Behold my power, i am a genious, i figured out how to cram in as much study time before exams. Ive cast a spell, the first part, which will create a "lock" on this exact place and time, in 20 years ill cram in all my study work and then cast the second spell, thatll bring me back to this time, merging with my previous self.
Its so simple, so elegant, i dont know why others havnt done this before?
20 years ago, march 21st 2026 i cast the first part of my chronomancy spell, the idea brilliant if i do say so myself.
Id study, for 20 years, then cast the second half of the spell and have those 20 years of knowledge put back into my brain.
Simple, elegant, bad idea, turns out 20 years worth of experiances can cause your brain to explode, so i cast another chronomancy spell to go back to before i cast the initial spell, in the hopes to avoid that, and the temporal paradox from killing myself and going back further.
But I cant do it, on interaction with myself i explode... well my old version does, so i need help from my fellow wizards, if you see me gloating about my spell can do convince me not too? Please, theres so much blood, i got like 6 versions of myself laying around the place and i cant explain this to the cops
When death entered our world is a hotly debated subject amongst those who are about to die. Some theorise it's always been here, quietly at work. Others point to the age of rationalism, the 1700 century, the famous words "god is dead", being the starting point, that once we killed the idea of god, it had free reign.
Others think it was a more recent predator to our home, that it was the early 2020 with the viral outbreak, something else was let loose from a facility and that indeed the virus was a cover-up.
The truth is, in my own expert opinion... there is no for sure way to know who was "patient 0", that when death activated itself is, and will forever be a mystery unsolved until our soon to be eternal rest.
I'm an expert amongst researchers on death, as anyone with any higher learning became as it was the only thing worth researching, a forlorn hope now, meaningless amongst our failure. But we did discover at least a few things.
Death only cared about sapient, that is beings that could understand, appreciate and actually fear its coming. Then again that makes death sound like something that can appreciate an audience and my own research spits in the face of that understanding, nevertheless it was only after every man, woman, child, dog, cat, bird and so on died that it would just wholesale slaughter everything else.
Ants, insects, spiders, germs, bacteria, amoeba, trees, flowers. All these would only die, in an instant, after the higher forms left, when we sent teams to investigate with drones afterwards the process would repeat. The team members would die, then their carcasses would remain. Emaciated and baking under the sun as even the bacteria that would break down their bodies were killed.
Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, if this log does indeed somehow survive to get to someone else... they would probably be confused as to the above inane ramblings of a dead man.
Then again, the chance this tomb survives to be read by someone else is infinitesimally small.... but in this dead world the only thing keeping anyone going is hope so maybe it isn't so mad to write this after-all.
I should start from the beginning then, set the scene. It was the mid 2020's when we first noticed the thing in our midst. If not for the presidents sudden death we may have gone in blissful ignorance for a few more months.
During a routine speech to reporters... it was as if a puppet had its strings cut, he just fell. Limp and boneless in front of the cameras. During the autopsy, nothing was found to be the cause, no poisons, no brain aneurysm, heart attacks, no nothing. Just the animating force of life was in him one second then it was gone.
Strange as it sounds, death before then.... wasn't exactly a rare thing, in the USA approximately 8500 people die every day, that's a combination of heart disease, violence, old age, SIDS and so on. Hell worldwide its almost 172 000 deaths, almost 2 every second. Read this paragraph from the top down, should of taken maybe.... 8 seconds, that's 16 deaths.
The thing that made this death so important, was obviously the status of the person, the public nature of it and the lack of meaning behind it.
But... well life carried on, or at least it used to. People went on their day and the strange episode faded from public memory as people got on with their pre-deaths.
As mentioned it may have been passed on but while the average person moved on, the leaders in the medical field were perplexed and kept wondering how it could of happened, there had to be something.
It wasn't until about a month later, that Doctor Prabasheet Kaur, a researcher at the university of Delhi made a note, one that other researchers around the world took note of to begin their own investigations.
