The Destruction Manifesto

Praveen Jangid
1 day ago
9 min read

Chapter 1: The Catalyst of Despair

The world had long been a breeding ground for suffering. Wars raged under banners of righteousness, yet they were nothing more than glorified massacres. Political ideologies clashed, faiths crumbled, and the cycle of destruction spun endlessly. He had once believed in change, in the naive hope that people would break free from this cycle. But that was before he lost everything.

His name had ceased to matter. He had been a man once, with dreams, with love, with a life that fit neatly within the fabric of normality. Then, in the span of a moment—one explosion, one bullet, one betrayal—he had nothing. But it wasn’t just the loss of loved ones that unraveled him; it was the realization that the world itself had crafted the circumstances that led to their deaths. The institutions that claimed to protect, the governments that preached justice, the societies that upheld moral order—none of them had saved his family. None of them had prevented his suffering.

It wasn’t grief that led him to this path; it was clarity. The world had shown him its truth, and he would embrace it. If humanity was the disease, then he would be its cure. Not out of rage, not out of vengeance, but because it was the only logical conclusion. The world needed to be cleansed, and he would be the instrument of its final absolution. His message was simple: Destroy the world that created the circumstances for your suffering. Wipe it clean so no one else would have to endure what he had.

He carved a symbol into the dirt—a broken hourglass. Time was running out, and soon, the last grain of civilization would fall.

Chapter 2: The Birth of the Movement

The first signs of the revolution were barely noticeable—whispers in the dark, obscure manifestos spread in the corners of the web, cryptic messages that resonated with the lost and the weary. His ideology did not scream for attention; it seeped into minds like a slow, creeping toxin, disguised as enlightenment. He did not force his followers to believe; he simply showed them what they had always known deep down: that existence was suffering, that justice was an illusion, and that salvation lay in oblivion.

His first followers were those who had already stood at the precipice. The ones burdened by the weight of the world, the ones who had lost all reason to keep going, the ones who yearned not for life, but for an end to the farce. But unlike the usual preachers of destruction, he offered something different—liberation, not despair. He did not ask them to wallow in sorrow; he asked them to act.

To join, they had to abandon their past. They shed their names, choosing instead a number or a word that defined their awakening. They performed the Ash Rite—burning a personal object from their old life, watching as the flames consumed their former selves. The fire was not an end, but a beginning.

They did not seek revenge against individuals, nor did they target institutions directly. They sought to dismantle everything, piece by piece, with no intention of rebuilding. To them, the world was a rotten structure barely holding itself together; all they had to do was pull out the right beams and let it collapse under its own weight.

Chapter 3: The Rise of Chaos

The movement began in a nameless city—an imaginary place, yet one that could exist anywhere, in any corner of the earth. A place riddled with poverty and crime, ruled by indifferent leaders, and filled with people too numb to fight back. At first, the unrest was nothing extraordinary. Protests turned to riots. Riots turned to skirmishes. Society, already fractured, began to split at the seams. But there was no clear enemy to fight against—no government, no faction, no tyrant to overthrow. The people were not rebelling; they were unravelling.

Before each act, members gathered in darkness, passing a single candle from hand to hand. Each whispered the creed: "We are the end, for the end was always coming." When the last member received the flame, they blew it out, marking the moment contemplation turned to action.

With each act of sabotage, the city became less a place of order and more a graveyard of civilization. Streets once bustling with routine became warzones of ideology. The scent of smoke lingered in the air, blending with the decay of abandoned buildings. The sky, once merely polluted, took on a permanent shade of gray, as if mourning the inevitable collapse. The air carried a heavy weight, not just of ash and debris, but of something deeper—an unshakable despair that even those who had never heard his words could feel.

He watched from the shadows as the world he once knew started to crumble. He did not celebrate. He did not interfere. He merely waited, allowing the movement to take on a life of its own.

Chapter 4: The Manifesto – A Speech That Changed Everything

Standing before a sea of followers, he spoke words that would echo long after the world fell silent:

“You have been deceived. You are told that life has meaning, that suffering has purpose, that you must endure because there is light at the end of the tunnel. But I ask you—how many have reached this light? How many have found justice for their pain? You chase an illusion, a promise that was never real.”

“Look at what they have built. A world where you are punished for seeking vengeance. A world where you are condemned for your grief. They tell you to move on, to heal, but they never erase the scars. Instead, they create more wounds, more tragedy, and they expect you to endure.”

“I offer you something different. Not endurance. Not patience. But release. You can be free. Free of guilt, free of pain, free of the endless struggle. You lost someone? You can reunite with them instantly. You suffered injustice? You can deliver justice in the only way that truly matters. You committed a crime? You can cleanse yourself by ensuring this world—the world that made you what you are—no longer exists to judge you.”

“The world made you suffer. Destroy it.”

And they did.

Chapter 5: The Path to the End

The movement had no single face. It spread like wildfire, a decentralized entity, each faction interpreting his words in their own way. Some sought personal revenge, others acted out of ideological devotion. Some saw him as a leader, others as a messiah. And he did nothing to correct them. He did not control; he merely lit the fire.

Their final ritual was simple—the Final Offering. Before their last act, they carved the broken hourglass into steel, concrete, or flesh, marking their commitment.

The city—his birthplace, the first experiment—was the first to fall. Then the ideology seeped into other places. Small at first, insignificant in the grander scale, but always growing. Governments dismissed them as radicals at first. But radicals become revolutionaries. And revolutionaries become the new order. Except, this time, there would be no new order. Only the end.

