The colossal implosion of the Nexus Paradox had flung Senku Ishigami, L, and Okabe Rintarou into a world of profound, unsettling stillness. Senku had landed first, his body protesting from the jarring impact, his makeshift devices shattered beyond immediate repair. Around him, the ethereal echoes of collapsing realities had given way to an eerie, silent forest. But this was no ordinary forest. Trees, animals, and countless human figures stood frozen, their forms captured in shimmering, translucent stone, caught in a permanent, silent tableau. The air was still, devoid of the rustle of leaves or the buzz of insects, tasting of dry minerals and ancient dust.
"This is… unbelievable!" Senku muttered, pushing himself up, his eyes wide with a mix of scientific awe and frantic curiosity. He immediately began trying to reactivate his wrist-mounted scanner, tapping it furiously. "Global petrification. A geological and biological anomaly of unprecedented scale! What kind of energy signature caused this? Was it a natural phenomenon? Or… a deliberate act?" He knelt, scraping a fingernail against the petrified bark of a tree, then the smooth, unyielding skin of a stony human figure. His mind raced, cataloging, theorizing. A world completely reset. Humanity transformed into inert matter. The ultimate scientific challenge. How exhilarating! And terrifying!
L, ever the calm observer, slowly rose from where he'd landed, dusting off his simple white shirt. His dark eyes methodically swept the silent, stone-laden landscape. He picked up a fragment of petrified bird, examining its intricate details. "The precision is remarkable," he murmured, his thumb instinctively rising to his lip. "Every fiber, every cell… perfectly preserved. This isn't merely fossilization. It's an instantaneous, uniform molecular transformation. A chilling form of stasis. An imposed, absolute order, perhaps, on a global scale. Not unlike the ambitions of the Sybil System, in a twisted way." He looked at the petrified humans, their expressions frozen in mid-emotion – fear, surprise, mundane boredom. "Such an absolute loss of individuality. Their crime coefficients, were they still calculable, would indeed be zero."
Then, a shuddering gasp broke the profound silence. Okabe Rintarou lay sprawled nearby, disentangling himself from the remnants of his torn lab coat. He clutched his head, his eyes squeezed shut, then snapped open, staring in disbelief at the petrified landscape. "The… the World Line… it shifted again!" he gasped, his voice raw. "But… this is too much! Everyone… they're all… stone! This isn't my Beta Attractor Field! This isn't anything I know!" He scrambled to his feet, his gaze darting wildly. "Did SERN do this? Was this their ultimate 'convergence'? To turn everyone into… statues?" The lingering trauma of his ordeal with SERN, of having his mind used as a temporal engine, was acutely present. He felt a profound sense of isolation, of being utterly adrift. His Reading Steiner, the ability to retain memories across world line shifts, was a curse in this new, silent world, flooding him with fragmented knowledge of realities that no longer existed for him.
"Calm yourself, Okabe," L said, his voice unusually gentle. "The Sybil System has been dismantled. Whatever caused this phenomenon, it was not directly their doing, though perhaps an unforeseen consequence of the Nexus's collapse. This world has its own unique crisis."
Senku's face, usually a mask of audacious confidence, held a touch of grim determination. "L's right. This is a scientific problem. And every problem has a solution. The first step is survival. Water, food, shelter. We're in a forest, even if it's a stone one. There must be unpetrified sources of life somewhere." He squinted at the sky. "The atmospheric composition seems normal. Oxygen levels are stable. So, something happened to the organic life, but not the air itself. Fascinating!"
They began to move, a strange trio traversing a silent, dead world. Senku, driven by insatiable curiosity, would stop to examine every detail – a petrified bird on a branch, a stone flower, the texture of a frozen stream. L, analytical and detached, cataloged the patterns of petrification, noting inconsistencies or peculiarities. Okabe, still struggling with the psychological shock, often trailed behind, whispering to himself, "El Psy Kongroo… where are you, Mayuri? Daru? Kurisu?" His Hōōin Kyouma persona, usually a shield, was shattered by the sheer, unyielding reality of their situation.
Their first priority was water. Following a dry, stone riverbed, Senku found a small, miraculously clear spring bubbling from beneath a petrified boulder. The water tasted fresh, clean. It was a small victory, but a vital one.
"Good," L remarked, taking a measured sip. "Sustenance secured. Next, a temporary shelter. The nights will be cold here, I surmise. And while this world appears devoid of immediate threats, an unknown environment always presents unforeseen dangers."
As they worked to gather fallen, unpetrified branches – a rare find amidst the stone – Okabe, still overwhelmed, sank to the ground. "But why? What could do this to an entire planet? It's like… like everything just stopped. The flow of time… the very essence of life… frozen."
Senku paused, his hands on a rough piece of wood. "That's the 10-billion-dollar question, Okabe. My preliminary analysis suggests some form of powerful, broad-spectrum energy wave. Something that interacts with organic matter at a sub-molecular level, converting it to a stable, crystalline structure. But the source, the trigger… that's the unknown variable." He held up a shard of petrified human skin, transparent in the fading light. "If we can understand the mechanism, we can reverse it. And if we can reverse it for one, we can reverse it for everyone."
L, observing the fragment, added, "Indeed. The commonality across all petrified forms suggests a single, unified cause. Not a plague, not a weapon of mass destruction in the traditional sense. Something more fundamental. A change to the very fabric of life itself, or perhaps, a cosmic event. The Sybil System sought to impose order. This petrification is an ultimate, inert order. The universe has a strange sense of irony."
A determination, cold and sharp, settled in Senku's eyes. "We need to find the cause. We need to find something that didn't get petrified, that contains clues. And we need to start building. From scratch. No electricity, no computers, no modern conveniences. Just our brains. We'll start with fire. Then primitive tools. Then chemistry. Physics. We'll bring humanity back from the Stone Age!"
Okabe, looking at Senku's unwavering confidence, felt a faint spark rekindle within him. The scientist's relentless pursuit of knowledge was a bizarre, yet comforting, anchor in this bewildering new reality. "The… the ultimate experiment, huh, Senku? To bring back civilization… from zero."
"Precisely!" Senku grinned, picking up a handful of dry leaves. "One step at a time. The first step to reviving humanity… is making fire."
The vast, silent Stone World lay before them, a monument to a lost civilization. But in the quiet determination of a mad scientist, a brilliant detective, and a time-traveling eccentric, the first flickering embers of a new, scientifically driven dawn were about to be kindled.