The light vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. For a brief moment, nothing happened. People simply stood there, confused, staring toward the sky and waiting for an explanation that never came. Then the screaming started. Cars drifted into sidewalks without drivers behind the wheel. Traffic lights continued cycling above abandoned intersections. Somewhere in the distance, something exploded. Phones began ringing endlessly. Across the world, people turned toward empty spaces where someone had been standing only seconds before. A husband reached for his wife and found only her clothes. A child called for their father and received no answer. Entire crowds looked around in growing panic as they slowly realized the same horrifying truth. People were gone.
Mildred Rossi had spent her entire life preparing for disasters. Magical disasters, political disasters, the kind of catastrophes that came from reckless experiments, ancient curses, unstable rituals, or powerful beings that humanity had been foolish enough to disturb. She had seen cities threatened by supernatural conflicts. She had watched witches argue over power, ideology, and tradition for decades. She had witnessed the consequences of people reaching beyond what they understood.
But never this.
Never something so impossible that her first instinct was not to fight. It was to understand. The command center was overflowing with voices. Governments were calling for information. Military forces were demanding answers. Emergency responders were trying to locate survivors. Witches were attempting every detection spell they knew.
And yet every answer led to the same conclusion.
Something had happened. Something had taken place across the entire world. And nobody understood what. Mildred stood among several of the most influential witches from across the globe, looking over the reports being sent from different regions. The situation was unlike anything she had ever seen.
At first, everyone assumed it was an attack. An invasion. A weapon. Something. Anything. Because the alternative was too absurd. But the evidence kept piling up. And every piece of evidence made less sense than the last.
The streets had become graveyards of abandoned vehicles. Cars sat motionless in the middle of intersections, many with their doors still hanging open and their engines idling until they eventually ran dry. Public transportation had collapsed almost instantly as operators vanished without warning, while emergency vehicles remained scattered throughout cities with no one left behind the wheel. The worst, however, were the planes. Pilots disappeared in the middle of flights, sending aircraft crashing into oceans, empty fields, and city outskirts. Airports across the world fell eerily silent, transformed within minutes into collections of lifeless machines with no one left to guide them.
Yet none of it was as unsettling as what had been left behind. Clothes. Thousands upon thousands of them, scattered across sidewalks, offices, restaurants, homes, and busy streets as though their owners had simply ceased to exist in the middle of whatever they had been doing. A dog refused to leave a pile of clothing lying beside the curb, barking endlessly at the empty space where its owner had stood only moments earlier. Everywhere people looked, they found the same thing, abandoned belongings, fading warmth, and silent proof that someone had been there.
Until they suddenly weren't anymore.
Mildred remained silent as report after report continued arriving across the Hall of Witches. At first, everyone had assumed the disappearances were completely random. There was no reason to believe otherwise. The light had engulfed the entire planet, and in the confusion that followed, nobody had been thinking about patterns. They had been thinking about survival. About restoring communications. About rescuing those caught in collapsing buildings and crashed vehicles. But the more information arrived from different countries, the harder it became to ignore that something wasn't adding up. Entire governments had begun comparing records, magical organizations were exchanging information faster than ever before, and a pattern slowly began to emerge. It was subtle at first. Easy to dismiss as coincidence. Until it wasn't.
"The missing reports have now been confirmed from multiple continents," one of the witches announced, her voice noticeably less steady than when the meeting had begun. "We're seeing the same thing everywhere."
Mildred finally looked up from the growing mountain of documents spread across the table.
"How many?"
The witch hesitated, glancing down at the latest figures before answering.
"...Too many."
The room fell silent. She swallowed before continuing.
"But there's something else."
Mildred already knew she wasn't going to like whatever came next.
"The disappearances... aren't affecting everyone as you have noticed Mistress."
Several heads immediately turned toward the speaker.
"What do you mean?"
