The first time Arin Kael saw the sky split open, he thought it was beautiful. Terrifying, yes, like the universe had decided to tear itself apart just to see what spilled out—but still beautiful.

It started with a sound, low and rumbling, not thunder, not an earthquake. The air itself shivered. Then the clouds shredded in streaks of silver light, as if someone had dragged a knife through the firmament. For ten long seconds, everything froze—the wind, the noise of the city, even the pigeons mid-flight, suspended like ornaments dangling in invisible threads.

And then, just as suddenly, the world lurched forward again.

People screamed. Cars honked. The pigeons shot upward in a flurry of wings. Arin just stood there in the middle of the bookstore’s parking lot, holding the delivery box he’d gone out to pick up, staring at the jagged wound in the sky.

The “Fractures,” the news called them. Random breaks in reality. Scientists argued about their cause, politicians blamed each other, and social media treated them like apocalyptic fireworks. But to Arin, they weren’t something to be analyzed or feared. They were… reminders.

That life, for all its monotony, could still surprise you.

He balanced the delivery box on his hip, eyes fixed on the sky until the crack shimmered, sealed itself with a faint ripple, and disappeared as if it had never existed. Just another scar the universe decided wasn’t worth keeping.

“Still staring at the apocalypse, huh?”

The voice came from behind him, raspy and playful. It belonged to Mr. Ren, the bookstore’s owner—a wiry man in his late fifties who wore thick glasses and Hawaiian shirts regardless of the season.

Arin glanced over his shoulder. “You saw that one too?”

“Hard to miss when half the customers screamed and ran out mid-purchase,” Ren said, scratching his greying beard. “That’s the third Fracture this week. At this rate, we’ll be selling books to ghosts.”

“Maybe ghosts read more than people,” Arin muttered.

Ren chuckled. “You’d know. You’ve been haunting this place since you were sixteen.”

Arin didn’t respond. He adjusted the box and walked back inside, the familiar musty scent of paper and ink wrapping around him like a blanket. The bookstore was his shelter, a forgotten corner of the city no one visited unless they were bored or lost.

But that was fine. Arin liked forgotten places.

----

Arin carried the delivery box toward the counter, weaving past crooked shelves stacked with secondhand novels no one asked for anymore. The bell over the entrance still jingled softly from the panic earlier, the sound oddly out of place in the silence that followed.

He set the box down, slit the tape with a pocketknife, and started pulling out fresh titles. Self-help guides. Romance paperbacks with stock-photo covers. A glossy biography of some politician who’d probably deny the world was ending until it collapsed under his feet.

Pointless, all of it.

Arin flipped through the pages without much interest, then stacked the books neatly on the counter. His gaze drifted toward the front windows. Outside, life was already resuming as if nothing had happened. Cars rolled by, pedestrians scrolled on their phones, a mother tugged her child away from the crosswalk where the sky had just threatened to swallow them whole.

Everyone pretended it was normal. That was the most terrifying part.

Ren emerged from the back office holding two mugs of instant coffee. “Here. Drink. You’re looking at the window like you expect it to start talking back.”

Arin accepted the mug, wrapping his hands around the warmth. “If the world really is falling apart, I don’t think coffee’s going to fix it.”

Ren took a sip from his own mug, unconcerned. “If the world’s falling apart, coffee’s the only thing that will fix it.”

Arin smirked despite himself. The old man had a point.

They stood in silence for a while, the hum of the overhead lights filling the space. Then Ren said, more softly, “You should go out more, Arin. All you do is come here, shelve books, and go home. That’s no way to live—especially now.”

Arin didn’t answer. He knew what Ren meant. He also knew he didn’t have an answer worth giving.

How was he supposed to explain that he’d tried living? That university was supposed to be his “real life,” the place where everything finally started? And yet he dropped out halfway, lost in the blur of lectures and assignments that never led anywhere.

Now here he was, twenty years old, shelving other people’s stories while his own remained blank.

Ren sighed, as if sensing the storm in his silence. “Never mind. Forget I said anything. Just—don’t waste what time we’ve got left, kid. That’s all.”

The words landed heavier than Arin wanted to admit. He looked down into his coffee, watching the reflection of the ceiling light ripple across the surface.

Don’t waste what time we’ve got left.

Easier said than done.

