I write obituaries for the gods

She returned to the house in a daze and knelt in her mother's bedroom, staring blankly at the broken crystal ball on the floor.

She suddenly longed to look at the crystal ball and see what she should do.

But the crystal ball was already broken.

"..."

The wind lashed against the glass like a roaring dragon, and through the cracks in the windows, it made the colored ribbons hanging from the roof sway wildly.

The house shook more and more violently, and at that moment, the older brother rushed into the room.

"tide Lena, a hurricane is coming!"

tide Lena turned her head and saw her brother carrying a large bag, which was probably full of daily necessities.

“But…we don’t have a car anymore…” she murmured.

At that moment, her mother's words came to mind:

“My bicycle is locked in the backyard. In less than five minutes, your brother will be able to ride it and take you away.”

"Boom!"

In the pouring rain, tide Leina sat on the back of the bicycle, tightly hugging her brother's waist.

The wind outside was getting stronger and stronger, and bricks and tiles were being blown away from time to time, causing screams to erupt from the residents inside the house.

tide Lena shivered from the cold, and scenes from the past flashed through her mind, blurry and indistinct, like the faint smoke that always lingered in her mother's house.

"Hold on tight, Xileina!" her brother shouted.

Her brother was usually quiet and reserved, and tide Lena rarely saw any trace of emotion on his face.

She hugged her brother tightly and sobbed in the storm.

After riding for an unknown amount of time, my brother suddenly stopped, breathing heavily.

tide Lena raised her head and cautiously peered forward.

Then, she witnessed a scene she would never forget:

The raging floodwaters swept in from the horizon, the spray reflecting lightning like an ancient oil painting slowly unfolding.

Behind the flood, a hurricane connected the sky and the earth, enveloping everything from all directions.

New Orleans is a sunken basin, and once the giant waves generated by the hurricane overflow the flood control levees of Lake Pontchartrain, the floodwaters will inundate 80% of the city.

And now, the flood has arrived.

"Crash..."

A chill ran down her ankles. tide Lena looked down and saw that the floodwaters had somehow already submerged her ankles.

"We need to find a high place."

The older brother calmly got out of the car, picked up tide Leina, and walked through the floodwaters toward the nearest house.

In the distance, the floodwaters roared, washing away houses, and the hurricane tossed them into the sky, tearing them to shreds under the lightning of the heavens.

"Hurricane Katrina has been confirmed to have strengthened into a subspace-level hazard..." came the intermittent announcement over the neighborhood loudspeaker. "Stay with your family..."

The tallest building in the neighborhood is a church. tide Lena is not religious, but she has participated in charity performances here.

The older brother found a ladder that had fallen onto the lawn and set it up from the edge of the church:

“Go up, Xileina, I’ll hold the ladder for you.”

tide Lena nodded gently, and with her brother's help, she was the first to climb onto the roof of the church.

However, she had barely stepped up when the sound of guns being cocked rang out:

"No, don't move!"

Xilena looked up blankly and saw Clement standing in front of her, holding a gun!

Behind him, several bodyguards were pointing guns at Xileina.

“tide Lena?” Clement murmured, his expression suddenly turning fierce. “Get out! They all say that the doomsday prophecy spread by you Gypsies angered the Lord, which is why this has brought divine punishment!”

Clement was a Catholic, so it wasn't surprising that he would choose the roof of a church as a place to take shelter from the flood.

But now his expression is so frightening; Xileina can't see any piety in him towards God.

She only saw a crazed outlaw.

"You...you didn't leave?" Xileina tried to communicate.

"Leave? This is a warp disaster! No one can escape!" Clement roared. "That thing is coming this way... It's all your fault... It's all your fault, you bunch of witches who peered into the future through the crystal ball! You blasphemed the Lord's majesty and brought divine punishment upon yourselves!"

"I don't know how to use a crystal ball at all!" Xileina shouted. "We're not what you think!"

"Get off! Get off!" Clement yelled, "or I'll blow your head off, I swear!"

He excitedly took two steps forward, completely unaware that his brother had climbed up from the eaves.

"Snapped!"

The older brother swiftly punched Clement to the ground, then snatched the gun from his hand and fired at the bodyguard standing nearby.

"Oh!"

The armed bodyguard was shot in the head and fell silent.

Just as the older brother was about to shoot at the other bodyguards, Clement got up and punched his brother in the face.

The two men fell to the ground and began to fight. The bodyguards were afraid of hurting their master and dared not fire their guns.

"Stop hitting! Stop hitting!" Xileina shouted.

She tried to pull Clement away, but he slammed her elbow into the forehead, sending her sprawling to the ground.

By the time her vision cleared, Clement and several bodyguards had already subdued her brother.

