1 Birth of a New Age

Loud footsteps could be heard from outside the classrooms. A student, who wore just plain clothes, dragged his feet across the wooden floorboards of the highschool's hallways. He was fourteen years old, and also happened to heavily dislike school as a whole.

"Haaa…"

"I'm so tired!" He moaned, dragging his feet even more, "Why did my mom just have to have a go at me, so early in the morning?!"

The young teen made his way to his first class of the day unenthusiastically, with his footsteps echoing throughout the school hallways so much that it got irritating very quickly. This young teen's name was Arthur West, a diminutive and fair-skinned teenager, with tousled hair that seems to have a mind of its own.

His piercing, green eyes, just like hidden emeralds, held a depth of curiosity and mischief. But despite his slightly small stature, there was an undeniable charm to him. He was quite quick on the uptake sometimes, yet stupid some other times. He was just an average highschool student.

However, though he was just a bored highschool student, though he already thought of school to be tiresome, he begrudgingly took the school bus all the way there.

He was in a sour mood, and mostly because he hated his highschool, though, it was also because his parents, his mom especially, yelled at him over the subject of "detention".

And, that was exactly why he hated school. Because it was boring. Highschool was totally boring — even as an average highschool student. Sometimes he'd even wish that an apocalypse could happen, so he could have some fun in his life for once.

Anyways, he dragged himself to his first class of the day, on the third floor of the huge, modernised school building — but, to almost every freshman's surprise, it was quite an enormous building, built with sleek, polished marble and thick glass walls.

This school looked more like a museum than an actual school, once you saw its absolutely massive and magnificent facilities.

"Heh. Heh. Heh."

He obviously bored, since he was sort of having fun planting his foot on the ground as hard as he could, even though it was around this time that lessons would've already started, and he was creating a very loud ruckus.

He was always nagged by his parents, to always, always "value his education" and "listen to his teachers", just because he goes to a 'prestigious' highschool.

"It's not like I get into trouble so often," Arthur grumbled, kicking his feet, "It was only one time!"

He then frowned and slumped his back, staring at a few of the green or red lockers as he walked past, which had visible marks or scratches on them.

"I can't imagine how many times Alexander's shoved someone into a locker before," Arthur said, "He still gets angry when I call him Other Alex." He smirked, letting a little snarky smile slip through.

"I'm definitely already late, but I guess I should speed up my pace since I don't want to get barraged with useless words again once I'm really late."

Arthur's mouth curled upwards to form a little smile, as if that was funny to him, and he began to speed up his pace. He dashed through the hallway, ran up the tall stairs, and took it slowly from there.

That was because he saw Bella Storm, his longtime crush, through the classroom window. She was also sitting next to Thomas Katz and chatting to him, since their teacher wasn't there yet. Thomas Katz, who also happened to be a friend of Bella, was a person Arthur knew not so much.

Arthur could only describe Bella Storm as a radiant individual with cascading, sun-kissed blonde hair that glistened like spun gold.

With her captivating golden eyes reflecting warmth and kindness, perfectly complementing her infectious, bright smile that lights up any room, Arthur fell in love instantly.

Thomas Katz, however, was a lad with effortlessly cool short silver hair that adds a touch of uniqueness to his appearance. His striking green eyes gleamed with curiosity — contrasting beautifully against his tan skin.

For some reason, there was an air of quiet confidence about him, making his presence subtly captivating; to others, at least. But not to Arthur, because he was too busy hating on Thomas for being so close to Bella.

Arthur exaggerated a sigh, and then did a quick wave to Bella before leaving. He didn't see it, but Bella had noticed him at the classroom's window, and she giggled to herself slightly, and waved right back.

He dashed through the hallways like never before, just simply staring at Bella giving him new wings, and as soon as the door to the classroom was in view, he began full on sprinting for no reason at all.

Unexpectedly, once he reached the classroom window, he saw that the teacher wasn't even in the classroom yet. He entered, his footsteps quickly becoming hushed by the raucous students who were running rampant inside the classroom.

He now had a big grin now plastered on his face, as he walked over to to his bestfriend, Alex Godfrey, who was sitting at the farthest end of the room.

Alex seemed to be sleeping, since he was facedown with his arms sprawled around himself on his desk.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"Hey." Arthur repeated, poking Alex relentlessly.

"Heyy. Heyyy."

"…Stop." Alex responded to the poking, annoyed profusely,

"Stop poking me."

Alex Godfrey was quite a laid-back young fellow sporting effortlessly cool, blonde tousled hair. His warm brown eyes almost immediately reveal his relaxed demeanor, perfectly matching his very, very casual clothes that effortlessly radiate a carefree aura.