---

The day dragged on quietly after that. A few regulars trickled in, more for conversation than purchases. An elderly woman asked about poetry anthologies. A teenager browsed the manga shelf for two hours before leaving without buying anything. Somewhere in the middle of it, Ren slipped out for groceries, leaving Arin to man the store alone.

By evening, the shop grew quiet again. The city outside buzzed with its usual neon glow, holographic ads splashing across half-collapsed buildings. Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed, probably chasing chaos from another Fracture zone.

Arin sat behind the counter with his notebook open, pen poised but unmoving. The pages were filled with false starts—lines of poetry that trailed off, story fragments that never reached an ending. He stared at the latest one, a sentence he’d written two days ago:

If tomorrow never comes, what regrets will follow me into the void?

He tapped the pen against the paper. No answer came.

The bell over the door jingled.

Arin glanced up.

A girl had stepped into the store. She was dripping wet, rain clinging to her hair and jacket. The storm must have started while he was lost in thought. She brushed water from her sleeves and looked around, her expression bright, curious, as if she’d just walked into a treasure chest instead of a dying bookstore.

Arin blinked, caught off guard by her sudden presence. Customers rarely wandered in this late.

“Uh… hi,” he managed.

The girl smiled, and for some reason it felt like the first crack of sunlight after weeks of overcast skies.

The girl pushed damp strands of hair from her face and moved toward the counter, her shoes squeaking faintly against the wooden floor. Despite being soaked, she didn’t seem embarrassed or hurried. She carried herself like someone who didn’t mind being noticed.

“Do you sell coffee here too?” she asked, her voice light, curious.

Arin blinked. “This is… a bookstore.”

“Right,” she said, as if the answer amused her. “But bookstores should sell coffee. Otherwise, how do you survive reading all these pages without falling asleep?”

Her tone was playful, almost challenging. Arin found himself fumbling for words, which wasn’t unusual—conversation rarely came easily to him—but the way she looked at him with unshaken patience made silence feel heavier.

“There’s a café across the street,” he finally said.

She leaned her elbows on the counter, ignoring the small puddle forming around her sleeves. “Too crowded. I like quiet places better.”

Arin hesitated, then gestured to the chair near the corner table. “You can sit there if you want. I’ll… find you some tea.”

The girl’s grin widened as if he’d passed some invisible test. “Tea in a bookstore. That works.”

He disappeared into the back, filled a paper cup from the staff kettle, and returned to find her already leafing through one of the old poetry collections. She accepted the cup with both hands and inhaled the steam as though it were the most precious gift she’d ever received.

For the first time all day, the storm outside slipped from Arin’s mind.

---

She stayed longer than he expected, flipping through pages, reading aloud occasional lines that made her laugh. Her laughter was sharp, bright, like breaking glass—yet it left warmth instead of shards.

Arin sat back at the counter, watching quietly, wondering what kind of person could be so at ease in a world fraying at the edges. Most people he knew carried the apocalypse like a weight on their shoulders. She carried it like a feather she’d already decided not to hold onto.

Finally, she looked up and caught him staring.

“What?” she asked, head tilted.

Arin coughed, caught. “Nothing. Just… you don’t seem worried.”

“About what?”

He raised an eyebrow, gesturing vaguely toward the window where faint ripples of the earlier Fracture still glowed against the clouds.

The girl shrugged. “If the world’s ending, I’d rather spend the time doing something that feels alive.” She closed the book, her gaze steady. “Wouldn’t you?”

The question lingered in the air, sharp and intimate, as if she’d cracked open his chest and found the thought he’d scribbled in his notebook.

If tomorrow never comes, what regrets will follow me into the void?

Arin didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The smirk she gave him suggested she’d already guessed.

---

It was late when she finally rose from her seat, setting the poetry book back on the shelf. She tucked the empty cup neatly by the counter and gave a casual little wave.

“Thanks for the tea, bookstore boy.”

Arin blinked again. “Wait—your name.”

She paused at the door, turning just enough for the streetlight outside to frame her damp hair like a halo.

“Mira,” she said. “Mira Solis.”

And then she was gone, swallowed by the drizzle and neon glow.

---

Arin sat there long after the bell stopped jingling, staring at the empty cup she’d left behind. Something about her felt unreal, like she’d stepped out of one of the unfinished stories in his notebook. A stranger who appeared out of nowhere, asked impossible questions, then vanished before he could think of the right answers.

He picked up his pen and wrote on the half-filled page:

Today, the sky cracked open. But before it swallowed me whole, a girl walked in with rain in her hair and a smile that felt like tomorrow wasn’t ending at all.

