Every single day there's been some new problem. It all started about a week ago when the Dragon Hourglass in my castle started glowing, and the sand in it started moving. Since then random disasters have been occurring very frequently. These disasters are completely unprecedented. Nothing like this has ever happened in our recorded history. I hope today there's some good news.

"Sir, we've received reports of a pack of direwolves decimating the village to the east"
"Your Majesty, the adventurers guild is reporting a spike in disappearances"
"King Hersch, Heralds Bay has gotten hit by a tsunami"
"Your Majesty, the Legendary Axe has chosen a wielder. Shall I send for him?"
"Ah, yes please."

"One more thing to note, the adventurers guild has concluded the spike in adventurer disappearances is directly correlated to the average level in monsters rising."

Some good news, along with lots more bad news. I had been debating enlisting the help of the legendary heroes, but our records with conversations of heroes past suggest a darker tone to the summoning process. If the hero is summoned from another world, it is a common occurrence for them to have died in order to come here. For that reason I was hoping the Legendary Gauntlets and Axe would pick wielders from this world, and that those two would be enough. I… I understand all too well how it feels to lose an offspring, and I don't want to put the heroes' families through something similar.

I was pacing around my throne room awaiting the arrival of the Axe hero. Apparently they were in a neighboring town, so I expected to wait a few hours, but I couldn't just sit still.

BOOM

The door to my throne room had burst open, and now slightly hovering in the middle of the room was a humanoid figure wearing some strange head. It's clear the head was artificial, it clearly looked like some kind of cloth covering a sphere, but the design…
"Haah!" "Hiyah"
Two of my guards both leapt at this creature and swung their swords down on it, but their weapons stopped about 10 centimeters short of hitting it. The creature then pointed its arms at the knights and two cannonball sized holes appeared in their midsection. They both collapsed to the ground dead.
"Ha ha! Well that wasn't the rudest greeting I've gotten so far, but it was up there. Hello there, you've got a crown on, so I assume you're king of this land?" The figure spoke in a high pitched male voice, with a bit of an unhinged cadence to it.
"Y-yes, I am King Hersch Einsbrey XII. I rule this kingdom, and oversee the lands on the main continent."
"Well you may call me Lionhead, that is my screen name after all. I've just come to deliver a general warning. You may have noticed some bad stuff happening all around the world. Just some minor calamities I assure you, it's just that worlds tend to not react very well when we're preparing them. These natural disasters should dissipate in under a year."
This is a very destructive way to deliver a message, but I suppose it's some good news. He said a few things I don't understand like 'screen name' and 'preparing worlds'? But at least I know these calamities will come to an end in time. I just need to focus resources on keeping people alive until they're over.
"But most importantly-"
He wasn't done?
"If you don't summon this world's Holy hero in a month's time, this world will die."

My blood ran cold at that sentence. "What?"
"I believe you heard me. If you don't summon the Holy hero, every living thing on this world will die in one month."

Was he going to destroy the world in a month? I don't doubt his capabilities seeing how effortlessly he killed two of my knights. Those two were among some of the highest level knights in the castle. But I don't see how the Sword hero could stop him. Heroes might be seen as wielding god-like power, but very skilled and high level people could still sometimes compete with a hero.

Watching me think, Lionhead continued. "Well that's all the important stuff. I believe I've given you a lot to think about." Lionhead started floating upwards "Remember to summon your Holy hero or else the world will die!" He shouts with almost glee in his voice, right before he shoots through the roof of my palace, leaving a sizable hole behind.

I do have quite a lot to think about. That individual didn't sound alright in the head, and claimed to in some way be causing the natural disasters plaguing the world. My attendant comes out from behind a pillar, and with a shaky voice asks "w-what shall we do your majesty?"
"We need to do a summoning ritual. Regardless of how I feel about it, it may just be necessary for the sake of our world. The Holy Sword is in our storage, correct?"
"Y-yes it is sire. We shall commence the ritual at once"
Unlike the Legendary weapons, the Holy weapon requires a summoning. For whatever reason, the Holy Sword will never choose a resident of this world as its wielder. The ritual is somewhat expensive to do, requiring a lot of rare gems and a lot of magical power to be put towards it, but nothing a king can't afford. Especially when the world seems to be in peril such as this.

It was about two hours of preparation altogether. While the castle mages were performing the ritual, I was sitting on my throne praying I didn't tear apart another happy family.

My name is Sorezo Katagi, and I am currently falling to my death.

I was born with a psychic ability to see the future. At first I thought I was special, but my ability is very unreliable, only showing me random glimpses of the future, not being very helpful most of the time. Certainly nothing special like psychokinesis strong enough to lift cars, or perfect teleportation. I went through most of my life, already knowing some of the mundane stuff that will happen, and still being surprised by a lot of major stuff, although there was one time my power warned me of a mugger being on my usual path, so it did help me once. At least my visions never spoiled any anime for me. Anime was one of the few escapes in my world. I went to school from 8-4, had an after school club that also took up most of my evening, and was spending my time on weekends either studying or helping my family work. Both were renovators, so I was expected to come in and help tidy up houses with them. At least I got some money out of that, but overall I had very little free time. One day on my walk to school, my power finally showed me something important. A person was about to jump off a building! I was sure I recognized the building, and looking around, I saw it. The building was only about a minute away. I didn't see anybody at the top there, but maybe if I could get there before them I could finally do something meaningful with my life. I ran to the building, and up all of its stairs. When I was around the middle of the stairs I heard the door at the top close. Was that them? Pushing myself even harder, I raced up the stairs and flung open the door. The person in my vision was almost at the edge of the building, but turned around in shock when they saw me.

