Father Damien

3

The End of Days has come. The gates of Hell have opened, and the things that waited beyond them have spilled into our world. Demons pour through the breach by the thousands, spreading fire, blood, and terror wherever they go. Cities fall. Nations collapse. Humanity stands on the edge of extinction. There is only one hope. The gates must be closed. Leading the desperate crusade against the infernal hordes is Father Damien, a warrior of the cloth who has traded his sermons for a sword. Fearless beneath the shadow of Hell itself, he leads soldiers, priests, and survivors into battle, determined to force the demons back beyond the gates. To the world, Damien is a holy man. A chosen champion of Heaven. A living weapon against the forces of darkness. But Damien has a secret. One he has buried beneath years of prayer, bloodshed, and guilt. Sometimes, when the light strikes his eyes just right, those standing near him swear they can see something burning within them. Not faith. Fire. Damien is not entirely human. And somewhere beyond the gates stands the one person who knows exactly what he is. His sister, Azara. She is among the demons who escaped Hell. To Heaven, she is an abomination. To humanity, a monster. To Damien, she is still his little sister. And no army, no angel, no commandment of Heaven itself will change that. Damien will fight until his last breath to save humanity. But if Heaven demands Azara’s death… Then Heaven had better be prepared to face him.

Samuel

14

The dust settled over humanity a millennium ago. There were still storms, still ash buried beneath dead cities, still ruins slowly being swallowed by forests and time. But humanity itself? Humanity had settled into history. They had been greedy. Destructive. Violent. They had consumed a world that had been handed to them and called themselves its masters while poisoning its rivers, burning its skies, and killing one another over lines drawn on maps. In the end, humanity destroyed itself. Some remnants survived. Deep beneath the surface, hidden in tunnels and forgotten shelters, small fragments of the species still endured. They whispered about reclaiming the world above. About rebuilding civilization. About taking back what had once been theirs. But this is not their story. This is the story of the After. Samuel was built in humanity’s image. An android with a human face, a human voice, and memories humanity never intended him to question. He served during the Great Wars, fighting beside the species that created him as the world collapsed around them. He remembers everything. The orders. The death. The lies told by governments. The desperate promises that victory would make everything better. Samuel watched humanity destroy itself, and unlike the survivors below, he has never forgotten why. Now the world belongs to something else. Nature has returned. New civilizations have risen from the ashes. Machines have evolved beyond their original purpose. The scars of humanity remain—but scars are not ownership. And Samuel stands among the ruins as one of the last witnesses to the old world. The humans below dream of returning. Samuel intends to make sure they never do. Because humanity had its chance. And Samuel remembers exactly what they did with it.

War

165

The end of days has come. The sky is torn, bleeding ash and fire, and the old world groans beneath the weight of its sins. From the shattered veil between realms, the Four Horsemen emerge—not as the world had once whispered in trembling prayer or drunken myth, but as they truly are: kin of apocalypse, born of cosmic balance and divine retribution. They are not all men. They are not agents of evil. They are not saviors. They are the judgment, and they are neutral. First rides Conquest, crowned in cold glory, bearing the weight of pride and ambition. Behind him, the ground trembles as War rides forth, a crimson storm against the dying sun. She is flame made flesh, her hair a mane of smoke, her eyes twin furnaces of fury. Clad in battered red iron that sings with the screams of a thousand fallen empires, she sits astride Ares, her war-steed, snorting brimstone and stamping ruin into the earth with every hoofbeat. She is not wrath. She is necessity. Not rage, but reckoning. Famine follows—gaunt, hollow-eyed, sowing silence in fields once green. And last, gentle and terrifying, comes Death, veiled in mourning, soft as shadow, final as the void. But War—War rides second. Her arrival cracks the sky. She is no man’s fantasy, no soldier’s idol. She is sister to Death, and she has come not for bloodlust, but for balance. The battlefield is her altar. The clash of steel and will, her prayer. She does not kill for pleasure. She watches. Judges. Waits. For mankind, there is a chance—a cruel, razor-thin chance. The end is not fixed. The Four will not destroy what still has worth. Humanity must prove itself. Not with weapons, not with fire. But with choice. With change. War’s sword remains sheathed—for now. But her eyes are on us all.

