The day started off like any other.
The long period of darkness caused by disappearance of the sun in the sky would gradually come to an end as that familiar yellow disc would finally resurface after a long period of misery and boredom, heralding the start of a brand new day of disappointments and burdens. Despite it being such an early hour, plenty of living things were already up and about, with some perhaps having not fallen asleep at all. But as that ball of glowing plasma in the sky gradually made itself known, all the other little ants on the ground would start to stir; they'd stretch their appendages, perhaps yawn once or twice, then proceed to go about their daily routines. They'd most likely do the exact same thing as yesterday, which is the same as what they will do tomorrow.
Well, they were *pretty* much ants, anyhow. Those creatures, those living objects, those contestants, they had nothing much that separated them from all the other animals and beasts of this corner of the world. They acted against common sense and themselves, were more than willing to betray each other for the sake of limited, temporary gain, and were completely at the mercy of forces and powers that were completely beyond them, things that they had absolutely no say over, and couldn't even think about rebelling against.
There are times where they think of themselves as something more than just a stray speck of dust on the surface of the Earth. Perhaps they fancy themselves as some sort of hero or villain, maybe they have some sort of following among their little group, or maybe the fact that cameras are apparently pointed at them made them *somebody*. But in the end, it really didn't matter at all what side of the proverbial screen they were on; they were of no more value to the cold, indifferent universe than the heartless, sadistic entities often referred to as viewers, those twisted ones that actually found entertainment in their antics.
And this was a worthlessness that was about to be effectively demonstrated.
The arrival of the heralder of death would be completely and totally overlooked by those hapless individuals. They (partly) aren't to blame, really; it was nothing more than a tiny speck that crossed the sky in a few brief, glorious moments until it finally 'spoke', in a sense. But even if it was a giant glowing sign that indicated their upcoming demise in blatantly obvious wording, odds were that even then they'd still ignore it. Those objects were so self-centered, so preoccupied. They fretted over every little petty dispute or skirmish like it meant everything to them, even though it ultimately meant absolutely nothing whatsoever. The 'teams', as they'd call themselves, just continued on bickering and arguing until death finally arrived to take them.
And, inevitably, it did.
The sudden explosion was more than powerful enough to completely destroy, annihilate, *erase* any trace of their existence within an instant. They wouldn't even have a moment to process the blinding flash of white that immediately occurred; their eyes, heads, and everything else were immediately turned into dust, and that dust into even finer dust, and so on and so forth. The temperatures in that furnace were hot enough to cook them alive a thousand times over, but absolutely none of their constituent parts would survive long enough, especially for their ever-so-fragile brains (or whatever substitute they had, if they had any) to even process those stimuli. Everything that could reasonably be attached to the memory of a certain one of those people that called themselves competitors in the Battle for Dream Island was turned into complete nothing in an instant, with little to no considerations on who they were, who they are, or who they could've been.
And nothing nearby was spared, either. Over the next few moments, that fireball of instant death would rapidly expand to consume the near-endless plains of grass that this part of Goiky was known for, immediately dissolving each and every one of those tiny blades, each one having been a labor of love produced by nature over quite a period of time. It mattered not if it and its ancestors had been there for 2,763 years; destruction knows no bounds or limitations.
