Chapter 1

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.

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