Whether it's a worn-in t-shirt or comfy jeans, his style always reflected his slightly easygoing attitude towards life.

"Where's the teacher?"

"Why the heck would I know?" Alex retorted, "I'm trying to get some extra hours of sleep in."

"You're hopeless." Arthur sighed, and Alex responded with a muffled, "…Shut up."

A cacophony of laughter and shocked cries could be heard from the other side of the room, and they weren't even trying to keep quiet. Arthur noticed that the noise was coming from a group was crowded around someone with a phone.

"I bet this isn't true!"

"But the evidence is right there!"

"But how could the sky be…!"

Arthur, interested, walked up to them and asked, "What's happening here?"

"Oh, er…"

The person holding the phone, a short guy named Tomas Bailey, diverted his eyes for a short moment out of nervousness, but proceeded to let Arthur look. From the screen on his phone, Arthur saw something pretty weird.

"Cracks appear in the sky? Students and teachers are told to stay home until the cause of this is discovered…?" Arthur repeated after a news report, as his face scrunched up in confusion.

He suddenly felt a sharp pain through his head and although it went away after a few seconds, an eerie sensation overcame him.

"Yeah," Tomas said, "Apparently cracks are opening up in the sky."

"No… no way…" Arthur said, his lips curling up to form a little grin, "We're finally gonna get powers!"

He said this sarcastically, but he may have also believed it. But, he had no way to be sure, unless…

A couple of people were already at the window, staring at the sky in both fear and wonder, and he could already tell from their expressions that the news report seemed to have held the truth.

Arthur took a few steps towards the window, and even from there, he could see the the empty colours of the void swirling in the skies.

It was unlike anything he had ever seen before.

"How… how the hell??? Is this even possible?!" Arthur cried out, confused as fuck, "The sky definitely wasn't cracking while I was heading to school this morning!"

"Holy shit."

Arthur went back over to Alex to nudge him, and he woke up swinging.

"Huh??? Stop… stop shaking me!!" Alex yelled, "What's going on??"

"Look… look outside the window."

Alex, still unable to realise what was going on, did as Arthur asked and looked outside.

"Holy… holy shit! What the hell??"

"Yeah."

"Wait, wait! How the hell is this possible? What the hell's going on?!"

"I don't know," Arthur replied, "But, we might die."

"Die?! Like, right now?!"

Alex, fearing the worst, took his phone out of his pocket to find out more details about what the hell was going on, and Arthur did so too. It was made apparent by then that everyone was freaking out.

"The sky… the sky's disappearing!" Alex cried out, yelling out the same exact words he was typing on his internet browser, and the results were catastrophic.

People were preaching and repenting as if this was the end, some other people had decided to end their own lives before 'whatever was at the other side of the sky' got them, and some other people were already taking advantage of the chaos to loot and steal and kill. Arthur's heart dropped, and he really started to panic.

"My mom and dad… they haven't called me once…" Arthur whispered, his expression that of pure worry.

"I pray that my parents are safe…"

Our of nowhere, somebody cried out, "The sky's been ripped open!" Causing Arthur to jolt in shock.

Arthur rushed over to the windows outside yet again to see large chunks of the sky missing, and it was just like he was staring at a giant floating void in the sky.

"…"

Arthur's heart was beating his his heart, so hard that he feared that it could jump out of his chest. His thoughts were doing the exact opposite of calming him down. Instead, he was only making his own fears worse.

Bang!

The door swung open, and closed behind two people. To Arthur's surprise, was Thomas and Bella.

"W-wait… why did… why did you two come here?" Alex asked, not in a much better state than Arthur.

"She insisted on coming here, so I just followed," Thomas said, pointing a finger at her, to which she replied,

"Shh!"

"I just wanted to… to see if you were okay!" Bella said, "Do you know what's going on? All of the new articles I've seen so far are panicking about this."

"I don't know… I don't know either," Arthur replied, "The… the sky's disappearing, and we're all going to die."

"No… I'm sure that we won't die..." Thomas said, "We need to remain hopeful in this situation."

"But, but how?!" Alex cried out, his tone of voice sounding less shocked than he actually was.

*THUMP*

They all felt shivers on their skin at once, and Bella jumped in fright.

"What… what was that?!"

"GGGGGRRRRRRRTAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!"

A roar. A single roar.

A single roar made their blood run cold. A single roar made terror seep into their bones.

Screams of terror followed that roar not too soon afterwards, and the sound of agonising shrieks and screams and the horrific anguish of flesh being torn apart made them all freeze up instinctively.

They didn't have the instinct to fight or even run, because this instilled only one thought into each and every single one of the minds inside that classroom.

"Death is coming."