It started with a rumble, deep underground. The pressure which had been building up for weeks, occasionally cracking, finally grew to be too much for the continental plate.

  The rumble continued up through the layers of rock and dirt, spreading north and south through a fault line, until it reached the top. Silence. For three and a half seconds.

  And then, like a stick bent too far, it snapped.

  Boulders the size of houses were shot so far up into the air they left the atmosphere. Some burned up on their way out, most disintegrated as gravity caught them and pulled them back down, but a few remained in orbit.

  Sonic booms filled the air, and forests were flattened in seconds. Every living thing within miles of the split died instantly from the force of the air rushing down. Birds in flight, rodents in underground burrows, insects of all kinds, everything.

  And then the ground began shaking.

  Magma pushed itself up through the crack, lubricating the break, making the smaller eastern part of the continental plate slide upwards easier. Lava rushed out over the western part, setting fire to the world before it was all covered. The eastern part rose and continued rising, being pushed by the ocean plate.

  The movement lasted eighteen minutes and fifty-three seconds. A blink of an eye, in terms of normal geological timeframes.

  For the people living there, those one thousand, one hundred and thirty-three seconds felt like each moment lasted a year.

  On the eastern piece of the continental plate, not a single building remained standing. No wall remained upright. Trees exploded from the movement. Cliffs flattened. Water vaporized. Bones shattered. Eardrums burst. Lungs collapsed.

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  The Watcher of Tiros… watched. She waited until the earthquake faded away, and then took a deep breath, trying to sense a single mind still alive on that part of the planet.

  There was none.

  Not a single soul had survived.

  Thus, the requirement had been met.

  Bonnie stretched her arms out, focusing on the globe below her. Gold magic covered the ground, spreading out down the new volcanic mountain range, over rivers and lakes and forests and plains and beaches. She was careful to not touch the planet itself beyond the very top layer of soil, leaving the tectonic plates where they’d settled.

  Flinching a bit at the expenditure of mana, Goddess Bonnie, Watcher of Tiros, turned back time.

  It felt like a dozen needles stabbed into her chest, and every second added a dozen more. The first handful were fine. The first hundred were bearable. After that, it just became agony.

  Bonnie bit her lip, trying to breathe as shallowly as she could, trying to remain conscious. She had to stay awake, had to push life back into as many people as possible. Tears ran down her face as her hands began to shake.

  Four hundred seconds.

  Five hundred.

  The goddess fell to her knees, almost losing the spell, but caught it at the last moment and pushed through.

  Six hundred.

  Seven hundred.

  Eight.

  Bonnie screamed, hunching over, desperate to not let the spell fail too early.

  Nine hundred seconds.

  One thousand.

  No creature on Tiros had ever experienced this level of pain, and none ever would.

  One thousand and fifty seconds.

  One thousand and eighty…

  One thousand and eighty-four…

  Eighty-five.

  Eighty-seven.

  The spell stopped as the Watcher of Tiros collapsed, the Void around her fading into darkness.