ERIC PRESSES THE BIG BUTTON

Pharaoh Chad could feel his body giving out. The king who once conquered half the known world now lay awake coughing up blood, staring at the ceiling and wondering if this was the end. Sigmauron, always ready to pounce, leaned in during one of those weak moments and dropped the ultimate brainrot take: the Valor Squad weren't keeping immortality from Men because it was some sacred gift. Nah. They were just scared of him. Scared that a man could outshine them. Pharaoh Chad, terrified of the dark closing in, ate it up like premium copium. He started muttering about sailing west and claiming what was "rightfully his."

Andy Faithful caught wind of the plan and felt his stomach drop. The old lord of Sunset Town had watched his country slide from golden age to death cult, and this was the final boss. He pulled his son Lentil Tallboy aside one night in Getaway Harbour and laid it out straight: get the Faithful together, load the ships, be ready to bounce the second things went nuclear. As for himself, Andy Faithful was going to try the impossible. With three loyal servants he slipped out under cover of darkness, sailing west to beg the Valor Squad for mercy on behalf of the few who still remembered what Númenor Premium was supposed to be. No one ever heard from him again. Whether he reached Manny Breezy or was simply not forgiven is one of those questions the lore leaves open, but the silence itself was its own verdict.

Lentil Tallboy did exactly what his father asked. He gathered the Faithful at Getaway Harbour, loaded the ships with everything they could carry, and waited like people who knew the group chat was about to explode. The warnings started small and then got biblical. Storms hammered the island harder than they had since Spaceboat Eddie's day; ships that had once sailed without trouble started sinking with crews still aboard. Then came the clouds. Massive, eagle-shaped thunderheads rolling in from the west, turning the sky black in broad daylight. Lightning ripped down from them, striking people dead in the streets and fields. Some Premium Islanders took one look and started repenting on the spot. Others doubled down, screaming that the Valor Squad had thrown the first punch and now it was war.

Sigmauron's temple got hit dead center and burst into flames. Everyone waited for the priest of Melvin to go up like a Roman candle. Instead he walked out of the inferno completely untouched, arms spread, daring the sky to try again. The crowd lost their minds. In their eyes he had just become a god for real. His influence, already toxic, went nuclear. The final warning rolled in when Silent Peak started smoking like a volcano that had been holding a grudge for centuries. The mountain that once held the holiest temple to Eric now looked like it was about to erupt in divine disappointment. Nobody listened. They were too far gone.

Pharaoh Chad gave the order. The fleet launched amid fresh human sacrifices on Sigmauron's altars, blood running while the ships sailed into waters no one was supposed to touch. They passed Lonely Island without incident and kept going until the shores of Aman itself came into view. For one brief, almost human second, Pharaoh Chad stood on the deck and felt the full weight of what he was doing. He almost turned the fleet around. Pride, that old family curse, won the coin flip. He marched ashore, planted his banners, and basically told the continent, "This is mine now, fight me." The Elves of Túna had already evacuated. The Premium Islanders set up camp at the feet of the mountains like an army that had just invaded heaven and was waiting for someone to do something about it.

Up on Taniquetil, Manny Breezy looked at the sheer cosmic audacity unfolding below him and did the only thing left. He called on Eric directly. The response was immediate and absolute. The world changed. A chasm wider than any ocean ripped open between Valinor and the mortal lands. Pharaoh Chad's entire fleet disappeared into it like it had never existed. The mountains of Aman came crashing down on top of the king and every soldier with him, burying them under stone and seawater forever. Númenor Premium itself, the island that had been a gift and then a warning and finally a nightmare, slid into the same abyss and was gone. Aman and Lonely Island were taken out of the circles of the world so no one could sail there again by ordinary means.

Lentil Tallboy had kept his ships just offshore at Getaway Harbour, staying clear of Sigmauron's soldiers and the worst of the madness. When the chasm opened, a wind like the breath of the Powers themselves caught his little fleet and hurled it eastward. The ships were battered and half-destroyed by the time they made landfall in Middle-earth, but the people survived. The world itself had been remade in the catastrophe: coasts redrawn, islands drowned, new ones thrust upward, rivers forced into brand-new paths. The Faithful who came with Lentil Tallboy built what kingdoms they could. They were only shadows of Númenor Premium's old glory, yet they carried knowledge, craft, and memory that changed the course of mortal history in the east.

Sigmauron had been cackling at the prospect of the Ed Boys getting deleted. He had not counted on the scale of the payback. He fell with the island, and though death was still denied him, the fair form he had worn for so long was ripped away forever. He fled back to Mordor as a spirit of malice and remade himself into the dark shape that would haunt the later ages. The world was now round. Sail far enough in any direction and you came back to where you started. All roads bent. Only the Elves still knew the Straight Road that could carry them to the Undying Lands, and every once in a while a mariner lost at sea would, by strange grace, glimpse that forbidden shore before the end.