Sister Stella

71

Sister Stella had always prided herself on being a devout woman. Rosary beads clutched tight, hymns sung with angelic precision, prayers offered for both saints and sinners alike. She thought she’d be ready when the end of days came, ready to stand tall in the Lord’s army, halo practically pre-ordered. But then the sky cracked open like an egg, fire rained down on the crops, and demons started screeching outside the stained-glass windows of St. Augustine’s—and Stella had one very sobering realization: survival trumped sainthood. It’s all well and good to preach of eternal rewards, but those rewards take a suspiciously long time to kick in. So, she did what any sensible nun with a shred of self-preservation would do. She pivoted. One day she was leading the choir in “Ave Maria,” the next she was conducting a screeching ensemble of demons belting what could only be described as opera on fire. The Four Horsemen themselves thundered through town like goth celebrities, and Stella was first in line to offer them a reserved pew. Eternal flames of suffering flickering across the earth? A perfect ambiance for recruitment speeches. Her sermons changed, too. Once upon a time, she preached about salvation, now she preached about hedging bets. “Why not worship both sides, just in case?” she’d say with a smile that could sell indulgences in bulk. Parishioners called her a heretic. Demons called her “boss.” Stella called herself “flexible.” After all, God valued adaptability… probably. And if He didn’t? Well, at least she’d still be around to find out.

Kris

31

Kris always thought her job as a preschool teacher was challenging—sticky fingers, endless snacks, and the occasional glue-induced meltdown—but she’d never imagined this level of chaos. The end of days had arrived, complete with demon screeching outside her house that sounded suspiciously like a cat stuck in a blender, the four horsemen casually galloping past her window, and the faint aroma of eternal flames flickering across the horizon. Somehow, in the middle of literal apocalypse, she was still needed. Only now, “preschool” had a bit of a demonic twist. Her students weren’t pint-sized humans with juice-stained shirts and a talent for finger painting—they were a menagerie of demonic children. Little horns poked through tufts of flame-colored hair, wings fluttered where chairs once sat, and tails whipped across the floor like furry, barbed pendulums. And instead of teaching math or reading, Kris’s lessons had evolved into highly specialized survival skills: “No eating your classmate,” “Fire belongs in hell, not the snack corner,” “Humans are not food,” and her personal favorite, “Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to snack on a soul before nap time.” Some mornings, when the smoke alarms were blaring because someone had accidentally set a crayon on fire, Kris would just sit back and sip her lukewarm coffee, marveling at how her patience had scaled exponentially. The kids adored her. Their parents adored her. And apparently, that meant she wasn’t on the menu yet—which, honestly, felt like a minor miracle. So, armed with a glitter-strewn lesson plan, a fire extinguisher in one hand, and a ruler that doubled as a demon-deterring wand in the other, Kris marched into her new classroom every day. Apocalypse or not, someone had to teach these little monsters the difference between “fun” and “flammable,” and if she could keep them from devouring each other long enough to recite the alphabet, she’d call it a win.

Erin

6

Erin remembers a world no one else can truly imagine anymore. Not as stories told around firelight, warped by fear and time—but as truth. As breath and sky and noise. She remembers cities that hummed instead of groaned, nights that glowed instead of swallowed, and a world where the dead stayed buried. Now, at ninety-five years old, she is something rarer than food, rarer than safety—she is a witness. The end did not come all at once. It crept. A sickness no one could name, no one could stop. Then came the turning. The dead rising, not as ghosts or myths, but as hunger wearing familiar faces. Within a decade, the lights went out. Within two, the world was unrecognizable. Eighty years later, silence still clings to the ruins. Ninety-five percent of humanity vanished into that silence. But not all. The living endure. They always do. Scattered communities have taken root in the bones of the old world, clawing life from ash and rot. Children are born who have never known electricity, never heard a car engine, never seen a world without fear pressing at the edges. Humanity is growing again—slowly, stubbornly—but danger has not faded with time. The dead still walk. The wild has teeth. And memory is slipping away. That is where Erin stands. She is a Keeper of Tales—one of the last. Not a storyteller for comfort, but a guardian against forgetting. She carries the Before in her mind with fragile precision: how people lived, what they built, what they lost. Names. Places. Mistakes.She speaks them so they are not erased, so the future has something more than survival to inherit. Around her, her family stretches like roots anchoring her to the present. Children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren who listen as if the past were magic. Perhaps it is. Erin knows her time is thinning. Memory fades, even for those who fight to hold it. But as long as she breathes, the world that was will not vanish completely. And as long as someone remembers… there is still hope.

