End, The

The year is 2004. The Day of Judgment has dawned and the Lord God did separate the wheat from the chaff, the sinners from the virtuous, the damned from the saved. One-hundred forty-four thousand souls felt the Rapture that was the touch of God Almighty and were assumed into Heaven. Then came the Day of Reckoning. Those who had marked their heads, hands and hearts with the Mark of the Beast were cast into the Lake of Fire. Los Angeles, the modern Babylon, was torn from the land and swallowed by the sea. Mankind's lordship over the beasts of the Earth has been shriven from him. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were loosed upon the unrighteous. The Great Beast was given free reign to roam the wastelands of the world, and a third of the stars were torn from the heavens by the wings of Michael the Archangel. In the end, Death claimed almost every human that lived.

Then things went horribly wrong. God's hand fell upon the dust that was neither wheat nor chaff. There were people in this brave age that had neither chosen God nor His Adversary. The risen Christ could not damn them for their sins, nor could they enter the Kingdom. So the Lord of Hosts hardened his heart to their cries, and left them to the clay in which they had placed their faith. The Archangels cast down the last of the Demon- spawn and withdrew forever into Heaven. God's greatest creation, Man, was finally left to his own devices. They have many names: The Meek, The Forsaken, The Unrepentant, and The Lost. The Meek have inherited the Earth... forever and ever, Amen. Still, upon the corpse of civilization there are those who will not surrender. They gather strength enough to remake the world, a world made in Man's image. Perhaps it will be a better world, a fine and loving place to die in.