India's daily deaths had risen, from 26000 daily to 28000. This may seem huge and small at the same time to many, an increase of 2000 deaths is devastating to any society. But.... take it from one of histories greatest monsters Joseph Stalin "a single mans death is a tragedy, a million a statistic."
2000 extra deaths isn't notable apart from, just like the presidents death, there was no cause. 2000 people, a mix of doctors, teachers, service workers, school children, IT workers and more your usual mix of people just dead.
About a month after that, numerous reports were coming in from smaller nations, populations of a couple hundred thousands to, maybe a few million were being compiled. Although small they all shared the same similarities. No cause of death, from a wide range of people.
Very strange and you may be wondering if people were freaking out or not and the answer was.... not really, all in all the world's daily death toll had risen to about 200 000 deaths daily, an increase of 30 000, very very small compared to world wide population but negligible.
In comparison look at daily births, on the higher end, 385 000 people were being born every single day, that's over a million in half a week. 140 million in a year. Governments, sure were annoyed that people were dying, but that sort of thing could be chalked up to, bad autopsies, bad counting a body misplaced in the less than reputable countries and so on.
This all changed when the China report was released. See those numbers, 11 thousand deaths here, 30 thousand there may sound insane as a number to brush aside but, well people die. Consistently, the world population is measured in the billions though, so those numbers are negligible.
The numbers that truly matter are percentiles. In China before death arrived, out of every thousand people 7-8 were expected to be dead by the end of the year.
11-12 million people dead every year. Big number scary yes but again meaningless overall in a place that had almost 1.5 billion people.
But the trend by the end of the year of 2024 was had changed. 8-9 people per thousand dead by years end.
That's a monumental increase believe it or not and so all the smaller countries ran their data research again. In February 2025 the daily deaths worldwide was found to be, not the usual 170 000, or the maybe notable 200 000.... it was 400 000. Again read the start of this paragraph to now, that is probably the same 8 seconds, but instead of 16 people dead, that's 32 people dead.
The alarm bells were being rang by the medical professionals, something was seriously wrong, a jump like that didn't happen naturally.
The SDP, or sudden death plague as it was dubbed, a new supposed plague ravaging the earths populations and recriminations, blame and every bad human habit you can think of from the last big virus came back full tilt.
It was labelled a hoax by some, blamed as a Chinese bio weapon by some war hawks who confusedly also insisted it was a hoax by their enemies political party. Some countries implemented strict quarantine methods, honed from their last bout while other were reluctant to do so again.
Pharmaceutical companies were given billions of dollars to find and cure this new plague, while some more unscrupulous members of society sold herbal remedies and crystals that could keep it away.
It was pandemonium worldwide... again, but this time worse. See at least with the virus, it was mainly the old or very young that were dying, and people that obeyed various safety procedures could at least stay mostly safe, or contract it and live.
This time, locking yourself away didn't help, you couldn't run from it, hide from it, wear protective clothing or contract it and build immunity to it. It simply killed.
Now with everyone at least being alerted to SDP we at least had more data coming to us, the death rate in Vietnam for instance had risen from 6.77 deaths per thousand every year to 8. The rates of deaths in Australia was 6.78 to 8. The death rates in Algeria had been 4.8, and was now.... 8.
The data didn't lie, everywhere, every country we looked at, it didn't matter if they had 50 000 people or over a billion, a unifying number was found. 8 out of every 1000 people on this planet died in 2024.
This, is statistically improbable, you may say "oh its impossible" but that would be incorrect. I don't know if you ever read about infinite dimensions but its said if you get 1 million monkeys to write randomly on a typewriter, in an infinite number of dimensions there is one where the whole story of lord of the rings was written.
You may take the above to mean, oh in an infinite number of universes there is a probability that 8 in 1000 people worldwide died, but i point out that I'm not trying to convey that its probable, I'm trying to say scientifically i have to say its improbable, but for the layperson.... well put your cat on your keyboard and see if it writes harry potter.
This sort of number made us all so so so sure there was a guiding intelligence behind it. Our research into it though, were grabbed by your usual society of idiots and pushed their favourite point.