---

By the time Ren returned with groceries, Arin had already closed the notebook, hiding the words before anyone else could see them. The old man complained about the storm, muttered about power outages, and didn’t notice the slight change in Arin’s expression—the way his usual weariness had been replaced by something quieter, almost fragile.

Hope.

For the first time in months, maybe years, Arin didn’t feel like he was wasting his time.

He didn’t know that tomorrow, Mira Solis would return. He didn’t know she would drag him into the heart of the crumbling world, or that he’d soon be faced with choices heavier than anything he’d ever imagined.

All he knew was that he wanted to see her again.

And sometimes, wanting was enough to change everything.

The next morning, Arin found himself staring at the bookstore’s clock more often than usual.

It wasn’t as if he had anywhere urgent to be—the bookstore moved at its usual glacial pace, its handful of customers drifting in and out like dust motes in sunlight. But still, he kept glancing at the clock, tapping his pen against his notebook, pretending he wasn’t waiting for something.

Or someone.

Every time the bell hung over the door jingled, he looked up too quickly, only to be greeted by disappointment: a delivery man, a student with earbuds, a pair of tourists asking where the nearest subway line was. No Mira.

By late afternoon, he’d almost convinced himself it was foolish to expect her return. Maybe yesterday had been a chance—a girl caught in the rain, looking for shelter, who’d happened to step into the quietest bookstore in the city.

But then the bell chimed again, and there she was.

Mira Solis walked in as if she’d been coming here for years, her jacket dry this time, her steps light. She headed straight toward the counter without hesitation.

“Hey, bookstore boy.”

Arin froze mid-scribble. “…You came back.”

“Of course I did.” She leaned against the counter, her smile tilted. “You didn’t think I’d leave you alone with all these boring books, did you?”

Arin’s lips twitched despite himself. “They’re not boring.”

“Mm-hm. Convince me.”

Before he could answer, her wristwatch caught his eye. It was silver, delicate, but the glass was cracked and the hands frozen at 11:11. He realized she’d worn it yesterday too, only he hadn’t noticed it in the rain.

“Your watch,” he said, pointing. “It’s broken.”

Mira lifted her wrist, glanced at it, and shrugged. “Yeah. Stopped years ago.”

“Why wear it, then?”

“Because,” she said, her tone softening in a way that startled him, “time doesn’t matter if you decide it doesn’t.”

Arin had no response to that. He stared at her, struck by the odd mixture of playfulness and gravity in her words. She carried herself like someone who’d made peace with something he couldn’t even begin to understand.

---

They settled at one of the tables near the poetry shelf. Mira plopped herself into the chair and kicked one sneaker foot up on the opposite seat, ignoring the small “No Food or Drinks” sign taped to the table.

“So,” she said, chin propped on her hand, “tell me about you, bookstore boy.”

Arin frowned. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Wrong answer.” Her grin widened. “Everyone has a story. You look like the type who’s got a hundred of them, you just don’t say them out loud.”

“I… write them down.”

“Ah. A secret poet.”

“Not a poet.”

“Let me see.” She reached for the notebook on the table.

Arin snatched it back before she could touch it. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re unfinished.”

Mira leaned closer, her eyes glinting with challenges. “Then finish one. Right now.”

Arin stared at her, caught in the weight of her gaze. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t that simple, that words didn’t come just because someone demanded them. But instead he opened the notebook, pen hovering. He didn’t know if it was her grin, or the way she spoke as if she’d known him longer than a day, but suddenly the page didn’t feel as empty as before.

He wrote:

Some clocks break to remind us that every second is borrowed.

When he finished, Mira reached over again. This time, he let her take the notebook.

She read the line, then looked at him with something softer than her usual teasing smile. “See? Poet.”

Arin shifted uncomfortably. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” she said firmly, closing the notebook and sliding it back to him. “It’s proof.”

“Proof of what?”

“That you’re alive.”

The words lodged in his chest, heavy and sharp. No one had ever spoken to him like that before—like living itself was something you had to prove.

Before he could reply, thunder cracked outside, low and distant. The lights flickered once, then steadied. Both of them looked toward the window, where the faint shimmer of another Fracture rippled across the darkening sky.

Mira’s expression didn’t falter. She turned back to him, grinning again. “So. What are you doing tomorrow?”

