Chapter 285

The world had known natural disasters before, but nothing like this. It began as a whisper of a storm off the coast of the Azores. A hurricane, massive enough to send ripples through the atmosphere, was tracked as it churned across the Atlantic. The first reports called it "unprecedented." They were wrong. It was something much worse.

It started growing, twisting unnaturally. The winds reached speeds no one had seen before, higher than the most violent tornadoes ever documented. The sky turned an odd, unnatural shade of gray. Satellites picked up the tornado's size: twenty times the size of the Earth. Twenty times. Impossible, yet there it was.

It wasn't just a storm. It was a living thing, consuming everything in its path.

Jacob had been one of the first to notice the shift. He lived in a small coastal town on the outskirts of New England, a place where storms were common but never devastating. He had watched the news reports, watched with a cold sense of disbelief as the tornado reached for the heavens, larger than any living thing he could comprehend.

A part of him thought it would turn around, that it would dissipate like so many others. But the sky didn't change. The winds only grew louder. He saw it then, a dark, swirling vortex that stretched down from the clouds and curled around itself like a beast with no end. The horizon twisted.

The world began its slow descent into panic, though no one could truly prepare for it. Governments scrambled to formulate plans that didn't exist. They tried to evacuate, but there was nowhere to go. The oceans churned with such fury that escape was a farce. Even the air felt different now, like it had been touched by something untouchable.

Jacob had always been the kind of man who could find comfort in logic. The universe was cruel, but it made sense, didn't it? The tornado, though, made no sense.

It was impossible for something so colossal to exist. Impossible, yet it hovered above the Atlantic like a malevolent eye, always watching. With each passing day, it moved closer to the east coast. Jacob had moved inland, but not far enough. The news was filled with terrifying reports of cities lost, but the tornado just kept going.

One night, as he sat in his modest house, staring out at the stars that no longer twinkled, the power went out. Everything went silent. There was no sound of birds, no rustling of trees in the wind. Not even the hum of the streetlights. Just the deafening quiet. His heart pounded. He could feel it—the tornado's presence. Like a giant, unseen fist curling around the Earth.

His phone buzzed. An emergency broadcast. Jacob's fingers trembled as he reached for it. The government was telling people to stay inside, to hunker down. But there was nothing to hunker down from. What were walls against something like this?

By morning, everything outside had taken on an eerie, impossible calm. The sky, no longer a normal color, felt heavy, like something was pressing down on it. Jacob stepped outside, the ground beneath his feet soft, as if it had already been eroded by the tornado's wind, and looked toward the horizon.

It was there. The massive, spinning mass of clouds and debris that reached so high it consumed the heavens. Even from miles away, he could hear the low growl of the winds, howling relentlessly like a chorus of ghosts, the tornado itself reaching out with fingers that seemed to stretch farther than the world could bear. It was coming. It was always coming.

By noon, the wind began to pick up, a faint howling sound at first, followed by a pressure that squeezed the air. The streets grew empty as people took shelter, but there was no safety. No building, no place to hide. Jacob retreated to the basement of his home, huddling in a corner, watching as the air outside darkened further.

The first scream came at dusk. It sounded far off, a wild, raw sound that tore through the silence. It was followed by others, louder now, shrill and desperate, as the winds began to roar. The tornado had reached land.

The ground trembled underfoot. Jacob's heart raced, each thud of it a reminder of how little time there was left. He didn't want to go outside, but the screams grew louder, mixed with the groaning of collapsing structures.

He crawled up the stairs, his breath shallow, and peered through the cracked window. The tornado had descended so low now, it was almost touching the ground. The winds churned the trees into splinters, and the ocean, dark and wild, had begun to churn up waves that crashed against the shore with a violence that seemed unreal.

He couldn't tear his eyes away from it. The destruction wasn't just happening to buildings or trees. It was tearing apart the very land. The earth was crumbling, sinking under the sheer weight of the tornado's winds.

He could see it now—black, monstrous clouds swirling, and within it, lightning arced in strange patterns, as though it had become a living thing, something sentient, almost mocking the fragile nature of humanity.

Jacob didn't know how much time passed. He sat there, glued to the window, as the world outside died. The tornado's mass twisted and writhed, unrelenting. And as night fell, the winds howled louder. They were close now. Closer than he ever could have imagined.

He turned back to the basement. His knees buckled under him as he collapsed in a corner. The tornado wasn't just a force of nature; it was something more. It had become a thing of legend, something that defied the very rules of physics. Jacob had learned, too late, that nothing could stop it.

Then, the sky cracked.

There was no sound at first. Not even the winds. The ground, however, vibrated with a terrible, low rumble. The earth itself seemed to shudder under the strain of the beast that hovered above. Jacob grabbed his head, pressing his hands into his ears, but it wasn't enough.

The noise that followed—the roar of something breaking free from the heavens—shook him to his core. The tornado expanded, a blinding flash of light erupted, and then everything was lost.

The roof of his house tore off like paper. Wood splintered, and concrete cracked, flying in all directions. Jacob's body was ripped from the ground, tossed like a ragdoll in the chaos. He didn't have time to scream.

The last thing he saw was the tornado's center, a massive eye of nothingness, pulling in everything in its path, a vortex that consumed both matter and spirit alike.

And then the world turned to dust.

Jacob had hoped, like everyone else, that maybe the world would fight back, that somehow this nightmare would be just that—something that could be shaken off. But the tornado didn't care for hope. It didn't care for anyone.

When the storm finally passed, the land was unrecognizable. Cities were gone. The oceans had swallowed coastlines whole. And in the distance, in the heart of what remained, the tornado spun still, its size unfathomable, a reminder that the end wasn't sudden—it was slow, inevitable, and merciless.

Jacob's name was lost to the winds, along with the billions of others who had died, hoping for something that would never come.