The chair creaked under me as I sat, trying to make sense of the scene unfolding in front of me.
The boy across from me, my "brother" was talking a mile a minute about something called gridball, a virtual sport, apparently.
His voice bounced with energy, full of names and scores I didn't recognize.
I nodded and hummed at the right beats, pretending I was following, pretending I was… him.
The food on my tray was warm. Too warm. The kind of warmth that lingered in your throat and made your stomach believe everything was okay. Bread that tasted homemade. Eggs with a hint of spice I didn't recognize. Juice sweet, almost floral.
It all felt real.
That was the problem.
Across the table, the man the one who claimed to be my father was half-listening, eyes focused on a sleek handheld device. Not a phone. Thinner, transparent at the edges, glowing softly with lines of unfamiliar text and shifting headlines.
He paused mid-scroll. His brow furrowed. His eyes narrowed.
"Another gate breach in the northern districts," he muttered. "That's the third one this week."
The air in my lungs froze.
Gate breach?
I didn't move. Didn't blink.
That phrase gate breach it rang in my mind like a bell. Not from this life. From the one before.
From the damn story.
The Hollow Stars Fall.
I'd read those words before, at 3 AM in the quiet dark, lit by a phone screen and a restless mind. It was a plot point.
A late one.
The beginning of the unraveling. The part of the story where the cracks between worlds deepened, and the fragments started to fall.
I looked up. I hadn't meant to.
He noticed. "You okay?"
"Yeah," I replied quickly. Too quickly. "Just tired."
He gave a grunt and turned back to the screen.
My hand trembled slightly around my fork.
This wasn't a dream. This wasn't just a coincidence.
Somehow, this was the world of that unfinished novel and I was inside it.
But it wasn't my story.
The real protagonist never even showed up before the final chapter cut off.
So who was I supposed to be?
Before I could fall too deep into the spiral, the woman. my "mother" stepped into the room, drying her hands on a towel.
"Eli, can you take the recyclers out back when you're done?"
Eli.
That name again. Familiar now, but not mine.
Still, I nodded. "Sure."
She smiled and disappeared down the hallway.
I pushed back from the table, the legs of the chair scraping softly against the floor. The air in the house was warm, filled with the scent of food, dust, and something faintly metallic.
It didn't feel like a home.
It felt like a memory someone else had left behind for me to wear.
I walked slowly to the back door, grabbing the bin by its smooth handle. The door slid open with a soft hiss, and I stepped out into the morning light.
The backyard was small but open. patches of tall grass, a few solar panels angled toward the sun, and a worn path leading to a small shed. Birds I didn't recognize chirped from the tree trunk.
I looked up.
The sky was pale gold, streaked with early sunlight. But near the horizon. just at the edge of sight was something else.
A line.
A thin, jagged crack stretching across the sky like a fracture in glass.
It shimmered faintly, pulsing like a distant heartbeat.
Most people wouldn't notice it. Maybe they weren't supposed to.
But I did.
The Fragment.
In the novel, it had appeared just before the world began to unravel. When the void began bleeding through the cracks in reality.
When the stars started falling.
It was supposed to be a metaphor.
A symbol.
But here… it was real.
I stared for a long time, the wind brushing through my hair, my skin prickling with something between awe and fear.
Was this how the story started?
No. That wasn't right.
This wasn't the start.
The story had already begun.
I was just late.
And then , just beneath the sound of the wind...
.......[System Initialized]..........