The rain over Delhi didn't feel like rain anymore. It hissed as it hit the shattered pavement, each droplet carrying the faint metallic tang that made soldiers cough into their masks. The sky above was bruised with the same strange purple-black streaks that had haunted the horizon since the Collapse.
Commander Anika Rao stood on the command platform of a mobile operations hub, her voice clipped but steady as she barked into the comms.
"Sector Delta-7, move now. Breach activity is accelerating."
On the holo-map, red flares pulsed like open wounds. The Breach—they had stopped calling them "anomalies" months ago—was expanding in unpredictable patterns. Entire districts vanished overnight, devoured by impossible geometry and the roar of creatures no textbook had ever prepared them for.
From the corner of her eye, Anika caught the broadcast feed on a side screen—old world news anchors reading casualty counts with voices that had long since run out of shock. She muted it. She didn't need numbers anymore. She could see the smoke from here.
And yet… amidst the destruction, there were rumors. A black-market war over meteorite shards—remnants of the storm that had brought the Breaches. Most corrupted those who touched them, but the rare pure shards were said to gift impossible power. Anika didn't believe in miracles, but she believed in patterns. And the way factions were killing for these stones meant something bigger was coming.
Survivor Broadcast –
"This is—hkkk—station Echo Nine calling any… anyone alive in North America. The Rockies are gone. The Breach swallowed it in minutes. The cities… they're—"[static]"If you find a shard… don't… don't—"[signal lost]
The ocean was no longer safe.Dr. Kaito Senzu braced against the railing as the ship cut through black waters lit by distant lightning. Somewhere beneath them, Breaches had begun to form undersea, sending strange luminescent plumes spiraling upward.
His tablet flickered with incomplete data—shard samples from five different countries, none stable for long. Every corrupted shard emitted a pulse, like the heartbeat of something alive and hungry. The pure ones… they were silent. Waiting.
Kaito's research logs had been flagged twice by the Alliance Council for "inducing political instability." He didn't care. What was coming wasn't political—it was planetary.
He turned to the secure crate in his cabin. Inside, wrapped in triple-sealed shielding, was a shard unlike any he'd seen—one that absorbed nearby energy instead of releasing it. The readings were impossible. And in the center of the stone, something faintly glimmered… like an eye.
"Day 29 after Collapse. Water's rationed to 2 liters a day. Most of the old government is gone—what's left has rebranded as the United City Networks. Not everyone follows them.The street markets trade food for ammo, ammo for meds, meds for rumors. And every rumor is about shards.They say one of them woke a man in Sector 14. Woke him… different."
[POV: Arjun] —
The shard burned.
Not like a flame that would consume and destroy, but a slow, steady pulse—like the heartbeat of a living thing pressed tight against my skin. Beneath my ribs, a warmth spread out in ripples. It felt wrong, like ice melting in reverse, like the world was bending inward on itself. I could taste the heat, metallic and sharp, as if it had seeped into my bloodstream.
I wanted to rip it out, to shove my hands into my chest and pull free whatever unnatural thing had taken root inside me. But the shard wasn't just embedded. It was fused. A quiet but firm anchor pulling me toward something I didn't yet understand.
The rubble around me was slick with rain and ash, and every breath I took tasted like dust and rust. My head throbbed, a migraine roaring behind my eyes, but my body obeyed me. Slowly, carefully, I pushed myself upright against the broken wall.
The city groaned in the distance, a chorus of collapsing buildings, screams, and sirens fading into an eerie static. Somewhere beyond the crumbling roads, gunshots cracked—sharp, relentless. The night sky above was a fractured mirror of purple and black, lit by the faint glow of Breaches in the distance, like wounds that refused to heal.
I didn't know how long I'd been out. Minutes? Hours? Days? Time didn't matter anymore. It was a luxury the world had taken from us.
I could feel the shard pulsing again—a slow, steady rhythm that seemed to sync with my own heartbeat. Then, a sound surfaced in my ears, low and deep, like a voice echoing far off in a cavern.
"Awaken."
The voice wasn't human. It was ancient, layered like cracked stone and dripping honey, old as the stars but somehow... familiar. I swallowed hard.
"Who's there?" I whispered, but the shard throbbed louder, answering instead.
The voice pressed closer. "Child of Concrete and Chaos… Will you accept the gift, or let it rot inside you?"
I blinked. The words echoed inside my mind, not spoken aloud. My fingers trembled as they brushed the shard's surface—cool to touch but alive with energy.
Then, a flash.
The shard flared with blinding light. Pain exploded in my chest like a thunderclap. I gasped, head spinning as my vision fractured into shards—like the world had broken the same way the sky had. The glowing edges of the shard wrapped around me, tendrils of raw energy twisting into my nerves, my muscles, my very blood.
I fell backward, but the shard held me fast. A surge of power pulsed through my veins. My body screamed, but the pain was laced with something else — strength. Cold, sharp, but intoxicating.
My hands clenched into fists. The ground beneath me cracked with a sharp snap. A flicker of blue light danced across my fingertips like liquid electricity.
The voice spoke again, calm but demanding."Choose. Command the storm, or be consumed."
"Wait—what?" I croaked. But the shard didn't wait for my consent. Instead, it spilled out like liquid light, crawling up my arms, swirling in circles around my head, and for a moment, I saw the world from somewhere above—like a god watching a city crumble.
Then, sharp images flashed—fragments of memory and visions that weren't mine. A towering beast with six legs made of glass, its eye swirling like the milky way. A woman screaming in a dark forest. A battlefield where soldiers fought shadows.
I swallowed, cold sweat slicking my skin. It was too much. Too fast.
Then—silence.
The shard dimmed, retreating back into my chest like a heartbeat slowed to a whisper. My breath came in ragged gasps. My body ached but was alive in a way I'd never felt before—awake, aware, changed.
I looked down and saw it: a faint blue glow radiating from beneath my shirt, like a tiny star pulsing beneath my skin.
"Holy crap," I muttered, voice cracked and raw. "What the hell just happened?"
From the shadows, a figure emerged—tall, sharp-eyed, moving with a grace that made my pulse spike in fear and adrenaline. The man's face was half-hidden beneath a hood, but I recognized the glint in his eyes: calculation.
"Finally," he said, voice low. "The Last Meteorite System has chosen its host."
I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. But my legs wouldn't move. The shard hummed beneath my ribs, and I realized something terrifying: it wasn't just alive—it was waiting. For me to decide what I was going to do next.
"Who… who are you?" I managed.
He smiled, and it wasn't a comforting smile."Your beginning, Arjun Sharma. The world's about to get a lot stranger."
Lightning cracked overhead, and the city around us shifted with a sound like the tearing of fabric. The Breach was near, and whatever I was now… I had no choice but to face it.