Arin blinked at Mira’s question. “Tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” She said it as though it were the simplest thing in the world, even though outside the window the sky was still glowing faintly with fractured light. “Don’t tell me you’re busy.”

He glanced at his notebook, then at the shelves around them, then at the flickering light overhead. Busy? He’d spent the past year hiding in routine: shelving, scribbling half-sentences, walking home, sleeping, repeating.

But looking at her, he realized that “busy” had never been the right word. “Stuck” was more accurate.

“I… don’t usually make plans,” he admitted.

“Perfect,” Mira said, clapping her hands once. “Then you’ll make one with me.”

Arin frowned. “You don’t even know me.”

“Sure I do.” She leaned across the table, ticking points off on her fingers. “Your name’s Arin. You work here. You write in that little notebook like your life depends on it. And you pretend to hate attention, but your ears turn red every time I catch you staring.”

Arin’s ears burned exactly on the cue. He looked away, muttering, “That doesn’t mean you know me.”

Mira only smiled wider. “Not yet. That’s why we needed it tomorrow.”

---

The storm outside swelled, raindrops pelting the window like impatient fingers. The bookstore lights flickered again, this time longer, until Arin reached instinctively for the flashlight under the counter. But the power steadied before he needed it.

“Fracture storms,” Mira murmured, her gaze fixed on the glass. She sounded almost reverent, like someone admiring constellations. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

Arin followed her gaze. The cracks in the sky glowed faintly violet, spider webbing across the clouds. Streets below shone slick with rain, car headlights stretching like smudges of light in the watery air. Beautiful wasn’t the word he would’ve chosen. Unnerving, maybe. Fragile. Like the whole city was one wrong breath away from crumbling.

“You’re not scared?” he asked.

“Of what?”

“The world ending.”

Mira looked at him then, her expression unreadable. Slowly, she lifted her wrist, tapping the cracked face of her watch.

“It already did,” she said simply.

Arin stared at her. He wanted to ask what she meant, but something in her voice stopped him—the way it carried weight, a finality that suggested it wasn’t just a clever line. She lowered her hand again, eyes shining in the dim light.

“I just decided,” she continued, “that if everything can disappear at any second, then I don’t want to waste time pretending tomorrow is guaranteed.”

She said it with a smile, but there was something fragile behind it, like glass just before it shatters.

Arin didn’t push. He only asked, “So what exactly are you planning for tomorrow?”

“Anything but sitting alone,” Mira said immediately. “We’ll start with coffee. Not from across the street, though. I know a better place.”

Arin shook his head, incredulous. “You really trust strangers this easily?”

“Strangers?” Mira tilted her head, considering him. Then she laughed softly, though her eyes stayed serious. “No. Not strangers.”

---

The rain eased after a while, the glow in the sky dimming until it looked almost normal again. Mira wandered through the shelves while Arin finished tallying the register, her fingers trailing along the spines of books as if she were listening to them whisper. She pulled out random titles, flipped pages, put them back with a kind of careless reverence.

When she finally returned to the counter, she had one book tucked under her arm—a battered anthology of love poems. She dropped it in front of him.

“Here. Your homework.”

Arin blinked. “Homework?”

“Pick one poem before tomorrow,” she said. “Memorize it. Then recite it to me. If you mess up, you buy me dinner.”

He stared at the book, then at her. “That’s not how bookstores work.”

“Sure it is,” Mira said. “This bookstore, anyway. Special rules.”

Her grin was daring, playful, yet her eyes carried that same undercurrent from before—that urgent insistence on filling moments with something more than silence.

Arin looked down at the cracked watch on her wrist, then back at her, and for the first time in a long time, he felt the strange pull of a decision.

“Fine,” he said. “One poem.”

Mira beamed. “Good boy.”

The bell above the door jingled as she left a little later, vanishing into the night like yesterday. But this time, she left something heavier behind: not just an empty cup or the echo of her laughter—she left expectations.

Tomorrow.

And for once, Arin realized he wanted tomorrow to come.

That night, Arin couldn’t sleep.

He lay in bed staring at the ceiling, the city’s muted glow leaking through his curtains. Normally, the quiet was a comfort—a blanket of stillness he could wrap himself in to keep the noise of the world away. But tonight it pressed down on him, restless, charged.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Mira’s watch. The crack in the glass. Frozen hands. 11:11.

It was ridiculous, he told himself. She was just a girl he’d met yesterday. Twice, if you counted today. That wasn’t enough to matter. Not in a life like his, built carefully from routines and quiet corners.

