Rey woke with a start.
The room was bathed in eerie silence, the kind that presses down on your chest like invisible hands. The fan had stopped spinning. The shadows were heavier than usual. Outside, the sky was no longer the faint grey of dawn—it was black. Unmoving. Like someone had erased the stars.
Mira still slept beside him, curled tightly beneath the threadbare blanket. Their mother's cough had stopped. That, more than anything, sent a chill crawling down his spine.
Rey sat up. His body ached, but something else tugged at his senses. A vibration. A hum beneath his skin. As if the world itself were holding its breath.
Then came the sound.
A distant chime. Soft. Metallic. Almost musical.
But it wasn't coming from outside.
It was coming from above.
Rey stood, crossing the room barefoot. He opened the window slowly, careful not to wake his sister. The air outside felt thick—like oil instead of wind. The city was cloaked in unnatural darkness. No headlights. No streetlamps. Just shadows stretched long and deep.
And then… the sky split.
No warning. No roar. Just a silent crack like glass under pressure. A thin, glowing line appeared across the heavens—pulsing red, jagged like lightning frozen in time.
Rey blinked.
The line opened.
And something looked back.
---
It wasn't an eye. It wasn't a face.
But it saw.
Rey stumbled back from the window as the red fissure widened, spiraling open into a massive gate. Not mechanical. Not magical. Just… wrong. A wound in reality, bleeding crimson light that painted the buildings in hues of death.
From the gate, they came.
Winged shadows. Twisted shapes. Horned silhouettes. Some tall as towers. Others crawling like beasts. All of them moving without sound, gliding down toward the earth like ghosts on strings.
The demons had arrived.
---
Sirens screamed too late.
By the time the city reacted, buildings were already burning. People ran in every direction. Some froze, unable to comprehend what they were seeing. Others were simply torn apart.
Rey didn't scream. He watched in stillness, paralyzed.
Then Mira screamed.
He spun—she was awake, her face pale with terror, pointing to the hallway.
The door exploded inward.
One of them stood there. Small, for its kind—barely taller than a man. Skin like cracked obsidian. Eyes glowing with dull blue fire. Its mouth opened slowly, too wide for its head.
Rey didn't think. He grabbed Mira and dove behind the kitchen counter. Wood splinters rained over them as the demon stepped forward, claws dragging across the wall.
Their mother tried to shield them—her final act.
The sound was wet.
Rey's heart cracked.
He dragged Mira out the back door. The stairs were already crumbling. The air was filled with screams and flames. Across the rooftops, dozens of red eyes watched.
Mira tripped. Rey scooped her up.
But he ran straight into another.
This one was larger. Horns twisted backward like a crown. Its chest glowed faintly, like something burned inside. It didn't strike.
It grabbed.
Mira fell from Rey's arms as claws encircled his body like steel bars.
"Run!" he screamed at her.
She did.
The last thing he saw before the darkness swallowed him was his sister's terrified face vanishing into the smoke.
---
There was no sky in this place.
Just endless red mist and the faint glow of a dying sun. Rey couldn't move. His body dangled in the creature's grip as it soared through the torn sky, leaving the human world behind.
The gate closed behind them with a silent shudder.
And Rey entered the Abyss.
---