“What’s the difference between you and those black slaves? More free?” Clement spat out a tooth, inspecting the gun barrel. “Arrogant animals, I’ve put up with you for too long…”

After saying that, Clement pressed the gun against his brother's head.

"don't want..."

Xileina reached out to her brother, her chest heaving as she gasped for breath in the cold air.

At some point, a faint, ethereal blue began to appear in the air.

"don't want..."

Xilena heard Clement laughing and saw her brother struggling, but his hands were held down tightly by the bodyguards.

"No!" Xileina screamed.

She suddenly felt an intense hatred for the malice from the world, an intense hatred for prejudice, and an intense hatred for the version of herself that tried to change prejudice by pandering to others.

But her hatred was futile; Clement ignored her screams and pulled the trigger—

"Boom!"

A deafening roar came from afar, and the violent shock caused Clement's hand to veer off course, the bullet hitting the roof.

Almost simultaneously, everyone looked into the distance: on the horizon, the Superdom Stadium was swept into the sky by a gray hurricane, its magnificent steel structure torn to pieces by the hurricane.

That was the last refuge provided by the city of New Orleans, but now it's like a broken egg that's been pried open.

“Oh my God…” Clement murmured, “Oh my God…”

The next second, the hurricane swept in at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye, passing by in an instant—

"boom----"

Clement suddenly fell to his knees, his head slamming against the roof, a wave of dizziness washing over him.

In a daze, he saw a shadow gradually rise from the horizon—

"Buzzing..."

It was a shadow as high as a mountain, with thousands of tentacles reaching all the way up to the sky, and a ghostly blue light appearing and disappearing in the outline of the hurricane.

That was the anomalous entity that caused Hurricane Katrina.

不 ...

The disaster had destroyed the young Creole; the light of reason had long since left him, and his almost primal instincts had once again taken over his mind.

That's not some anomalous entity! That's not a hurricane!

That's a goddess! That's the great Katrina!

“God! I beg you!” he roared, “Protect the people of New Orleans!”

The words had barely left his mouth when he heard a clear sob rise from the background noise of the hurricane:

"Ugh...woo..."

Clement looked down and saw that Xileina had started convulsing at some point.

She sobbed, her skin and flesh breaking open repeatedly, leaving dark blue streaks running along the contours of her muscles.

Ecstasy surged through Clement's mind, and he opened his arms wide before the god in the storm, roaring at the top of his lungs:

"Yes! Yes! Lord! Take away your Gypsy offerings! They are praying for the end of the city! They are a shameful barbarian!"

"This is your city! Bless us! Bless New Orleans!"

Amidst the howling of the hurricane, Clement himself couldn't even hear what he was saying.

But he continued to howl, his deranged mind mistaking that god for their God—there was no difference, his life and death were now in His hands.

Then, amidst his prayers...

God's promise came like a death knell.

"Buzzing..."

Between the sky and the earth, painted pure gray by the hurricane, a figure slowly stood up.

Clement, who was so heavy from the wind that he could barely lift his back, stared in astonishment at the scene before him: Xilena, whose skin was almost unrecognizable, was slowly standing up, her slender body swaying in the storm, her dark blue eyes flickering like will-o'-the-wisps.

Behind her, the gods roared, and the hurricane gradually shifted its direction, slowly rotating around Xileina.

"No...no..."

Clement had no idea what was happening. His mind, already clouded by religion, raced through the air as he tried to rationalize everything before him.

He suddenly understood: it was the Lord who had descended upon her! The Lord had taken away the offering he had made, and now He was about to bestow upon her the promised protection!

"Lord...!" Clement cried with joy, crawling to Xileina's feet and struggling to raise his hands to her. "Please...please protect me—"

"Boom——"

Xilena's index finger landed on Clement's forehead, and he instantly exploded, turning into scattered gray fragments.

Each gray fragment emitted a mournful wail: he would wail forever, singing praises to his Lord in the shadows of the warp.

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Clement's minions exploded one after another, grayish-white fragments swirling around Xileina like embers scattered across the sky after being burned.

Xilena silently stared at the humanoid figure Clement left on the ground. Her body swayed twice, then she suddenly knelt down:

"Cough...cough cough..."

Excruciating pain tore at Xileina's body; she was dying. She felt her consciousness being disintegrated by that enormous thing—it seemed to want to descend into this world through her body.

"Do not..."

She protested.

"don't want..."

tide Lena didn't want to die like this.

"tide Leina..."

In the gray and white vision, someone was calling her name.

It's brother.

tide Lena struggled to prop up her small body and crawled toward her dying brother.

She saw her brother struggling to crawl toward her, and the last two members of the Boswell family reached out their hands and interlocked their fingers.