And yet.

Her words repeated in his mind like an echo that refused to fade: Time doesn’t matter if you decide it doesn’t.

---

Arin sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. His notebook sat on the desk across the room, half-buried under books. He hesitated, then stood and pulled it out. The page he’d written on earlier—Some clocks break to remind us that every second is borrowed—was still open. He stared at it for a long time before flipping to a blank sheet.

The pen felt heavier tonight. He started writing without overthinking, without pausing to correct himself:

She walks into silence like she owns it,

turns the ticking of a broken clock into laughter.

Maybe she’s right—

maybe tomorrow is a lie we keep telling ourselves,

so we don’t have to admit

that every heartbeat is already borrowed.

When he stopped, his hand ached. But the ache was good. It was proof of motion, proof of something shifting inside him.

Arin closed the notebook, resting his palm on its cover. For the first time in months, maybe years, he wanted the sun to rise faster.

---

The next morning, he was awake before his alarm.

He moved on autopilot through his routine—coffee, bread, jacket—but everything felt sharper, charged. Even the air outside seemed fresher, damp with the scent of last night’s rain.

At the bookstore, he kept glancing at the door again, but this time it wasn’t with reluctant impatience. It was with something dangerously close to anticipation.

And sure enough, just past noon, the bell jingled.

Mira stepped inside, her smile immediate, like she’d been expecting him to be waiting. “Good boy,” she said again, teasing, “you showed up.”

“I work here,” Arin deadpanned, but his lips twitched.

“Excuses.” She leaned forward on the counter. “So? Did you pick a poem?”

Arin slid the book she’d left yesterday toward her. He didn’t say anything, just opened it to the marked page. His chest tightened, but he started reciting:

“I loved you first: but afterwards your love

Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song…”

The words felt clumsy on his tongue at first, but then something strange happened. Mira was watching him, and in her gaze the lines didn’t feel borrowed anymore. They felt alive. His voice steadied. The verse, once distant on the page, carried weight in the space between them.

When he finished, silence stretched. Mira tapped the cover closed with a fingertip, her expression softer than he’d ever seen it.

“You cheated,” she said finally.

Arin blinked. “What?”

“You didn’t just pick a poem,” she said. “You picked one that fit.”

He frowned. “Fit what?”

“Me,” she said simply.

The air between them tightened, heavy with something unspoken. Arin swallowed, suddenly aware of how close she was leaning across the counter, of the faint smell of rain still clinging to her hair.

Before he could respond, the ground shuddered.

It was subtle at first, like a subway rumble beneath their feet. But then the lights flickered, books rattled against their shelves, and the air itself seemed to hum with static.

Mira straightened instantly, her smile vanishing. She grabbed his wrist without hesitation. “Come on.”

“What—”

“No time.”

The floor trembled again, harder. Outside, people were shouting. Arin caught a glimpse through the window: the sky was tearing open in broad daylight, violet cracks spiderwebbing wider and faster than he’d ever seen before.

He froze. For all his quiet routines and carefully built walls, he’d never prepared for the one truth everyone feared: the Fractures weren’t slowing down—they were accelerating.

“Arin.” Mira’s voice snapped him back. She still had his wrist, her grip strong, urgent. Her watch gleamed between them, its frozen hands pointing to 11:11.

“Do you trust me?” she asked.

Arin stared at her. The bookstore shook again, dust sifting down from the ceiling. Outside, the world looked ready to rip apart.

And yet all he saw was her. The girl with the broken watch, daring him to step out of his silence.

He didn’t know why, didn’t know what she meant or where she wanted to lead him. But somehow, the answer came easier than breathing.

“…Yes.”

Mira’s smile returned, fierce and bright, as the windows cracked with the sky outside.

“Good,” she said. “Then hold on.”

The world did not end with a bang. It ended with a crack.

The bookstore’s windows splintered inward as the air outside shrieked—yes, shrieked, like a thousand voices screaming through torn fabric. The violet rift in the sky widened, jagged edges pulsing as if alive. Arin’s knees buckled as the ground swayed, books crashing down around him in a deafening waterfall of paper and wood.

“Mira—” he gasped, but her grip on his wrist didn’t loosen. She was already dragging him toward the back door.

“Move!” she shouted.

They stumbled through the narrow aisles, their feet crunching over fallen books. A shelf toppled with a groan, blocking the way. Mira swore under her breath, then yanked him down another row. The air buzzed like static against Arin’s skin, raising every hair on his body.

