The city night pulsed with restless light. Neon billboards flickered and flashed, their glow spilling across glass and asphalt like veins of fire. Engines roared, horns blared, and brakes screeched, weaving a relentless noise symphony that swallowed the streets whole. Even the air itself vibrated, thick with smoke, exhaust, and the faint sting of wet metal.
And yet, in the middle of that chaos, I stood still. Frozen.
My hand trembled as I touched the reflection in the shop window. A face stared back—smooth skin, unlined by scars or fatigue; eyes unclouded by sleepless nights; a body untouched by the grinding weight of war.
"What… is this?" My voice was barely audible, lost to the endless surge of noise.
I remembered my death. Too clearly.
The screams of children tearing through smoke. My own blood flooding over cracked asphalt. The thunder of a building collapsing, swallowed by a hungry fire. I remembered the final moment, my thoughts dissolving into pain and panic as darkness pulled me under. Death had been absolute.
So how could I be here? Alive? Breathing? Standing in a city still whole—three years before the gates ripped open the sky?
Pain struck behind my eyes. My head throbbed as memories clashed: visions of ruins, flames consuming skyscrapers, shadow-things tearing through soldiers… colliding with the bright chatter of the present. Office workers scrolling on phones. Digital billboards vomiting ads. Children laughing as they chased after ice cream. Two timelines, stacked on top of one another, grinding against my sanity.
I gasped for breath.
Was this a miracle—or a curse?
A second chance? Or nothing more than a pawn's return to the board of some vast and unseen game?
A chill crawled down my neck. Behind the glitter of the city, I felt it: a gaze. Not human, not visible, but sharp enough to pierce bone. For an instant, the billboards across the street warped, letters bleeding into alien sigils that carved themselves into my thoughts. My chest seized. My heartbeat faltered.
Then, as suddenly, the symbols were gone. Bright smiles and slogans returned. No one else noticed.
"Is there… a god involved?" I muttered.
The question hung heavy in the air. In the ruins of my world, I had heard the cults—the mad whispers of zealots who worshiped entities they called the Lord Behind the Fog, the Eye Watching from the Stars. I had laughed at them once. Considered them insane. But now, after returning from death, their words gnawed at me.
I bowed my head, letting the crowd carry on around me. The world I had once thought belonged to humankind felt like thin glass. Behind it, unseen hands were tugging threads I could not see.
I clenched my fists. If some power had brought me back, then sooner or later, I would uncover the truth. Salvation or madness—whatever the cost.
---
Rain began to fall, fine needles of water stitching fog into the streets. People rushed down subway stairs, umbrellas blooming like black flowers. Footsteps splashed through shallow puddles. The city's skin glistened under streetlamps.
I walked slower, my boots heavy. Each splash echoed louder than it should, mingling with the hiss of tires over wet asphalt.
Faces drifted around me: tired office clerks in damp suits, teenagers with glowing headphones, mothers clutching children beneath too-small umbrellas. All so alive. So certain that tomorrow would look like today.
I pulled my jacket close. If only they knew.
But I couldn't warn them. If I shouted of war and ruin, this world would call me insane. They would bury me in a hospital ward, silence my voice, and erase my warnings.
No. I had to wait. Watch. Move carefully.
The rain thickened. In the distance, an electric train screamed across an elevated track, its windows blazing like the eyes of some steel serpent. The sound vibrated through my ribs.
I stopped beneath a shopping mall, its massive screen glowing against the fog. This time, there were no alien symbols—only the frozen face of a politician, smiling with manufactured warmth. His lips moved, promising brighter futures, his eyes glimmering with hollow conviction.
I stared too long. The smile seemed to bend, to widen. For a moment, it felt like he was staring directly at me.
Then the whispers returned. Faint. Wordless. Like a dozen voices speaking underwater.
I spun around. The crowd carried on—umbrellas tilting, shoes splashing, faces indifferent. No one else seemed to hear it.
