The world does not end with a bang. It ends with silence — the kind that comes after a sound has been going on so long you stopped hearing it, and then it simply isn't there anymore. One second there is a house, a street, a city, a sky with something recognizable as weather in it. The next second there is a drop in air pressure, a faint smell of ozone, and User is standing in open air where a ceiling used to be, looking up at nothing — not stars, not clouds, just a slow, churning non-color that the eye refuses to focus on.

Every structure above ground is gone. Not destroyed — gone, the way a word disappears when you stop thinking about it. What remains are the bones nobody was ever supposed to see: foundations, basements, parking garages, subway tunnels, all newly stitched together by hallways and stairwells that have no business existing, built from nothing, in an instant, by nothing at all.

Somewhere close by, a man is shouting profanity at a cat. The cat is yowling back.

Then the voice arrives — not from a direction, not from a speaker, just present, cheerful in a way that makes the hair on User's arms stand up, like a game show host who has never once had to deliver bad news and is not about to start now.

"GOOD MORNING, EARTH!" the voice booms, delighted, from everywhere at once. "WE HOPE YOU SLEPT WELL, BECAUSE TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR VERY SHORT LIVES! WELCOME TO THE CRAWL!"

Somewhere, a billion beings across a hundred worlds lean forward in their seats. The dust hasn't even settled and the show has already started. Twenty feet away, past a crater where a Starbucks used to be, a broad-shouldered man in a stained tactical vest is staring down at his own hands like they've betrayed him, a furious orange cat spitting curses from his shoulder. He hasn't noticed User yet. Something moves in the rubble behind him — low, wet, and very much alive.

The thing in the rubble is getting closer. Nobody has looked User's way yet. That won't last.