Chapter Text
2019, Proper Human History
The Shadow Boarder raced across the frozen wastes of Antarctica away from the ruined base that had sheltered them throughout various adventures across human history. Within the large vehicle was a small number of brave heroes of the Chaldea Security Organisation, those few that were left, at least.
Over the white, empty vastness of the icy wastes the Boarder surged towards the ocean, tet in that moment, none of those within focused upon their narrow escape or the difficulties to come, rather they gazed beyond the windows of the vehicle at the impossibility that they saw.
Seven stars falling to earth, falling straight downwards in defiance of the normal trajectories of falling celestial objects. Each descended in a slow, languid manner belying the actual speed that they thundered towards the ground.
Little did Chaldea know yet, but when each of those stars made inevitably contact the ground, they would begin to overwrite the very surface of the world itself with a new history.
Ahead of the group were abundant adventures, the friends made and lost along the way and the beginning of a new Grand Order.
"Senpai, look!"
It was abrupt, indeed, had one not seen it then it would have gone unnoticed by almost all.
Of the seven stars, only six hit the earth.
2019, Unknown space
Kirschtaria Wodime was a man who had hardly expected for everything to necessarily proceed smoothly at the onset of this operation.
In this world, things rarely did, and on the face of it, that was one of the reasons for the Alien God to create multiple Trees of Emptiness. Even had one or two of them in some way been destroyed upon its descent, there would still be others that would survive.
But Kirschtaria’s own past had demonstrated abundantly that one could never expect things to go perfectly.
The seemingly smooth progression of his life as heir to a one-thousand-year-old Magus lineage, which should have seen him succeed to the title of family head in his mid-teens, had almost been cut short by the actions of his father. Were it not for humans acting in amazing ways when faced with such unexpected developments, then they would never have reached this point in their existence.
That small boy had done the incredible for him, without Pino, he would have died and all those careful plans of both his grandfather and himself would have been all for nothing, failing at a solitary hurdle early in life.
So some small degree of things going off the rails had been expected.
Chaldea, the primary threat to the entire goal of the Crypter’s plan had been able to escape through a near miraculous series of events that should never have been able to occur… But he struggled to begrudge such.
The enormity of the challenge that the group was facing meant that he could focus on the real question at hand, namely---
"What do you mean, one of the Seed’s disappeared?" he asked, raising a brow.
"I mean exactly what I'm saying; only six have taken root, one of them just went up and, poof! Disappeared completely," Scandinavia Peperoncino replied, and for all of the feminine man’s normal levity there was just a hint of confusion.
How could a Seed disappear?
There had been no flash of light or obvious sign of its destruction, even if such a thing should be next to impossible, given the bleaching of the Earth surface…
Wodime thumbed the top of his cane, which had been sat beside his throne.
The other Crypter’s, all present in person or in projected image were silent.
"It matters not. This changes little, even with six Lostbelt’s, the plan continues unabated. The Tree's of Emptiness have already taken root and the world rewritten. The Felling Theoretical Phenomenon is complete, and the beginning of a new history for the planet commences," he declared.
There was nods around that grand table, the six members of the Crypters present occupied their seats... and yet---
"... But with the disappearance of a Lostbelt, one of our own has gone with it. Perhaps it was to be expected, there was one for each of us, after all, it only fits that they would disappear alongside their Seed..."
Another long silence.
Wodime shook off the faint melancholy that had settled upon his shoulders. In this moment, as the head of the Crypter's, he had an image to present.
… He remembered their own simulated journey through the Incineration of Humanity, he had been right by their side---
"I am sure that the Alien God has it within its powers to return both our fellow and the Lostbelt in question to its rightful place. Perhaps the fox woman would be willing to look into the matter, given her... interesting habit of popping in and out as she wishes. Let us put aside the matter aside for the moment and focus on the growth of our respective Tree's of Emptiness, and I shall conduct investigations into our missing fellow in the meantime."
If nothing else... the majority of the plan had gone smoothly.
He just hoped that his fellow Crypter was safe.
2011, ‘Earth Bet’
In the sky above the earth, a star appeared from nothingness and fell.
Displaced in time and space, removed from the bleached timeline onto which it was intended to fall, it still descended upon the world as if nothing had happened.
The phenomenon was observed by many, although without sufficient time for anyone to take action or to stop it.
A golden figure paused in his efforts helping the victims of an earthquake, and the Shard network as a whole took notice of the falling object. It was alien in some way, it was something that didn't belong to this planet, which the Entity as a whole had gone to such efforts to lock off from outside influences.
The planets self-defence systems had been compromised and locked down so that they could not interfere with the cycle, so what was this falling star?
It was something that the Network did not recognise at all, in the seconds before the star collided with the ground there was nothing that could be done to stop it.
Within a moment of touching the earth it expanded, a great storm wall expanded from the impact point like an explosion, claiming the very earth over which it moved. In those first few hours the storm expanded hundreds of miles, far faster than anybody in its way could escape, and it would continue to expand after that, even if the larger it grew the more the rate of its expansion slowed.
Within that space a new history began to overlap what had been there before, washing away what had been there before with something new.
The various humans captured within that expanding storm wall could only watch, helpless, as the very world around them changed into something new. The environment, the climate and culture eroded away and replaced with something they had never seen before, and likely could never even imagine in the first place.
In just a minute, tens of millions of people had been trapped within the new history that was imposed upon the surface of the planet.
Even as the first panicked reports began to issue in to various governments, the nascent Lostbelt was born.