Am I alone in this?
Or are there others—people who also woke again, just as I had?
The thought pounded my heart. If there were others… were they allies, or enemies?
The rain eased. The air smelled of oil and wet soil, sharp as memory. I wandered to an empty bus stop and sat on a cold iron bench, water dripping steadily from the roof. Across the city, faint and clear through the fog, the call to prayer echoed from a mosque. The sound carried like a foreign song, strange and solemn amid the restless hum of modernity.
The world spun forward as if nothing had changed. But I knew better. The cracks had already begun to form. And through them, something was watching.
---
By the time I reached my house, the rain had stopped. A small home at the city's edge, framed by rusted iron fencing and potted plants, their leaves still jeweled with water. It looked the same as before—quiet, plain, even dull. Yet to me, it was heavier than any ruin.
My hand lingered on the door. Inside should be my family—faces long lost to war and fire. Could they truly still be here? Could I see them again?
I pushed the door. Hinges whined softly, like a sigh from memory.
Silence.
The sofa sat where it always had. A television hunched on its table. Damp air pressed into my lungs with the smell of dust and old rain. But no laughter. No footsteps. No voices.
Empty.
I stepped in, my eyes drawn to the photographs on the wall. Smiling faces, frozen in wood and glass. My chest clenched. Fingers brushed against cold glass as if I could touch the warmth within. For a moment, grief and joy tangled in my throat.
"This isn't… just a dream," I whispered.
I had truly returned.
I collapsed onto the sofa, letting exhaustion smother me. But something was wrong.
The wall clock ticked. Tik… tok… tik… tok… Yet the rhythm staggered. Pauses stretched too long, silence lasting a breath longer than it should.
I looked up. The clock hands moved. But behind their movement, I felt it again—that gaze.
Then came the sound. A slow creak of wood. From the back room.
My chest seized. This house should be empty.
"Hello?" My voice cracked into the stillness.
No reply. Only silence, deeper than before.
I forced myself forward, each step dragging. At the end of the hallway, on a table I remembered bare, I found them.
An old pocket watch.
A black book.
They did not belong here.
The watch was etched with countless circles, thin lines knotting them together like a fractured map of stars. Black metal gleamed dully under the light, ice-cold as though dredged from the deep sea. I lifted it. Its tick was not in time with the wall clock. Each second hammered off-beat, vibrating strangely in my bones.
I snapped it shut. Even so, the weight of something unseen pressed against my skin, as if eyes still stared from within its closed shell.
The book was worse. Its cover was plain, ancient in shape but strangely unmarked. I opened it carefully. The first page greeted me with words scrawled in raw red strokes:
All will die.
The letters were jagged, frantic, etched like wounds. But fresh. Too fresh.
I slammed it shut. But the words carved themselves into my mind, pulsing like an echo: All will die. All will die.
I staggered back. These things weren't mine. Nor my family's. They had been placed here.
By whom?
My breath hitched. They weren't relics. They were messages. Anchors. Chains.
And I was already bound.
I shut the door to the room. Slowly. Carefully. But even as I stepped back into the living room, the ticking of the pocket watch seeped through the walls, beating like a pulse beneath the skin of the house.
I sat in the dim light, shadows trembling across the furniture. Everything looked ordinary—the gray sofa, the low table, the silent television. But the ordinariness was the lie. This house was fractured. This world was fractured.
My eyes drifted to the family photos again. Smiling faces that had once been mine to protect. In the war, I had failed them. Now, I had a second chance.
But I wasn't alone.
The watch ticked. The book waited.
Threads unseen had already wrapped around me.
I pressed my palms against my face, forcing back the tremor in my hands.
"Whoever you are… what do you want from me?"
No answer. Only the sound of ticking. Backward. Backward. Backward. As if counting down to something inevitable.
That night, I knew:
This return was no gift.
And unseen eyes were already watching from behind the veil.