He risked a glance back at the windows.

That’s when he saw it.

Shapes.

Not human, not animal, but jagged silhouettes pouring from the Fracture, like shadows cut loose from reality itself. Their outlines rippled, bending the light around them, their movements twitchy and unnatural. Wherever they landed, the ground darkened, corroded, as though their presence rewrote the rules of the world.

Arin froze. His mind screamed at him to run, but his body wouldn’t obey. The things were spilling in faster now, clawing against gravity as though the air itself was a surface they could crawl on.

Mira yanked him again, her voice sharp. “Don’t look at them—just run!”

He forced his legs into motion. The two burst through the back door into the alley. The sky above was split open, violet light bleeding into the blue. Screams echoed down the street, mingling with the wail of distant sirens.

“Mira—what are those—”

“Later!” she snapped, scanning the alley. Her eyes locked onto the fire escape above. Without hesitation, she jumped, grabbing the ladder, and shoved it down. Metal screeched as it hit the ground. “Climb!”

Arin hesitated, staring up at the rusted rungs. His hands were trembling. His chest burned with panic.

Mira’s voice cut through again, steadier this time. “Trust me, Arin. You said you would.”

That anchored him. He grabbed the ladder and climbed, every rung rattling beneath his weight. Mira was right behind him, moving faster, more sure. By the time they reached the rooftop, his lungs were raw, but the air up there was worse—charged, sharp, like breathing in lightning.

From the height, the destruction stretched endlessly. Cracks webbed across the sky, violet against the pale afternoon. More of those shadow-things crawled out, sliding down buildings, clawing across streets.

The city wasn’t panicking anymore. It was screaming.

Arin dropped to his knees, staring in horror. “This is… this is the end.”

“No.” Mira crouched beside him, her broken watch glinting. Her voice was steel. “It’s the beginning.”

Arin turned to her, disbelief in his eyes. “Beginning of what?”

Her gaze met his, steady, unflinching. “The reason you’re still here.”

Before Arin could even process the words, the rooftop shuddered. One of the shadow creatures had landed. Its limbs bent wrong, like broken glass forced to walk. Its faceless head tilted, fixing on them, and then it lunged—

Mira shoved Arin aside as the thing struck, its claws raking sparks from the concrete.

“Run!” she shouted, drawing something from her coat.

It wasn’t a weapon Arin recognized. It looked like a shard of crystal wrapped in wires, pulsing faintly with violet light—the same light as the Fracture.

Before the creature struck again, she slammed the shard into the rooftop. The air rippled outward, a wave of force throwing the monster back in a distorted blur.

Arin gaped. “What the hell was that?!”

“Insurance,” Mira said, breathless. She grabbed his hand again, pulling him toward the next rooftop. “And I’ve got more. Come on—we’re not safe here.”

Arin stumbled after her, every instinct screaming to stop, to hide, to collapse. But he kept moving. Because her hand was warm around his. Because somehow, even with the sky breaking apart, he believed her.

They jumped the gap between buildings, the wind roaring in their ears, the rift pulsing above like a wounded star.

And for the first time in his life, Arin Kael wasn’t just surviving. He was falling—into chaos, into terror, and, without realizing it yet, into her.

---

The rooftops stretched ahead in uneven steps—some close enough to leap, others separated by alleys too wide for even Mira’s reckless confidence. Arin’s lungs burned as they sprinted, boots slamming against wet concrete. The storm had broken into a furious downpour, and every step felt like running across glass slick with oil.

Behind them, the creature screeched, a sound that wasn’t sound at all—more like nails dragged across the inside of Arin’s skull. He flinched, almost tripping, but Mira’s tug on his arm kept him upright.

“Don’t look back!” she shouted over the wind.

Arin wanted to argue, wanted to scream that they couldn’t just keep running across collapsing rooftops. But then another shriek split the night—this time from the street below. He risked a glance despite her warning.

More of them. Crawling along walls, skittering over shattered glass, bending reality with every twitch. The ground itself seemed to rot where their claws touched.

The Fracture wasn’t just leaking. It was spilling.

“Mira!” he gasped. “We can’t—there’s too many—”

She cut him off with a sharp, almost feral grin. “Then we don’t outrun them. We outplay them.”

Before he could ask what that meant, she stopped dead at the edge of the next rooftop. The alley yawning below was far too wide. Arin’s momentum nearly carried him right over the edge before he stumbled back, chest heaving.