"Aliens are causing this" says one conspiracy theorist, "no its a weapon released by Muslim extremists in Pakistan" says another, ignoring Pakistan had also suffered the attrition. "No ones dying its all made up so the government can take control, wake up sheeple" says some woman on Facebook with too much free time, conveniently forgetting a cousin, auntie or friend had died.
All of them using our research to "prove" their point, despite the fact it did no such thing, and it really made it hard for us to collaborate when one government would cut off another due to the above rabble rousing.
During the year of 2025... well i don't want to say we squandered our chances, as that implies we could of done something, but it was the year everything started noticeably went downhill.
Our theory about a guiding intelligence flew out the window when during one month, pre-SDP death levels recorded in most major countries. The plague was over some said, they were right about it being a hoax said others.
But the entirety, and i mean ENTIRITY of Micronesia, new Zealand, Mauritius, Jamaica, various little islands all over the world became silent husks.
It was a Welsh fisherman that discovered what became of the isle of man, he was ignoring local stay in place orders to sneak over to a friends house for a few pints. He pulled up to shore and realised, there wasn't any noise, the grass black, trees withered and leafless. He wondered the silent streets to his friends house and found him, face down in his morning breakfast plate, the wife nearby covered in horrible burns from a kettle that spilled its now cold contents all over her.
When informing local authorities a ship of the coast guard moored and started staking stock of the island, when noon hit, half the team instantly dropped dead, which caused the rest to flee back to the ship leaving the bodies where they laid.
This sort of incident happened worldwide as people checked on suddenly silent neighbours. The biggest mast casualty incident happened in new Zealand.
As mentioned it was one of the places that went quiet, most air planes that were scheduled to land diverted to Australia once they didn't receive any signal from the authorities. Reports of long, dead tracts of brown almost desert lands accompanied them.
One plane travelling from south America however didn't have enough fuel to make it the distance and so they forced a landing. When the crew disembarked they noted that, loaders, engineering personal and other passengers were littered around the airfield. One plane that was loaded full of passengers ready for liftoff remained in terminal, its engines powered down and rows upon rows of the dead remained in their new metal tomb.
The crew made the decision to do their own refuelling and get off the island as quick as possible, some of the passengers volunteered to help, they helped with the process, gathered black boxes from other air planes, food for the flight and other necessities. When noon hit however suddenly around half of them died.
I may be repeating myself but i have to impart how important it is to you, no cause whatsoever. One moment your reading a comic in your air plane seat, next moment mummy slumped over next to you, not breathing.
A few hours later they landed in Sydney and the incident went wild. News and press reporting, with video evidence an entire country's mausoleum, that when noon hit people died. We found a pattern! Hooray, I'm sure you noticed as well.
Noon was when people died, it happened in sparsely populated nations. Its not much but its more than we had before. The alien theories were more wild than ever before.
Hell around this time even i started to believe it, but... we couldn't detect anything. Then as if in mockery of us thinking, believing, having the gall to try and understand it the Paris incident occurred.
In response to yet another lock down the french did what they do best and protested against the government the streets were packed with Parisians and people from neighbouring cities marching against tyranny and overreach of power.
Death seemingly decided to make a game of it, again the death rates across the world seemed to slow down on the lead up to the march then on the morning of the march, cameras everywhere it began. By that i also mean death didn't wait for noon. As the streets started being filled up, some didn't rise from their beds. During the march, sections of protesters would suddenly collapse, but there were so many it went unnoticed, even as the bodies were trampled underfoot.
But it was eventually noticed, and when you have a large group of angry people thinking their being under attack... well what do you think happened.
The cops, the government was blamed and suddenly vicious mobs were attacking the police full force, it was pandemonium and chaos everywhere. I remember watching a live stream of three cops pulling down a machete wielding protester, one of the cops fell dead, the other two shot the protester believing he had stabbed the other officer only to fall dead himself with the third running away from a furious mob.
