The silence was wrong.
Muted and unnatural, like the universe itself was holding its breath. Outside, the bruised-purple clouds of evening lay slack and heavy on the sky, rolling with invisible weight. The streets were empty. No honking. No music. Nothing but the bark of some restless dog and the soft, relentless click of Julyah's wall clock.
11:57 PM.
She stood in the center of the room, a tripod of packed gear around her: field bag, knife on her thigh, and the old rusted bracelet that had started it all cold and unassuming in her palm.
It was deceptively simple, silver-blackened by time, faint etchings barely visible in the faint moonlight: half-dance steps, half-words she'd never known how to read.She'd practically ignored it when she first saw it, tucked away like the other trinkets her parents had left behind. If not for the letter—and the dream—she would never have looked at it twice.
The first time it had pulsed against her wrist, she'd thought it was haunted.
Now, with everything she knew… she didn't think at all.
She decided.
Julyah took a deep breath and slid the bracelet over her wrist one last time.
Nothing happened. At first.
Then the metal heated. Fast.
She gritted her teeth, fingers twitching as the searing burn crawled up her arm, not quite pain but pressure. A shift. Like the weight of reality drawing tight around her bones. She gasped, falling back into the wall as the bracelet tightened, the lines glowing faintly in her wrist, syncing up with her heartbeat.
One beat.
Two.
Three.
The metal melted into her skin like smoke.
It was gone.
But in its place, tracing her wrist and curling across the inside of her forearm, was something alive. A flower tattoo, glowing softly like morning light filtering through stained glass. Its petals shimmered, half-unfurling every few seconds like it was breathing.
She didn't scream.
She didn't blink.
She knew.
The moment it finished blooming, the world shifted.
A breeze that wasn't there ruffled the edge of a tarp near her gear. Her duffel bag unzipped itself. The box of canned goods rattled in place.
And in the center of her mind, clearer than any spoken word, was a menu. An inventory.
Every item she'd ever packed into those containers… every bullet, every canned bean, every book… was there. Organized. Categorized. Accessible by thought.
Her eyes widened.
With a single mental nudge, she will the knife in her hand to vanish, and it does. Not into thin air, but into that glowing memory-space. Her own personal vault.
She summoned it back, and it reappeared in her grip, clean and cold.
Next, she tested weight. Her full field bag, twenty kilos, disappeared with a blink. She danced in place, free of the burden. Light. Nothing on her back.
Then she summoned it again, and nearly wept with relief when it dropped back into her arms, perfectly intact.
She exhaled, trembling with adrenaline.
No one would ever steal from her again.
She wouldn't have to bury supplies or guard them, hide them in hollow walls.
She was the storage space now.
And her mind was the map.
The flower pulsed once more, brighter than before.
A gift from the old world.
Or maybe a seed planted by the new one.
Whatever it was, she had no more time to wonder.
Because far above her apartment, beyond the city's occasional blinking lights, the first glint of the meteor shower split open the sky—
And the world began to fall.