Time, in the tomb, was measured by the hum of the ventilation fan. For one hour every day, Ben would fire up the small, dedicated generator, and the shelter would fill with the life-giving sound of moving air. It was a brief respite from the thick, recycled silence, a reminder of the complex machinery that was keeping them alive. For the other twenty-three hours, they lived in a state of suspended animation. They ate their cold meals of tinned fish and garri, drank their carefully rationed water, and tried not to count the days.
It was during the second week, on what should have been a Tuesday afternoon, that the sounds from the surface changed. The rhythmic, industrial thudding that had become a strange, unsettling backdrop to their existence stopped. For a full day, there was silence, a quiet so profound it felt more menacing than the noise it replaced. Then, the new sounds began. They were sharper, more violent. The deep, resonant clang of massive pieces of metal being struck. A high-pitched, terrifying shriek, like the sound of a giant buzzsaw cutting through steel. And sometimes, a low, pulsating hum that made the fillings in their teeth ache and the water in their cups tremble. It was the sound of a forge. A demonic, impossible forge, working day and night to create the weapons the calm voice on the radio had alluded to. They were preparing for the war against the heavens.
The voice on the shortwave had become their only link to the world, a daily ritual of horror and fascination. He called himself the Logos, the Voice of the New Age. He spoke of the coming battle with a poet's flair and a general's confidence. He claimed the prophesied day was a month away, on July 19th. He preached about the "Great Alliance" between the new sons of Earth and the "Elder Powers" below, who had shared their knowledge of dark energy and forbidden metallurgy. He was a master propagandist, turning a pact with Hell into a noble defense of their new world.
Ben would listen, his face a mask of stone, trying to glean tactical information from the ravings of a madman. Funke would listen too, her hands twisting a rosary, her prayers a silent, desperate counter-narrative to the honeyed poison coming from the speaker. Adekunle felt like he was listening to a history lesson being taught by the devil himself. He felt a chilling certainty that every word was a lie wrapped around a kernel of terrible truth.
They lost track of the exact date. The world outside had become a place of myth and rumour, a story being told by a single, unreliable narrator. It must have been late June when the tremors became almost constant. The shelter, their concrete sanctuary, felt less like a fortress and more like a small boat on a vast, violent ocean. Dust would trickle from the ceiling, and the tins on the shelves would rattle a soft, metallic chorus of fear.
It happened on a Monday. Adekunle remembered because his aunt had declared it "laundry day," a small act of defiance against their grim reality, and was diligently hand-washing their few clothes in a bucket. It was 10:32 PM. He knew the precise time because Ben was winding the small mechanical clock on the workbench, a nightly ritual.
There was no warning.
The first sound was not a tremor. It was a note. A single, pure, impossibly resonant note of a trumpet that seemed to come from inside their own skulls. It was a sound that vibrated in their very bones, so powerful and all-encompassing that it transcended hearing. Funke dropped the shirt she was washing and fell to her knees, her face a mask of ecstatic terror. "He is here," she breathed.
Before Ben or Adekunle could react, the world erupted.
It was not a sound; it was the absence of it. A pressure wave so immense it felt like the shelter was being squeezed by the hand of God. The air thickened, and Adekunle felt a painful pop in his ears. The LED lights, connected to their own isolated battery, flickered violently and died, plunging them into absolute, suffocating blackness. For a single, terrifying second, there was no sound, no light, nothing. They were suspended in a void.
Then came the impact.
The shelter was thrown sideways with a force so violent it felt as if the planet had been kicked. Adekunle was flung from his bunk, his head striking the concrete wall with a sickening crack. He landed on the floor in a heap, his vision exploding in a flash of white-hot stars. The neatly stacked tins on the shelves came crashing down in a deafening, metallic avalanche. The structure of the shelter groaned, a deep, agonized sound of concrete and steel being pushed beyond its limits.
The world outside had become a symphony of Armageddon. He could hear it, feel it through the soles of his feet, through the very air. A series of deep, cataclysmic booms, like a thousand quarries exploding at once. A high-pitched, ethereal shriek that sounded like tearing silk, a sound so unnatural it made his teeth ache. And beneath it all, a deep, unholy roar of defiance from the forges on the surface, the sound of Hell's legions meeting Heaven's host.
He pushed himself up, his head throbbing, his vision swimming. "Funke! Uncle Ben!" he yelled, his voice lost in the cacophony.
A beam of light cut through the dust-choked darkness. It was Ben, with a heavy-duty, crank-powered flashlight, his face pale and grim. He found Funke huddled under the workbench, praying hysterically, her body shaking uncontrollably. He helped her up, his movements steady and sure, a rock in the middle of the apocalypse.
"He came early," Ben shouted over the din. "The Logos was wrong. He came early!"
For the next hour, they were trapped in the heart of a cosmic war. They experienced it only through its aftershocks. The shelter bucked and swayed. A hairline crack appeared on the ceiling, and a fine dust began to rain down on them. A sound like a million voices singing in a language of pure fire washed over them, so beautiful and terrifying it made Adekunle weep. It was followed by a demonic roar so full of hatred and despair that it felt like it was trying to curdle his blood.
At one point, there was a single, focused impact directly above them. The entire shelter dropped a foot with a gut-wrenching lurch, and a huge crack split the ceiling wide open. Through the crack, Adekunle could see not the sky, but a roiling, impossible vortex of golden and crimson light, a chaotic, swirling battle of divine energy and hellfire. He saw two figures, one blazing with the light of a thousand suns, the other a being of pure, elegant darkness, locked in a struggle that defied physics. Gabriel and Lucifer. Their duel was so powerful it was bending reality around them.
The fight lasted for what felt like an eternity but was probably only minutes. The golden light flared, impossibly bright, and the being of darkness was extinguished, its final, silent scream echoing not in the air, but in the landscape of Adekunle's mind.
And then, as suddenly as it began, the violence started to recede. The booms grew more distant, the unholy roars faded into whimpers and then silence. The single, pure note of the trumpet sounded again, this time a clear, triumphant call that vibrated with finality.
The war was over. Heaven had won.
A profound silence descended, deeper and more complete than anything they had experienced before. The silence of a finished thing. Ben, Funke, and Adekunle huddled together in the center of the shaking, dust-filled room, waiting for the next step. The destruction of the world. The final erasure.
They waited. But it didn't come.
Instead, they felt a strange, new sensation. It was not a vibration of violence, but one of… departure. A feeling of immense presence lifting away. A sense of being observed, and then disregarded. Through the large crack in the ceiling, the impossible, swirling colours faded, replaced by the familiar, starless black of the night sky.
He had left them. God had looked upon his ruined creation, his squabbling, broken children, and had simply… left. The weight of that divine indifference was a more crushing blow than any celestial weapon. They had not been judged. They had been abandoned.
In the ringing silence, as this terrible truth settled upon them, the shelter gave one final, weary groan. The damage from the battle above had been too great. The cracked ceiling, no longer held together by the strange energies of the war, began to collapse.
"Ben, look out!" Funke screamed.
A massive slab of concrete and earth, loosened by the final departure, broke free. Ben was standing directly beneath it, his flashlight beam pointed up at the crack, his face a mask of dawning understanding. He didn't have time to run. In the last second of his life, he did the only thing he could. He threw his body over Funke and Adekunle, shoving them toward the relative safety of the workbench.
The impact was a dull, final thud. The light from his flashlight spun wildly and then went out. The world was dust, and darkness, and the sharp, coppery smell of blood.
Adekunle's last conscious thought before the darkness took him completely was of his uncle's final, desperate act of love. He had built a tomb to save his family from the world, and in the end, the world had turned his tomb into a grave.