Chapter 6: The Final Blow

By the time the world’s leaders realized the gravity of what was happening, it was already too late. Entire cities had collapsed into anarchy, nuclear silos had been seized by radicals, and even those who had once dismissed his ideology found themselves questioning their own convictions. Was he wrong? Or had he merely seen the truth before everyone else?

And when the final blow was struck—the moment when the last remnants of resistance crumbled—he stood in silence. Explosions erupted across the sky, their glow illuminating the darkness like dying stars. The air was filled with wailing, screaming, the sounds of a world finally tearing itself apart.

He watched, unblinking. And then, for the first time, he lowered his gaze. His eyes, once filled with certainty, now carried something else. Not regret. Not satisfaction. Just the quiet, solemn weight of inevitability.

He had never doubted the path he had chosen.

Transparent

He writes because it’s the only way he remembers that people were ever alive.

Not just their names, but the little things—the way one of them always looked up before finishing a sentence, the nervous ticks, the way they smiled only when talking about their pets, how some dragged their feet and others floated across cobbled streets like they belonged to dreams. These details fill his journal, page after page, an archive of people who don’t even know they’re already gone. He watches them like a silent god, scribbling down their habits while knowing the dates their lives will end.

Because he knows something others don’t. Something horrible. Something cosmic.

People on Earth are moving through time, yes—but not in the same direction. Some are traveling forward like pages turning in a novel. Others are walking backward, their past is his future, and their future already his past. It doesn’t feel any different to them. Time flows normally. But he noticed the pattern. He saw the impossible contradictions and traced them back like strands in a web.

And one day, he stumbled upon a killer.

A man who is moving backward in time. A man for whom every murder has already been committed, though from the protagonist’s point of view, they are yet to happen. The police can’t catch him—not in this world. It’s set in an old time where there are no cameras, no forensic breakthroughs, no digital traces—only fog, whispers, and chalk outlines on cobblestones. Recognizing a killer is nearly impossible. But the protagonist can. Because he is not like the others. He is deeply observant, someone who dissects mannerisms, traces routines, and knows people more intimately than they know themselves. And so he, the observer, becomes the only living archive of these deaths.

But he doesn’t stop them.

Because this story isn’t about justice.

At first, he thinks he’s merely recording what is. Detached. Removed. After all, if these deaths are already fixed from the killer’s direction, then what difference does it make? But as the bodies pile up in his journal, something begins to rot inside him. A burden grows. It’s not about logic anymore. It’s about weight—moral weight.

With every name, a part of him whispers, "you could have done something." Another voice replies, "it was always meant to happen. You were just the witness."

And he starts to crumble under that internal war.

He becomes obsessed with the people he watches. He starts interacting with them, briefly, subtly, asking about their lives just to hear the sound of their voice, just to add something more to the pages than description. He wants to remember them before they die. Wants to own that memory, hold it close like a companion to his loneliness, like a souvenir. Like killers who keep trophies, he keeps moments. They’re not victims to him. They’re performances. The journal becomes both a graveyard and a shrine.

He re-reads it often. Not out of nostalgia, but out of hunger. These are the only people he’s ever known, even if they never knew him. It’s like watching old films of actors who are long dead. They will never know the people watching them. But the watcher feels something real. And that feeling—that one-sided attachment—is all he has.

Then he meets her.

She’s not particularly extraordinary, but she becomes everything. The way she stands still to listen to street musicians. The way she carries her sadness like something carefully folded. He starts watching her daily—not just watching, but purposefully engaging. He finds ways to speak to her, to insert himself into fragments of her day. For him, it's part of the ritual. She’s next. The pattern confirms it. And before she dies, he wants to collect something of her—her voice, her laugh, the cadence of her thoughts. Something to archive, to keep caged within the journal.

But something unexpected happens. He grows attached.

The pages devoted to her in the journal grow longer, more detailed, more intimate. And like a cruel echo of Dostoevsky’s White Nights, his growing affection remains unseen, unfelt by her. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t feel the same. To her, he’s a kind passer by. A flicker in her periphery. To him, she becomes the final test.

Already the burden of morality—of not intervening in so many deaths—weighs on him. Already he is alienated, emotionally scarred, unravelling under the agony of solitude. But with her, the emotional cost becomes unbearable. He begins to contemplate, “is she worth saving?”

And in that question lies his undoing.

He realizes that she represents the last gap between who he is now and the person he is about to become—the future self who is no longer shackled by guilt or love or empathy. She is the final bridge. And when he sees that his feelings are not reciprocated, when the hollowness of their bond stares him in the face, something collapses within him.

He doesn’t stop the killer.

Not because he hates her. Not because he wants her gone. But because she must go for him to be free. Her death is not just an event—it is a ritual of transformation. With her dies the last echo of his conscience. With her dies the final illusion of connection.

He lets the mask of sanity slip.

The journal is burned. The pages curl in ash. He no longer observes. He no longer writes. He no longer follows the killer.

He walks through the city like a ghost now. People are not people—they are shapes, noise, dust. He is transparent. Not human. Not monstrous. Just free.

He is the last artifact of a morality long gone, and he carries within him the terrifying realization that true freedom may only come when we no longer care who lives or dies.

And now, he is finally free.

-Pravin Jangid