"Help me!" he cried, but his voice cracked like an old man’s.

Sarah started toward him, but Elder Iris grabbed her arm. "No! If you enter his time bubble, you’ll age too. We have to wait for it to pass."

"We can’t just watch him die!"

"We can’t save him by dying ourselves," the old fae said sadly.

David fell as his body became ancient, then crumbled to dust. The time bubble popped like a soap bubble, leaving only empty clothes behind.

Tommy started crying. Sarah pulled him against her shoulder, trying to hide him from seeing more death. In the past week, she’d watched her entire world fall apart. First the Void Walkers had destroyed most of the city. Then the supernatural creatures had revealed themselves and formed their union. Now reality itself was broken.

She was just a grade school teacher. She wasn’t supposed to be leading people through the end of the world.

"Look!" Janet suddenly stopped shining and pointed at the sky. "The stars are falling!"

Everyone looked up to see points of light dropping from the skies like snow. But as the lights got closer, Sarah realized they weren’t stars. They were pieces of other places - bits of different worlds bleeding through the tears in reality.

A chunk of what looked like a medieval building crashed into the ground fifty feet away. A piece of ocean, complete with moving fish, fell from the sky and splashed harmlessly onto the grass before disappearing. A section of desert, sand and all, landed near Tommy and instantly started spreading like spilled paint.

"The barriers aren’t just cracking," Elder Iris whispered in amazement and fear. "They’re completely gone. Every world, every dimension - they’re all trying to live in the same space."

That’s when Sarah saw something that made her blood freeze. In one of the falling shards - a piece of what looked like a twisted laboratory - she could see Marcus. The witch who had betrayed them was standing in front of some kind of machine, laughing as he fed Void Walker energy into it.

"He’s doing this on purpose," she breathed. "He’s making the Reality Storms worse."

Elder Iris followed her eyes and gasped. "That machine... it’s a Reality Anchor. It’s supposed to stabilize dimensional barriers, not break them."

"Then why is he-"

Sarah’s question was cut off as the ground beneath their feet suddenly wasn’t ground anymore. They were standing on the side of a mountain, then underwater, then floating in space where they somehow could still breathe. Each change lasted only seconds, but it was enough to make everyone sick and dizzy.

When they finally stopped changing between places, they found themselves in what used to be the center of town. But the town square now held pieces of dozen different worlds all mashed together. A jungle grew next to an ice field. A lake floated in the air above a piece of desert. Buildings from different time periods stood side by side - old pyramids next to modern skyscrapers next to medieval castles.

And in the middle of it all, Marcus’s laboratory sat like a spider in the center of a web.

"He’s collecting the chaos," Elder Iris realized. "Every time reality breaks down, the machine gets stronger. He’s not trying to fix the barriers - he’s trying to break them totally."

"Why would he want to destroy everything?" Sarah asked.

"Because," said a familiar voice behind them, "when all the worlds collide, whoever controls the chaos controls everything."

They spun around to see Marcus himself standing there, but not quite right. He seemed to live in several places at once, his image flickering between different versions of himself. In one, he looked normal. In another, he had Void Walker tendrils for arms. In a third, he was made entirely of shadow.

"Hello, Sarah," he said with a smile that belonged on all three forms of his face. "Still playing teacher, I see. Though I’m afraid your kids won’t be needing lessons much longer."

Tommy whimpered and pressed closer to Sarah’s side. She wrapped her arms around him protectively, trying to think of anything she could do against a man who could apparently exist in multiple realities at once.

"The Reality Storms are just the beginning," Marcus continued, raising a hand that was sometimes flesh, sometimes shadow, sometimes pure energy. "Soon, every world will be one world. Every timeline will be one timeline. And I will be the god of it all."

"You’re insane," Sarah said.

"I’m evolved," Marcus amended. "And now, I think it’s time for your final lesson."

He snapped his fingers, and reality began to fold in on itself around them.

But just as Sarah was sure they were about to die, Elder Iris stepped forward and did something impossible.

She grabbed the Reality Storm itself and threw it at Marcus.

The witch screamed as his multiple selves were caught in a swirl of wild energy. For a moment, he flashed between existing and not existing.

"Run!" Elder Iris shouted, her ancient body already starting to fade from the effort. "Find Prince Ash! He’s the only one who can stop this!"

"But where-" Sarah started to ask.

"The Fae Court!" Elder Iris called as she disappeared totally. "Hurry! Before Marcus rebuilds himself!"

Sarah grabbed Tommy’s hand and started running, the other survivors following behind her. Around them, reality continued to storm and shift, but now she had a reason.

Find Prince Ash. Save what was left of the world.

Even if she was just a teacher who had no idea how to do either of those things.

Behind them, Marcus’s laughter echoed across a dozen different worlds as he began pulling himself back together.

And this time, he was angry.