They should have fallen.
That was the first thought that shattered through Ayaan’s mind as his body left the collapsing rooftop. Gravity should have taken hold instantly, pulling them down toward the unforgiving concrete below. But sothing was wrong. The mont stretched unnaturally, as if ti itself had loosened its grip just as reality had begun to tear apart.
Zara’s hand clutched his tightly as they leapt, her fingers digging into his skin with desperate force. He could hear her breathing—fast, uneven—but even that sound seed distant, distorted, like it was echoing from sowhere far away. The air around them felt thick, resisting their movent, slowing their descent into sothing that wasn’t quite a fall.
For a brief second, Ayaan looked back.
He shouldn’t have.
The rooftop was no longer collapsing—it was folding inward, vanishing into the darkness that had opened beneath it. The hands were gone, but the absence they left behind was worse. The crack had widened into sothing vast, sothing that could not be asured or understood. It wasn’t just beneath the building anymore—it was everywhere.
And within it—
Sothing moved.
Not a shape.
Not a form.
But a presence that made the mind recoil.
Ayaan tore his gaze away, his heart pounding violently as he focused forward. The neighboring building was closer now—but not close enough. They weren’t going to make it.
“We’re not going to reach it!” Zara cried, her voice breaking.
Ayaan didn’t respond.
Because sothing else had begun to happen.
They weren’t falling anymore.
They were drifting.
The space between the buildings stretched, bending in ways that defied logic. The distance shifted—expanding, contracting—as though the world itself couldn’t decide what it was supposed to be. Ayaan felt a sudden pull, not downward, but sideways, dragging at his body like an invisible current.
“Zara... do you feel that?”
She nodded, her eyes wide with terror. “It’s pulling us sowhere!”
Then the city disappeared.
Not gradually.
Instantly.
One mont, the broken skyline surrounded them. The next—
There was nothing.
No buildings.
No sky.
No ground.
Only a vast, endless darkness that felt both empty and impossibly full at the sa ti.
Zara scread, her voice echoing into the void, but the sound didn’t travel—it folded back in on itself, swallowed before it could exist. Ayaan tried to steady himself, but there was no sense of direction, no up or down, no way to understand where they were or what was happening.
And then—
They weren’t alone.
Shapes began to form in the darkness.
Faint at first.
Then clearer.
The creatures.
Dozens of them.
Suspended in the void, motionless, their hollow eyes fixed on Ayaan and Zara. But they weren’t surrounding them this ti—they were arranged. Positioned with precision, forming the sa pattern they had created on the street below.
A symbol.
A signal.
Ayaan’s breath caught as realization hit him. “We didn’t escape...”
Zara shook her head slowly, her voice barely a whisper. “We were brought here.”
The pulse echoed again.
Not from below.
Not from anywhere.
But from within everything.
The creatures reacted instantly, their bodies twitching in perfect synchronization as the pattern shifted, expanding outward. The darkness around them rippled, responding to the movent like a living surface disturbed by a single drop.
And then—
The eye opened.
Not in front of them.
Not behind them.
But everywhere at once.
Ayaan felt it before he saw it, the sa presence from the cara lens—but now there was no barrier, no distance, nothing separating them from it. It was vast beyond comprehension, stretching across the void, its awareness pressing down on them like an unbearable weight.
Zara gasped, clutching her head. “It’s inside my mind!”
Ayaan couldn’t speak.
Because it was inside his too.
Thoughts that weren’t his began to surface—images, fragnts, understanding that ca without explanation. He saw the city not as it was, but as sothing layered, sothing thin, sothing that had always been covering sothing else.
And beneath it—
This.
The creatures moved again, their formation tightening, focusing inward. Slowly, they turned—not toward Ayaan and Zara, but toward the center of the void.
Toward sothing forming.
Ayaan’s voice trembled as he forced the words out. “It’s not just watching us...”
Zara looked at him, her fear turning into sothing deeper. “Then what is it doing?”
Ayaan stared into the darkness as the shape began to take form.
“It’s bringing sothing through.”
And as the void trembled—
Sothing began to erge.
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