Chapter 5
Inside the mall, chaos reigned. The air thrummed with panicked shouts, crying children, and the frantic scuff of hundreds of feet on the polished tile floor.
Customers huddled together, faces pale and eyes wide with shock, clutching each other or shopping bags like lifelines.
The sudden, violent earthquake and the simultaneous shriek of every phone's emergency alarm had shattered the ordinary morning.
"Mama, what is going on?" A small voice trembled. A five-year-old girl named Arhi clung to her mother's leg, her tiny body shaking visibly. The cold tile felt unnerving under her small sandals.
Her mother knelt, forcing a reassuring smile onto her face, though her knuckles were white where she gripped her daughter's hand.
The warm, familiar scent of her daughter's hair couldn't mask the cold dread coiling in her stomach. "It is just a small earthquake, Arhi, don't worry about it," she soothed, her voice carefully calm.
But inside her, she screamed in horror. The scale of the emergency alert screamed this was anything but small.
The violent shaking had stopped, leaving an eerie, trembling stillness. People lowered their arms from over their heads, cautiously straightening their bodies.
A collective sigh of relief was quickly swallowed by a new wave of anxiety. Worried murmurs rose – family, friends. Phones were pulled out, screens glowing like frantic fireflies in the dimmer light.
"I can't get any signal here!" A man in a rumpled business suit barked, frustration sharp in his voice.
He held his phone high above his head, jabbing at the screen. The familiar network bars were stubbornly absent.
"Me too, I can't get any signal as well!" A teenager in denim shorts and a bright green t-shirt echoed, mimicking his gesture, her voice tight with panic.
She strained on tiptoe, as if a few extra inches could magically connect her. The silence from their devices was absolute and heavy.
The signal was cut off all over the world, but they didn't know that yet.
"LOOK! Something is outside!!" A man near the main entrance bellowed, his voice was raw. He pointed a shaking finger through where the glass doors had been.
Heads snapped around. A collective gasp ripped through the crowd.
Through the entrance, dominating the view beyond the mangled parking lot barriers, stood the impossible: the colossal, jagged dome of dark, rocky spikes.
It blotted out the horizon, a mountain of nightmare piercing the sky. Sunlight glinted coldly off its uneven surfaces.
"NOOO! My Lamborghini!" Another man wailed, his voice cracking. He'd spotted his prized, low-slung blue car skewered like an insect on one of the smaller spikes near the structure's terrifying base.
Others muttered about their lost cars, their voices tight with disbelief and loss. But most simply stared, frozen in terror at the sheer scale and violence of the structure.
This wasn't an accident; it was an invasion of their reality.
Suddenly, with a sharp pop and a shower of sparks from the ceiling, the mall plunged into near-total darkness.
Emergency strips flickered to life seconds later, casting long, distorted shadows and painting faces in sickly greenish light.
A wave of fresh screams erupted in the sudden darkness. The smell of hot electrical wiring briefly cut through the dust.
A deep, rumbling vibration shook the floor as the mall's generators kicked in. Lights buzzed and flickered erratically before steadying, bathing the terrified crowd in harsh, unforgiving light.
It was brighter, but the fear remained, and much colder and deeper than before.
Looking outside through the broken entrance, they saw the reason for the deepening gloom. Thick, unnatural clouds, the color of darkness, covered the sky with terrifying speed, devouring the sun.
Then, a movement. At the base of the colossal structure, within one of the huge, shadowed gaps between leaning spikes – a gap that looked like a wound in the earth itself – a figure began to emerge.