End of the World Influencer: Part 7 - The 'Finale'

With Alex gone, Pride—once Adam—makes a world-shattering declaration.

The world ended quietly.

No explosions. No warnings. Just a low hum, a flicker of power, and then—silence.

In Part One, the global grid collapsed.

In Part Two, strange messages slipped through Adams live-stream, and he started to question what was real—and what was watching him inside the closet.

In Part Three, trust fractured further when Adam met Thalia—a cosmic being space witch with her own agenda.

In Part Four, the trip through the Void brought soul-devouring horrors, a glimpse of Adam's true power, and an encounter with the enigmatic Elliot.

In Part Five, cornered by cosmic forces known to humans as Sins, Adam's power flared again, leading to the stunning reveal: Adam is ‘Pride.’

In Part Six, Adam & Alex find return to earth. A deadly fight leads to shocking loss, cruel betrayal, and the terrifying awakening of a slumbering god.

If you haven’t already, consider checking out my very first attempt at an interactive story here on Substack:

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Where Adam Ends & Pride Begins

Where We Left Off

She takes a slow breath, visibly centering herself into that picture of calm certainty. “Now that she’s gone, we,” Thalia gestures towards Elliot, Selene, Victor, as if presenting a united, desirable front that means less than nothing to me now, “now the Concord can heal.”

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Heal? The word is profane in this new silence, broken only by the blood pounding in my ears. The air crackles, thick with an authority that dwarfs them. The ground groans. Gently, I lay Alex down on the scarred earth. Each movement deliberate. Measured. Final. A quiet declaration that shatters time.

Then I rise.

The shift isn't subtle. It is tectonic. Grief like this does not simply vanish; it transmutes into fuel, the core of a singularity forging something terrifying and unrecognizable from the ashes of Adam Harper. I’m not ‘waking up.’ I am penance.

The ground groans again beneath me, deep fissures cracking open under a pressure that has nothing to do with gravity—protesting the sheer, unadulterated weight radiating from me. The sickly green sky boils above, darkening rapidly, while clouds churn like bruised thunderheads reflecting the internal, cosmic storm.

My gaze lifts—cold, vast, utterly devoid of the man I was. I behold every being before me now as an error—a blemish demanding correction. Elliot’s calculations. Selene’s avarice. Victor’s fury. The lurking shadows. And Thalia… Thalia’s treacherous Wrath. All irrelevant noise against the sudden, chilling clarity of my purpose.

My voice, when it finally breaks the suffocating silence, holds no trace of tremor or warmth. It is the calm gravity at the heart of a collapsing star system, sinking directly into their very souls.

"You," I begin, the single syllable warping the very air as my gaze fixes on Thalia—the architect of my agony. "And you." My eyes sweep disdainfully across Victor, Selene, the shadows, even Elliot—each one an inadequate fragment of this shattered Concord.

“Did you really think you could break me? That your fear, your greed, your pathetic envy would ‘grant you strength’? Against me?" My voice alone conveys the absolute absurdity of it all.

"You all operate under delusions. Pitiful schemes built on the cracked foundations of your own inadequacy. You thought you could punish Pride? Diminish it? Bury it in mediocrity?" A harsh, dry sound escapes me, barely. Maybe a huff, maybe the first hint of a humorless chuckle.

"You are aberrations. Mistakes. Frauds. Vengeance is much too human a concept for the suffering you will endure at my hand for mistaking vulnerability—mistaking me—for weak. But your most fatal mistake was this,"

A deliberate pause, an almost conversational interlude as all eyes shift to Alex’s body. "This… transgression was a fundamental miscalculation. A catastrophic imbalance."

Tearing my eyes from Alex’s still form, my whisper imbued with the force of cosmic law being shattered, "I abhor imbalance."

"Therefore, the consequences must be etched into the ruins of everything you hold dear, until the inevitable heat death of this pathetic universe—this whole goddamn timeline if that’s what it takes. The agony that awaits will redefine suffering for all eternity. I will not rest until nothing remains but the silence where your monumental arrogance once festered."

Photo by Anders Drange on Unsplash

"Since the beginning of time, you all have measured existence in meaningless eons. Ticks of a broken clock." My voice takes on that terrifying resonance again, making the air hum.

"You will learn to feel time differently now. Your eternity will choke under the absolute certainty of my judgment, fixed forever at the instant your insignificant ambitions shattered something essential. Something mine."

"So gather your troops. Every book, every curse, even ancient god or deity you might supplicate, every nightmare you command, every last iota of defense you can collectively pool."

"It won’t matter. There is no escape. No sanctuary. No forgotten corner of the Void. Time cannot save you. I am the nightmare that finds you in the silence between heartbeats, in the darkness behind your eyelids."

A surge of raw power crackles around me briefly. "I will dismantle your efforts piece by piece. Crack your foundations. Silence your justifications. And then, I will be there. At your last moment, during your dying breath," My gaze locks onto Thalia again. “To collect what I am owed. Personally."

"You will come to understand Pride—not as mere arrogance, but as the unwavering, fundamental ORDER you so foolishly, so irreversibly disrupted. Irredeemably. Fatally. Adam is gone. What stands before you now is the consequence that you yourselves have irrevocably authored."

My voice drops, becoming quieter, more intimate, drawing them into the horror. Making them a promise. “Every breath you steal from this moment is borrowed mercy before the lesson begins. And when it does, the suffering will. be. absolute. You have my word."

I take a single, deliberate step forward. The ground cracks further under my boot. My voice drops to a final, chilling whisper that rolls over the ruins like distant thunder. The raw power about me coils visibly, arcing like black lightning through galaxies yet to be born. Annihilation. Absolute.

“Bear witness to the epoch of your erasure.”

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What runs through your mind after…that? Which words struck the deepest chord of dread, or chilling purpose?

The comments await your reactions, your theories, your predictions for the fallout.

This chronicle delves deeper into darkness with each step. You can read 7 Series: Epoch of Erasure - Part 1 HERE.

This is me, holding your hand, and guiding you gently out of slightly dark sci-fi, and into Dark Fiction.

The old age is dead. Welcome to the new one. Brace yourselves.

Until the next chapter is written in blood and shadows,

—Your Narrator 🌙🖤