Chapter 372

The earth shook, soft at first, like the groan of a dying animal, then harder, the tremors starting to split the ground. Jace had been sleeping when it happened, but the moment he felt it, he woke. It was the kind of shaking that wasn't normal—this wasn't a quake, no, this was something else. Something worse.

He stood up from the couch, wiped his face with shaking hands, and went to the window. Outside, the sky was a sickly orange, not from the setting sun, but from the strange shift in the atmosphere. The horizon was black with a storm that hadn't been there moments ago, its fury growing by the second.

There was no noise, no warnings, no sign of what was coming. Just the earth groaning, the skies warping, and the sun dimming as if it knew it too had no place left in the world.

Jace stepped back from the window, his heart racing, his breaths sharp. Something ancient was waking. Something that should've stayed buried.

His phone buzzed on the table, and he grabbed it with a sense of urgency. A message from his sister, Mel.

"Jace, it's starting. They're waking up. We need to leave."

He stared at the message. Leave? Where would they go? The roads were already flooded. The towns, the cities—they'd all been overtaken by that same eerie storm. The world was changing, and not for the better. The old gods, the things that had slept beneath the earth for millennia, were finally waking up.

He wasn't sure how Mel knew. She had always been into the occult, the hidden knowledge, the things people didn't talk about. But how could she have known this? How could anyone know?

His mind raced, trying to make sense of the madness that had descended so quickly. The old gods were supposed to be myths. Stories. But now the signs were all there. The earth was split wide open, the sky was wrong, and there was an overwhelming, gnawing sense of dread in the air.

His sister had said it was starting. But what did that mean?

Another tremor shook the building, this one harder than the last. Jace could feel the concrete beneath him shift. He grabbed his bag from the floor, his fingers trembling as he threw in some clothes, a flashlight, and the half-empty bottle of water he'd been drinking earlier.

He rushed out of the apartment, running down the stairs, feeling each step beneath him as the ground groaned with unnatural force.

The door to the building swung open, revealing the street outside, now cracked and twisted like a broken mirror. The once-bustling city had turned into something else—a landscape of decay, of destruction.

Jace stepped out, his boots crunching on the broken pavement, the smell of sulfur and something sour in the air. A thick fog had begun to roll in from the horizon, swallowing everything in its path. People were running, too, but they weren't running toward anything. They were running in panic, aimless, as if they all knew there was no escape.

He reached his car and started it up, the engine sputtering as the vehicle jerked forward. He drove down streets that had been swallowed by the fog, the world around him growing darker with each passing second.

He tried calling Mel, but the call wouldn't go through. The towers were down, the signal was gone. His heart pounded. Where was she?

The road ahead was clear for a moment, but then the ground trembled again, and this time it felt different—stronger, more deliberate. The pavement cracked wide open, and from the fissure, an ancient howl erupted from deep within the earth. It wasn't an animal's cry. It wasn't human. It was the sound of something that had been slumbering for far too long, and now it was awake.

Jace slammed on the brakes, his car skidding to a halt just in time to avoid falling into the widening crack in the road. He looked out through the windshield, his eyes wide with horror as something massive rose from the earth.

It was difficult to describe—shapes that defied comprehension, limbs that weren't quite limbs, faces that weren't quite faces. They were nothing human, nothing even remotely familiar, but they had been here before. They had always been here, waiting for the right time to awaken.

The ground beneath him shifted again, and Jace could hear the cries of other people as they fled. The fog grew thicker, swirling around the monstrous forms that now dotted the landscape. There were hundreds, thousands of them, their massive bodies rippling with an ancient, terrifying power. Their eyes were pools of blackness, voids that swallowed everything in their path.

Jace put the car into reverse and slammed on the gas, but the road seemed to move under him. He wasn't sure if he was driving toward something or away from it, but every turn led him deeper into the chaos.

His phone buzzed again. Another message from Mel.

"They're coming. They know you're there. Don't look at them, Jace. Don't look."

His hands gripped the steering wheel. His mind raced. What did she mean, "they know you're there"? What was he supposed to do?

He glanced up, and that was the moment the world truly cracked open.

In the distance, a figure emerged from the fog. It was tall—unnaturally tall—and covered in something that looked like ancient stone, worn smooth by centuries of erosion. Its eyes were pure black, like deep pits that pulled in the very light around them.

Jace tried to turn the car, but his body felt heavy, as if it were being dragged toward the figure. He fought against it, his foot slamming down on the pedal, but the car only slid closer.

The figure reached out, its massive hand coming down on the car with terrifying speed. The glass of the windshield shattered with an awful screech, and for a moment, everything went silent.

Jace's breath was ragged, his heart pounding in his chest. He turned his head to look at the figure, and as his eyes met its, a flood of memories hit him—memories not his own, memories of things that shouldn't be remembered.

He saw the rise and fall of empires, the deaths of civilizations, the slaughter of billions. He saw the gods themselves, their faces twisted with rage, their voices echoing through the void, calling the end of everything.

The figure's hand wrapped around the car like a vice, and with a sudden pull, the world flipped upside down.

Jace screamed, but the sound didn't escape. His vision blurred as the car was torn apart, the metal bending and cracking like paper. His body was thrown against the seat, and then the floor, and then, impossibly, against the ceiling as the world spun.

The last thing he saw was the giant, black eyes of the god staring down at him, the face impossibly close, and the feeling of time stretching, of nothingness encroaching.

And then, it was over.

Jace wasn't dead. Not yet.

He woke up, not in the car, but in a place far worse.

It was a pit. A dark pit, surrounded by walls that pulsed with energy—thick and suffocating. His chest was heavy, his body aching, as if it had been crushed and put back together in the wrong way. He could hear the sounds of others—muffled, distant cries of people trapped in the same hell he was.

But what was worse was the thing standing before him. It was smaller than the ones that had risen, but no less terrifying. Its face was covered in the same black, stone-like texture as the rest, but there was something else in its eyes—something like hunger.

Jace wanted to scream, but his throat was raw, his mouth dry. The figure reached down, its hand large and pale against the darkness, and grabbed his arm. The touch burned, like fire and ice at the same time.

"You were warned," it said, though the words were not words at all. They were thoughts, seeping into his mind, pulling at his soul. "And now, you are ours."

The last thing Jace felt was the weight of his existence being ripped away, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but the cold, empty void.

The old gods had risen. And they had come for him. For everyone.