“You’re insane,” he choked out. “We can’t make that jump!”

Mira didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she held up another one of those strange crystal shards. This one pulsed brighter, humming faintly in the storm. She pressed it to her palm, muttering something under her breath—a phrase that sounded both foreign and familiar, as if his brain couldn’t decide if it understood or not.

The shard ignited.

Light rippled from her hand, tracing shapes in the air. For a heartbeat, Arin thought he saw symbols—letters? equations?—before they vanished in a rush of heat. The space before them shimmered, folding into itself until a makeshift bridge of light stretched across the gap.

“Go!” she barked.

Arin gawked at the glowing construct. “That’s—that’s impossible.”

Mira shoved him hard enough that he nearly tumbled forward. “So is the sky cracking open. Move!”

His legs obeyed before his mind did. He sprinted across the bridge, every step sending ripples of violet light beneath his feet. His heart clawed at his ribs, expecting it to vanish any second. But somehow, impossibly, it held.

Mira followed right behind, the bridge dissolving into sparks the instant her boots left it.

The moment they landed, the creature leapt after them. It didn’t fall. It clung to the air itself, claws digging into nothing as though reality was just another wall. Its faceless head tilted, fixing on Arin again.

This time, Arin couldn’t move. His legs locked, terror rooting him in place.

The creature lunged.

Mira stepped between them, her hand flashing out. Another shard hit the ground, exploding into a burst of force. The monster screeched as it was flung sideways, slamming into a rooftop unit and crumpling the metal like paper.

But it wasn’t destroyed. Already, its limbs were twitching, reforming, as though reality itself was trying to stitch it back together.

“Why—why aren’t they dying?!” Arin shouted, voice cracking.

Mira’s face tightened. “Because they’re not alive in the way you understand. They’re fractures, same as the sky. Echoes of what shouldn’t exist.”

He blinked at her, rain stinging his eyes. “And you just know this?!”

For the first time, she hesitated. Her hand flexed, the broken watch on her wrist ticking once—an audible click despite its shattered face.

“I know because I’ve seen it before,” she said finally, her voice low.

Arin’s stomach dropped. Questions burned in his throat, but the rooftop shuddered again, cutting him off. More creatures were crawling up the building’s sides, their claws anchoring into nothing.

Mira swore under her breath, then grabbed his hand again. “No more questions. Not here. We need cover.”

They bolted toward the far edge of the rooftop. This gap was smaller, barely a meter wide, but Arin still stumbled on the landing, his legs threatening to give out. Mira yanked him upright, steady as ever.

Somehow, her grip never faltered.

They ducked behind an old billboard frame, crouching as the rain hammered down. From here, they could see the street below—a mess of overturned cars, fleeing civilians, and emergency drones flickering red warnings into the chaos. The creatures swarmed, dozens of them now, turning the city into a nightmare playground.

Arin pressed his back against the billboard, chest heaving. His whole body trembled. “Mira… what are we supposed to do? We can’t fight that. We can’t even run from it.”

Mira’s eyes glowed faintly in the violet light, sharp and unyielding. “We don’t have to fight all of it. We just have to survive the night.”

“And tomorrow?”

She didn’t answer right away. Her hand tightened around another shard, and for the first time since he’d met her, Arin saw the faintest flicker of fear cross her face.

“Tomorrow,” she said softly, “depends on whether you keep trusting me.”

---

The city roared beneath them—sirens blaring, drones buzzing, screams echoing against the storm. Every flash of lightning lit up more fractures crawling across the skyline, some small, some gaping wide enough that the buildings themselves seemed to bend away from them.

Arin’s chest felt hollow, his breaths shallow. He wanted to believe Mira, to trust that she knew what she was doing. But his entire body screamed that this was wrong—wrong in a way the human brain wasn’t meant to process.

Mira peered over the edge of the billboard’s metal frame, eyes scanning the chaos below. “We can’t stay here. They’ll smell us out.”

Arin shuddered. “They… smell us?”

“Not with noses. With existence,” she said. “We’re whole. They’re not. That draws them like moths to fire.”

He wished she would stop explaining things in ways that made his stomach twist. But before he could argue, Mira grabbed his wrist again. “There—service stairs.”