I am a data collector and researcher tho remember, so i started hunting around the net finding everything, anything to see if i could find a clue in the madness. I came across one site showing officers, arms bound being strung up by protesters, one of the officers was dead even before being lifted, the others died as they were hung, one survivor was dropped to his feet when the people hoisting him died.
The day was long, and by the end of it. Paris was a ghost town. Id say there was the remains of the dead and dying everywhere but only ghosts remained. We also had... a very disturbing but useful phenomena. Cameras.
In the digital age there are cameras everywhere, streams, TV crews, reporters and whatever. Even with the operators dead they were still running everywhere. That's when we discovered two rules i mentioned before.
Sapient targeting. After all the humans died, some cameras picked up various animals picking through the dead collapsing. Birds of prey fighting over a torn out eyeball then going limp.
The second was the death of bacteria. This one took a bit longer for us to notice, and only the better camera setups lasted long enough for people to notice the bodies weren't decaying. The rivers of dead bodies filling up Paris, which was cordoned off by now, weren't breaking down.
Lt Luffiete a drone operator in the armed forces came up with a plan to retrieve a body for study, in order not to spread whatever was killing everyone he volunteered to use a drone to recover a body and bring it to a sealed lab with one other volunteer to study it. Doctor Vauntmen a Dutch pediatrician was the other volunteer for what will become obvious reasons.
Using a small drone they recovered a body of an infant from a politicians house and brought it to the sealed portable lab. Initial studies were enlightening, unlike previous deaths, this was the first one we could study from a total death area, that is an area where everything had died... obviously but for records sake i supose i should clarify the obvious.
The body was re-markedly intact for something 2 weeks dead, upon a tissue sample being taken doctor Vauntmen found that not a single cell had been broken down by bacteria. Sure some cells were mummified from the water evaporating but cell breakdown hadn't occurred. Further testing with a electron microscope found that indeed no bacteria survived, no viral cell to spread nothing. Heart muscle, faecal matter, intestine lining, skin nothing had a single thing that could be counted as living on it.
I don't know if i was happy to receive the report or driven to despair. But at least we got one before the Lieutenant and doctor passed away.
The published data was sent out again, and again we tried to make sense of it, some sort of electron disruption caused by the sun? Cant be, we had submarines and bunkers full of the dead. A sort of weaponized invisible ray-gun, didn't line up with the deaths worldwide.
Fuck we even seriously looked at the alien theory by now in our desperation. It was actually seeming very likely, some unknown force sweeping our world with beams to kill us off.
You may or may not know about how photons and electrons travel through water, but it can happen with a powerful enough beam. Photons are stopped when they get bound to an electron one way or another, for example when a light photon hits an object, like the ground, it reflects off it giving us light.
Theoretically with a powerful enough beam you could pierce water to reach those submarines, hell even most low depth bunkers could theoretically be pierced. This seemed like the first breakthrough we had on stopping this.... thing in a long time, build deep we said, photons cant reach you we said.
Again, as if to mock our puny attempts to rationalise and give ourselves even the myth of safety the Mponeng Gold Mine disaster occurred.
The Mponeng gold mine is the worlds deepest mine, reaching to over 4 kilometres or 2.48 miles underground. No one had really paid much attention to it, other things bring on our mind until local authorities contacted the SDP combat group which had formed after Paris.
The SDP was a worldwide gathering of scientists, no government was in charge of us, or could control us. We were given pretty much the keys to the world to stop this plague... i haven't mentioned it before out of shame but before we go on i should mention the history of that forsaken group.
Originally members of English speaking countries banded together our researchers in the hopes of combating the SDP, we had soldiers, technicians, politicians, you name it we had it, we had one mission, its in the name... combat the SDP.
As the world slid further into chaos we found our ranks swelled by more forces, Indian, Mexican, french and more. Our constraints were lessened and we were given more and more freedom every day as desperation grew.
We however proved unworthy of that trust. Some of our field operatives set up petty kingdoms, ransoming aid and promises of a cure in return for tribute, women and more. Later on the rot infested the higher ranks, i could theorise on why but it doesn't really matter. Those field agents gave some of their tribute up the chain in return for being left alone and soon enough the Neo-feudal society sci-fi had warned us about became reality.