"Wait, don't do it!" I shouted, sprinting at them. They had stopped in shock when I shouted, and I managed to run to their side and grabbed them before they started moving again. Once I grabbed him he regained his composure.
"Get off me you stupid kid! You can't understand what I've been through!"
"Whatever it was, it can't be worth ending your life over!"
We both struggled with each other a bit, me trying to push him away from the edge of the building, and him trying to push me off of him. I think I could do it! I heard a siren in the distance, if I could hold him here a few more minutes maybe the police would arrive and stop him. I'd finally be able to do something heroic with this terrible ability of mine!

"Easy for you to say! You're just a kid! Now GET. OFF!" He jerked his arm really hard to the side, with me holding on to it, that put me right in front of his hand, and when he jerked his arm again, it was like a hard punch right to the gut. Gasping for air, I ended up letting go, and the force from the punch knocked me back, and I tripped over the edge of the building. Horror filled both his face and mine as we realized what happened, it was like the world was moving in slow motion over that second. That is how I, Sorezo Katagi, at the age of 18 just a few months before I would be done with high school, fell to my death.

…

I should have hit the ground by now.
I opened my eyes and it looked like I was falling through a tunnel of light, with the bottom of it fast approaching. I looked up the tunnel just as the view of the building I was falling off of faded from view. The perspective changed, and I saw the top of the building. Someone else had climbed up. So the man I was trying to save wouldn't die… I'd managed to save him. I'd managed to accomplish something with my life. Even if this was just the afterlife, or if there was nothing at the end, I'm glad my life meant something.

My name is Ash. Ash Kane. Huh, so this is what your life flashing before your eyes feels like. I'll admit I was curious, though I never hoped to be in a situation where I'd experience it. Overall I'd say I lived a pretty good life. I made friends, I did well enough in school, and I had a lot of fun overall. To clarify, not the kind of fun that involved breaking laws. I've never done any drugs, unlike the school losers. WAIT WAIT WAIT this is MY life flashing before my eyes, and I don't want them in it. My parents were very kind people, kind but strong, and they raised me to be the same way. Expectations were put on me to ensure I'd become an upstanding person (they were mostly successful), and my dad always made sure I was doing a physical extracurricular of some kind. I ended up gravitating more towards Martial Arts, and that's what I've been doing most of my life, so maaaaaybe you can understand my decision to not immediately try to run when somebody lunged at me with a knife? As I'm bleeding out, I do recall my sensei saying something about never trying to fight someone with a knife, and whenever I'd talk to my mom about real fights, she would say I'm overconfident and shortsighted. My sensei was right the whole time no doubt, and I guess my mom was right too. When he suddenly pulled out a knife and lunged at me, my first instinct was to grab his wrist, to take control of the hand holding the knife. I managed to avert his swing away from me, and stomp his foot. He grabbed my other hand, and we ended up in a very weird sort of double arm wrestle. Unfortunately for me, he was stronger. He was able to inch the knife towards me, and prevented me from running away. Eventually I got stabbed in the neck, and now we're all caught up. I think I'm about out of time considering the blood loss is making me see some kind of bright tunnel, with my previous life at the end. Is my brain making me see some metaphor for dying as some poetic joke? And why do I feel like I'm falling-

The two messengers arrived at my throne room at the same time.
"Your Majesty-" They both started, then looked at each other.
I pointed at the one on my left "You go first"
"We've received a report that the Legendary Gauntlets have disappeared. According to eyewitnesses, a light from the Gauntlets shrine has flown towards the castle."
"What?" I shouted. The messenger shied away from me at that, so I calmed down before continuing.
"This is quite unprecedented, but we'll find out what this means later. Next."
The messenger on my right started speaking.
"We've completed the summoning of the Sword hero, but there's someone else down there too, and they've got the Gauntlets!"
Both me and the other messenger stared at them for a second. I didn't expect to find out what that light was so soon, but this just keeps getting stranger and stranger. The Legendary weapons have never summoned with the Holy weapons before. Perhaps what Lionhead said was true. This world is truly in great danger, so the Legendary weapon saw fit to summon someone as well.
I then heard footsteps coming up the stairs to the throne room. A young man who looked to be starting his 20's walked up the stairs. His physique makes him look like a farmer that was used to dealing with stubborn animals, he wore common clothes that were in good condition, and had medium-brown skin and dark brown hair. Finally, he had a giant axe strapped to his back, with a reddish orange gem embedded where the blade and handle would meet. His face turned to a confident smile.
"My King, The Axe Hero has arrived!"