Without another word, the witch placed a newly compiled report onto the table. Mildred reached for it, scanning page after page as her expression slowly hardened. Locations. Population statistics. Missing persons reports. Emergency broadcasts. Government records. Every nation was reporting the same impossible trend. The overwhelming majority of those who had vanished were Barebloods. Not every Bareblood had disappeared, but enough of them had that coincidence was no longer a reasonable explanation. Nobody around the table spoke. They couldn't. There was no spell in recorded history capable of something like this, no ancient curse, no magical phenomenon that selectively erased millions of people while leaving everyone else untouched. The only certainty was that whatever had happened had done so intentionally.
"The remaining Bareblood governments are demanding answers," another witch reported quietly.
Mildred closed the folder and set it back onto the table.
"Then we find them."
The investigation stretched on for hours. Every surviving Bareblood authority was contacted. Government databases were searched. Magical archives that had remained sealed for centuries were opened. Ancient records were translated. Every possibility, no matter how absurd, was considered. Yet every lead ended exactly the same way, with nothing. No warning. No enemy. No ritual. No evidence that could explain how millions of people had simply disappeared from the face of the Earth. Then one location appeared in nearly every report, drawing everyone's attention for the same reason.
The Vatican.
The updates arrived cautiously, almost reluctantly, as though those delivering them hoped someone would interrupt and tell them they were mistaken. But nobody did. The city wasn't destroyed. It hadn't been attacked. There were no signs of battle, no collapsed buildings, no fires, no bodies. It was simply... empty. The churches still stood. The streets remained untouched. Religious relics, monuments, and centuries of history were exactly where they had always been. The people, however, were gone. Every priest. Every guard. Every worker. Every visitor. It was as though life itself had quietly walked away and forgotten to take the buildings with it.
Mildred stared at the transmitted images longer than she realized. Something about them unsettled her in a way she couldn't explain. Places that had once been filled with voices and movement now looked frozen in time, as if the world had paused without asking permission. She was about to ask for another search of the surrounding districts when a strange sensation crept through the room.
Several witches instinctively reached for their staffs while others turned toward the windows. Even the magical instruments scattered throughout the command center began behaving erratically, their readings fluctuating without explanation. The lights flickered once. Then again.
Mildred, without saying a word, she walked outside.
Across the city, thousands of others were already doing the same. People emerged from buildings, abandoned vehicles, and crowded shelters, all looking toward the heavens for reasons they couldn't quite explain.
Something was there.
Above the clouds.
Watching.
And then the sky itself changed. A face slowly revealed itself across the heavens, not descending from above nor breaking through the clouds, but simply existing as though it had always been there and reality had only now remembered to acknowledge it. It was so unimaginably vast that the tallest skyscrapers beneath it seemed insignificant, little more than pebbles beneath a mountain. Its eyes remained closed, its expression unreadable, while a halo unlike anything found in religious paintings surrounded its head. There was nothing gentle about it. No warmth. No comfort. The ring resembled countless thorn-like rays piercing outward into space, each one glowing with an intensity that made it painful to stare at for too long.
Nobody moved. Nobody dared to speak. Every instinct Mildred possessed screamed the same warning.
This isn't human or any of the supernaturals of the world.
It isn't something you reason with.
Run.
Fight.
Hide.
Do something.
Yet as she stood beneath that impossible gaze, she realized none of those choices seemed to matter anymore. The face remained perfectly still for several long seconds before its lips finally moved.
When it spoke, the voice did not descend from the heavens. It came from everywhere. From the wind. From the ground beneath their feet. From the air filling their lungs. It echoed through cities, mountains, forests, and oceans alike until every living soul still remaining on Earth heard the same words at exactly the same moment.
"Undesirable pests. Unfit to be even used for our glorious kingdom."
The voice faded, but the silence it left behind was somehow even heavier. For the first time in recorded history, humanity understood one terrifying truth. They were not alone. They never had been. And whatever had finally revealed itself to the world had not come as a visitor. It had come as something far worse.