Sure enough, across the rooftop, a rusted metal door rattled in the wind, half torn from its hinges. She sprinted first, shards clinking faintly against each other at her hip, and Arin forced his body to follow. Every muscle screamed against the idea of moving closer to the edges where the creatures lurked, but staying behind felt worse.

They shoved the door open, slamming into a stairwell that smelled of rust and mildew. Water dripped steadily down the concrete steps, echoing like a metronome. Mira didn’t slow until they’d descended several floors, their footsteps splashing in puddles.

Finally, she stopped in the shadow of a broken light fixture, listening.

The storm’s roar was muffled now, replaced by the muffled hum of the building’s emergency generator. Arin slumped against the wall, sliding down until his back hit cold concrete. His body was shaking too hard to care about the dirt soaking into his clothes.

“I can’t—” His voice cracked. He tried again. “Mira, I can’t do this. I’m not—”

Her gaze landed on him, sharp but not unkind. “Not what?”

“Not a fighter. Not… whatever you are. I stock books, I drink too much coffee, I forget to pay my bills on time. I’m not cut out for—” He waved a trembling hand vaguely upward. “—whatever the hell just tried to eat me.”

For a long moment, Mira just looked at him. Then she crouched, lowering herself until they were eye-level. Her violet-tinged eyes caught the faint glow of the emergency light, making them seem almost luminescent.

“You think I’m cut out for this?” she asked softly.

He blinked at her. “You… just conjured a bridge out of thin air.”

“That doesn’t make it easy,” she said. Her voice had lost its hard edges now, quieter, almost tired. “Every time I use a shard, I feel it digging deeper. It’s not strength—it’s a bargain. One that gets heavier each time.”

Arin frowned, trying to process her words. “Then why do you do it?”

“Because if I don’t, people die.”

The simplicity of it silenced him. He wanted to argue, to demand answers, but her expression held no room for debate. She wasn’t bragging. She wasn’t making herself a hero. She was just… stating facts.

Mira reached into her jacket, pulling out another shard. This one was duller than the rest, its light flickering faintly. She rolled it across her knuckles like a coin, then pressed it into his palm.

“Hold onto this,” she said.

Arin looked down at it, the cool surface thrumming faintly against his skin. “Why me?”

“Because you’re still here,” she replied simply. “And because it listens to you differently.”

He wanted to ask what she meant, but before he could, a distant shriek reverberated through the stairwell. The concrete walls rattled faintly, dust raining down from above.

Mira’s head snapped upward. “They’ve caught our trail.”

“Of course they have,” Arin muttered, pushing himself up despite his legs screaming for rest. “We can’t keep running forever.”

Mira gave a small, crooked smile. “No. But we can run smart.”

They descended further, bursting into a lower maintenance level. Pipes hissed overhead, steam curling through the air. The place felt forgotten, like no one had walked here in decades. Perfect, Arin thought grimly, for hiding—or dying.

Mira led him to a heavy steel hatch tucked in the corner. She kicked it open, revealing a crawl space lined with cables and humming power lines. The air was thick with ozone.

“In here,” she said.

Arin stared at the cramped tunnel. “You want us to crawl into a hole in the wall while nightmare spiders hunt us?”

“Do you have a better plan?” she shot back.

He didn’t.

They squeezed inside, the hatch clanging shut behind them. The tunnel was just wide enough for them to shuffle side by side, shoulders brushing. Every few meters, Mira stopped, placing a shard against the wall. The crystal pulsed faintly, and for a few moments, the oppressive weight pressing in on Arin’s chest would ease.

Finally, after what felt like hours, they emerged into a small utility chamber. It was dark, damp, and smelled of copper, but it was hidden. Mira slumped against the wall, pulling her knees to her chest, exhaustion finally etching itself across her features.

Arin collapsed opposite her, clutching the shard she’d given him. Its faint glow painted their faces in a ghostly light.

Silence stretched between them, broken only by the hum of the power lines.

Finally, Arin asked, his voice hoarse: “Who are you really, Mira?”

Her eyes opened slowly, catching the shard’s glow. For a moment, something unguarded flickered across her face—a softness, almost sadness.

“The one trying to make sure tomorrow exists,” she murmured.

And then, before he could push further, her head dropped against her arms, and she slipped into an uneasy sleep.

Arin stared at her in the dim light, questions coiling tighter in his chest. But despite everything, despite the monsters and the fractures and the impossibility of it all… he didn’t feel entirely alone anymore.

For the first time in years, someone had grabbed his hand—and hadn’t let go.