They always said the world would end in fire, or ice, or maybe some virus cooked up in a lab.
Turns out, it was a rock.
A really, really big rock.
Figures.
Lior Darnell was twenty-one years old.
He delivered pizzas for a living, on a bike two potholes away from falling apart; he lived in an apartment whose ceiling leaked when it drizzled.
Life was already a joke.
The only thing that kept him going was the simple dream of making it to his twenty-second birthday, maybe buying himself a cake, maybe drinking a cheap beer.
Nothing fancy.
Nothing heroic.
Then the broadcast came.
Some scientist — poor bastard must've been drunk out of his mind — announced that a meteor three times bigger than Earth was about to smack them into cosmic dust.
Impact time?
About fifty minutes.
No room for bargaining.
No secret escape plans.
No 'hidden bunkers for the chosen ones.'
(Okay, maybe those rich pricks had bunkers. Good luck to them.)
For the rest of humanity?
Toast.
Lior had been mid-delivery, holding a double cheese pepperoni in his arms, when the news broke.
And when he called the customer to cancel, the guy simply said: "Still bring the pizza. I'm hungry."
'That was humanity for you. Oblivious to the end.'
He should've sat down. Maybe cried. Maybe prayed to whatever god was still listening.
Instead, he just laughed — a dry, broken thing that didn't even sound human anymore.
Then — the sky cracked open.
A blinding white pillar slammed into the ground, somewhere downtown, carving the clouds apart like tissue paper.
Everyone stopped.
Even the looters.
Even the murderers.
Even Lior.
And then the voice came.
Deep. Cold. Indifferent.
"Ascend to the top floor. Secure your survival."
A Tower?
What Tower?
Was this some cosmic joke?
Lior didn't have answers.
All he knew was that the ground split beneath his feet, and suddenly, the air tasted sharp — like iron and storms.
Like fate itself had decided to roll the dice one last time.
And somehow, somehow, he knew one thing:
If he wanted to live — really live —
He had to climb.
Higher than anyone.
Faster than anyone.
Smarter than anyone.
Because the Tower didn't care about dreams.
It didn't care about pity.
It only cared about survival.
And Lior?
He wasn't ready to die yet.
Not without a goddamn slice of cake.