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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT put a ring on it
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
THE STORIES TURNED out to be right. The world, when it ended, did indeed go down with a bang.
It was circular, Nadine supposed. The universe sprung into existence with the Big Bang; it was only fitting that it would be taken out in the same way. A perfect cycle of nothing to nothing. As if there was never existence in the first place. As if there was ever only oblivion.
Well, almost oblivion.
Against all odds, the Hotel Obsidian remained standing. No, not just standing—in perfect condition. While every other skyscraper in what remained of the city (which was really just a floating hunk of rock, now) was crumbled and burning, everyone within dead or swallowed up, the Hotel Obsidian wasn't even scratched. There was something... cosmic that kept it upright, even as everything else fell. Not just half the world, this time. All of the world... except a few stubborn assholes in a hotel.
Nadine should've been dead. Really, properly dead this time, not like she'd thought before. In a twisted replica of the first apocalypse, the Sparrow Academy had crumbled around her. Chunks of the wall flaking off and then disappearing, ceiling tiles crashing down on her head, explosions shaking the foundation... that should've been it. The kugelblitz had burst free, it was eating everything, and would leave nothing behind in its wake. The Umbrella Academy and the Sparrow Academy had truly, properly failed. Now, there was nothing they could do.
Yet, somehow, with the world quite literally on fire around them, nine bruised, battered individuals managed to make their escape.
Of course, Fei and Christopher hadn't been so lucky.
And neither had Kadence, really. Nadine had known something was wrong the moment the woman began to scream, convulsing on the floor, her eyes rolling back in her head. She'd immediately panicked, because she may not have liked Kadence but didn't want her to die right here, on the cold bathroom floor. But then she'd wondered if this was a symptom of the kugelblitz, and that, of course, had been the moment explosions began to wrack the house.
She'd had no choice. Even with her side beginning to ache again, she had to hoist Kadence into her arms and pull her away.
What proceeded was frenzied, showing up in Nadine's memories only in patches. She remembered running downstairs, but not bursting out the front door. She remembered coughing madly at the thick haze of smoke in the air, but not how she'd started breathing again. She remembered Kadence suddenly in Luther's arms, but not passing her over.
Then, the Hotel Obsidian. Which somehow managed to remain exactly the same.