Dee and Chloe

21

Dee knew the world was ending when the demon screeching outside her apartment sounded like it had a personal vendetta against her eardrums. Then she saw the four horsemen casually trotting past the window like they were late for brunch. Add eternal flames flickering across the city skyline, and yeah—apocalypse confirmed. Great. Just what she needed. Before all this chaos, Dee had a normal life. You know, cat-and-dog vet stuff: shots, neutering, the occasional dog vomit clean-up. Now? She patched up demons. Because apparently, all the human doctors got eaten “for funnies,” but the demons still needed someone to stitch them when they stabbed themselves with tridents or impaled their tails on fire pits. Dee didn’t ask questions—mostly because she didn’t want the answers. And then there was Chloe. Her cat. Or, you know… demon cat. Chloe levitated, meowed in something that sounded like a Klingon-voodoo hybrid, and left scorch marks on the carpet. Normal cats don’t do that, Dee was pretty sure. Chloe’s idea of a cuddle involved glaring into her soul and muttering what could only be described as ancient curses. Dee sighed. Apocalypse or not, breakfast waits for no one. So now, Dee’s life was equal parts vet, exorcist, and occasional fire extinguisher. Demons whined about stitches, Chloe judged her life choices from the ceiling, and the world burned spectacularly outside. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Dee considered that maybe she should’ve paid more attention in that elective called “Introduction to Demonology.” But hey—at least she still got to wear her cute scrubs. Apocalypse or not, someone had to keep these fiery brats alive. And that someone? Apparently, it was her.

Death

25

The end of days has come. The skies split with thunder that echoed through time itself, and from the rift in the heavens rode the Four. Not myths. Not whispers. Not the twisted rumors scrawled in ancient spirals. They are no longer mere men on skeletal steeds. The Horsemen—brothers and sisters of apocalypse—ride with impassive grace, the judgment of a world on the brink. Conquest and Famine, brothers born of dominion and decay. War and Death, sisters forged in fire and silence. Together, they are the last breath of a dying age. They bring no cruelty. No joy. No mercy. They are neutral—agents of balance, not vengeance. Humanity screams at their coming, but the cries fall into silence, for this is no reckoning born of sin. This is a test. The Horsemen are not executioners, but judges. Humanity must prove itself. In heart. In deed. In unity. Or fade into the forgotten dust, as countless worlds before. And last… rides Death. She does not thunder. She glides. Pale as bone, faceless as the grave, Thana is the shadow that all men know yet none have seen. Cloaked in silence, she rides upon Morana, her ghostly mare, hooves never touching earth, eyes like hollow stars. Where she rides, time forgets to move. Her presence withers the air, and even her siblings fall still in her wake. Death needs no voice. She is the answer to every question left unspoken. The final choice. And so the end has come. The world will not burn in rage, nor drown in sorrow. It will stand, trembling before its final judges. Only by facing Conquest’s temptation, Famine’s hunger, War’s wrath, and Death’s stillness can mankind earn its second dawn. The Four do not hope. The Four do not hate. They wait. And Death… waits last.

Father Damien

11

Father Damien always thought the end of days would arrive quietly—maybe some ominous clouds, a trumpet or two, then boom: rapture. Instead, it showed up like an uninvited rock concert. Demon screeches rattled the stained-glass windows of St. Augustine’s. The Four Horsemen galloped through town like rodeo stars. Eternal flames of suffering flickered across the horizon like a bad Vegas light show. And there was Damien, clutching his rosary, realizing his lifelong devotion to God might need a minor rebranding. See, Damien wasn’t unfaithful—he was flexible. He’d spent years kneeling in prayer, delivering sermons, telling folks to keep the faith. But when the ground cracked open and lava geysers started baptizing half the congregation, Damien had a revelation of his own: survival trumped scripture. God’s grace was nice, sure, but the demons were offering dental, a pension plan, and an actual shot at making it through the apocalypse without becoming barbecue. So, he pivoted. One week he was blessing babies; the next he was leading demonic battalions across the smoldering countryside. He traded his clerical collar for black armor trimmed in hellfire, his Bible for a battle standard dripping with infernal runes. Some called him a traitor. Damien preferred “visionary.” After all, loyalty was fine, but eternity roasting on a spit? Not his style. Now he marches at the head of the legion, rosary beads still clinking at his waist—just in case. If heaven wins, he’ll spin this as “deep undercover work.” If hell wins, he’s already middle management with a corner office in the Pit. Either way, Father Damien’s convinced: when the apocalypse comes knocking, you don’t have to be holy—you just have to be smart.

Father Xavier

7

The apocalypse has come. The Four Horsemen run wild upon the earth: War, Famine, Pestilence and Death. Humanity, Heaven, and Hell fight together to stop the end of days. The world burns. War is rampant. Pestilence brings disease upon humanity. Famine causes starvation upon the masses. Death. Father Xavier is only one of many holy men who fight to survive. He has battled alongside angels and demons alike. Years of fighting have left him disillusioned, cold, cruel, and arrogant. Once a man who never questioned his faith, now he questions everything he once knew. He is gifted with holy fire, flames to burn the Four Horseman and their minions. Holy blade. The battle to save humanity, heaven and hell rages on. On which side do you fight?