Time of Day: 11:05 am
Place in the Timeline: November 8th 2009

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En Sabah Nur.

The name rang in his head as he stepped out into the sunlight for the first time in millennia. Fierce eyes gazed across the dessert sands as the hot sun beat down upon his face. Others might have found the heat brutal, but the greatest warrior to have ever lived – the heir of destiny itself – registered the heat as the lightest caress on his skin. The change felt good after thousands of years of sleep.

En Sabah Nur...

The First One.

That was his name. The beginning of the end... the one to usher in the glory and ascension of the sentient beings of this planet. He was the fit. He was God incarnate. It was on his whim that people lived or died, and only those who proved worthy in his eyes would be allowed to continue drawing breath. It was his sacred duty... to crush the weak and cultivate the strong to become stronger... to hasten evolution... to raise an unstoppable army of perfect soldiers with a single goal in mind – ascend and conquer the stars themselves.

Lord Apocalypse's eyes narrowed; something was not right. The very air around him felt out of place, as if it were staring at rotting fruit instead of the pure, perfection that was supposed to await him. Precognition was not for him at this time, but his god-like abilities began to grow agitated – something had been displaced, perverting this reality.

The First One raised a hand and dipped his fingers into the very fabric of reality, tasting and testing them... trying to get a sense of what had gone wrong and watched as the strands of the universe slipped through his fingers, a name softly echoing in his ears.

Missing... Xavier...

He was unsure who or what was missing or how it affected this world, but it did not matter. Apocalypse would crush any resistance or anomaly underfoot like the chaff it was. He would ascend.

His eye caught a pile of gray dust at his feet that had already begun to mingle with the sand surrounding it as the gentle wind whipped around it and carried particles off. He knelt beside it and slid his fingers through the particles that had once been stone and looked back up at his dessert kingdom. Someone had been here recently... perhaps the one responsible for wakening the World Breaker.

::En Sabah Nur...::

The name reverberated in his mind once more, grabbing Apocalypse's attention and causing him to look over his shoulder toward the temple door from which he had emerged. He slowly stood to his feet and turned, making his way back into the interior of the ancient sanctuary. Once inside, he came to a halt and slowly gazed around his chamber, his mind already unfolding plans for the four most powerful beings that would become his Horsemen. They would bring the world to its knees in fearful worship of their god.

Suddenly his eyes caught a small detail that did not belong in the ancient temple... a set of white-hot eyes burning from a dark corner of his own chamber. He stared unblinkingly at the challenging gaze, mildly amused that there was a being who did not immediately drop to his knees at the sight of him.

After a few moments of tense silence, Apocalypse's amusement dwindled to bored annoyance, “I will show you mercy once, in case you do not recognize your god. You have trespassed into the Temple of Apocalypse. Kneel before your master and I will allow you to live. Perhaps you will become my herald, for my old one has not shown his face and displayed proper respect.”

The set of eyes hidden in the shadows did not move, “I'm afraid your old herald is indisposed.”

Apocalypse turned his head slightly to the side as if starting to look back at the doorway he had recently passed through, yet he kept his hard eyes fixed on his enshrouded adversary. The pile of gray dust he had taken note of...

“You destroyed Ozymandius.”

The intruder merely stared at him.

The First One nodded in approval, “You have shown yourself fit for my service. I shall let you live.”

“En Sabah Nur.” The stranger seemed to be chewing on the name thoughtfully as it growled from the shadows.

“It means The First One. You, however, may call me your god,” Apocalypse replied.

A small rumble began to build from the shadows... evolving into a mocking chuckle, “The world may have begun with you, First One, but it ends with me.”

Mixed with annoyance at this man's continued lack of reverence with him and elation at the opportunity to prove that he was indeed fit to survive and rule, Apocalypse glared at the newcomer as he took a couple of steps closer to the shadow, his shoulders squared off as he prepared to clean the soles of his boots with this stranger's hidden face. “I want to know who you are before I kill you.”

The stranger stared at him from the shadows for several moments before answering, “I am one who is fit to survive, En Sabah Nur. I am the ascended.”

A trace of a smile flickered over The First One's lips, “So be it.”

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11:31 am

The Temple of Apocalypse lay in ruins, an afterthought in a dessert that held many such ancient monuments torn down by passage of time and the events hidden from record. Old, worn stones lay on top of one another, burying a story that would never be fully understood. The only testament to the end of a legend thousands of years old was the bloodied face of En Sabah Nur hanging from tree limb cut into a crude pole and mounted stabbed into the top of the rubble. His mouth hung slack as the eyeless mask of flesh flapped gently in the breeze, forever surveying a kingdom that would never be his.