Labs became castles, the peasantry those looking for safety and the nobles those who were supposed to help the. I supposed the rapid onset of revolution and reprisals were a just punishment in record time but i mention all this as a confession to our ineptitude and selfishness and an explanation for how we managed to make a bad situation worse.
So now we return to the Mgoneng Gold Mine, after a week of being cut off a single man emerged from the earth to inform us that most of the crew were dead, at the bottom of the shaft building shelters for those fleeing our supposed alien enemies.
That may of been the straw that broke the camels back and brought us to the end of days. Hope in a scientific or practical salvation had been thwarted at every attempt, death spared no one as yearly deaths outstripped births and by the year of 2026 the calls for cooperation and understanding were abandoned for the calls of revelations and penitence.
Religious figures, even at the start claimed it was the rapture or some other end of days scenario, despite the fact the raptures fan-fiction from a Frenchmen but i digress. Most people ignored those, but as the years against this mysterious enemy grind-ed on those doubters became believers as.... we needed some, any explanation as to what was going on.
If there are any historians left after this, or this record reaches into a different world, people would refer to the year of 2026 as the year of a million religions. As the leaders of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism you name it fell to the march of death a million new cult leaders claiming a new understanding of the enemy, or salvation.
Its in these years those of us who were still searching for our own, scientific explanation fell into despair and removed the S and P from the title and started calling our enemy as it truly was, as we were beginning to understand what it was. Death.
I used to love... well lovecraftian stories, eldritch beings and unfathomable entities that break the mind of those that behold it. I was chatting to a friend of mine about it when the realisation dawned on me.
We weren't fighting against some alien, or plague or something simple we could assign reasoning to. Assigning reasoning to it had us searching for patterns, like 8 in 1000 dying, those on small islands, noon strikes the toll, all those and more were patterns we could understand.
Instead of that what if we treated our enemy as a lovecraftion god of death. It made sense, the pattern was the lack of patterns but recurring. Let me explain, the patterns we had as mentioned was us trying to understand it, it points to a deliberate intelligent force, which it was. But the fact the pattern kept changing, seemingly on a whim meant that the intelligent force was changing its mind.
Its an entity that found our little world, when and where doesn't matter but it was responding to us trying to combat it. Whether as an elaborate form of communication, or attack or whatever its an unknowable entity and that entity name was death. And death... death apparently had a sense of humour.
Almost as soon as someone took up the mantle of cult leader they would be struck down within a day or two causing the whole cycle of new cult formation to begin again.
One would assure their flock if they but sang the praise of their new lord Death they would be spared only to be struck down instantly. Others would welcome death with open arms, thinking that they were being lead into a brilliant new world. We found compounds of these bodies, thousands with ricktus grins on their mummified faces.
Humans are pretty damn persistent though, we don't accept the inevitable and push kicking and screaming just as we came into this world. Various surviving groups would declare war and speed up the death toll, taking out members of these new religions as we.... more out of habit than any hope we could make things better... took records of the conflicts. There's a million of these things laying around and unfortunately for anyone reading this i... cant bring myself to care, with deaths advent i didn't need to read the roll call of the ones humans sent to the grave on top of deaths much more impressive list.
2027 came and its probably the last year any of us will still be alive. The breakdown of even the hint of civilisation has already occurred, no nations exist anywhere across this empty husk of a planet.
I sit writing this on the top of a skyscraper in new York, all... 40 of us left having quiet drinks, enjoying what time we have left, watching the satellites in orbit come raining down as the fires across what was once the USA.
I'm typing this, Henry, a good friend of mine says he made a machine that could maybe give another version of us a better chance at surviving. I think his full of shit, his insisting using quantum or whatever he can but... i think his doing it just to keep us busy as the world ends.
I decided to humour him and write this, maybe someone will read it and recognise the signs. Hell maybe they will do a better job combating death in their world than we did here. Because in this world.
DEATH WON