Fed up with his defeats in tournament combat — most stinging of all his loss to Liu Kang in the Outworld tournament — Shao Kahn sets in motion a plan ten thousand years in the making. He has his Shadow Priests, led by Shang Tsung, revive his long-dead queen, Sindel — but not in Outworld. By resurrecting her in the Earthrealm instead, Shao Kahn creates the opening he needs to cross the boundary between worlds and reclaim her. When Sindel is reborn on Earth and Shao Kahn reaches across dimensions to take her, the Earthrealm is dragged into Outworld, killing billions in an instant. Only a handful are spared, their souls protected by the thunder god Rayden, who warns that Shao Kahn must be stopped — though Rayden himself is powerless to intervene, holding no authority in Outworld now that Earth has been partly merged with it. As Shao Kahn unleashes extermination squads to hunt down the last survivors, it falls to a chosen few to take a stand.