Dr. Sarah's POV
I slammed on my brakes when I saw the black smoke rising from Maya's neighborhood.
Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
The entire city area was in chaos. Police cars and fire trucks were racing toward the same apartment building where Maya lived. But that wasn't what made my hands shake on the driving wheel.
It was the fact that every animal in my veterinary clinic had gone totally insane an hour ago.
Dogs screaming like they were in pain. Cats hiding under tables and refusing to come out. Even the goldfish were swimming in frantic loops. Animals always knew when something supernatural was happening before people did.
And Maya Sterling was the most magical person I'd ever met, even though she didn't know I knew her secret.
I'd figured it out three years ago when I watched her heal a dead horse just by touching it. The cut had closed up like magic, and the horse had jumped to its feet completely healthy. Maya had made some excuse about the hurt not being as bad as it looked, but I wasn't stupid.
Maya Sterling could do things that normal people couldn't do.
I just never knew what kind of danger that might put her in.
I parked my car six blocks away and ran toward the smoke. The closer I got, the more scared I became. This wasn't just a building fire. The air itself felt wrong, like it was full of electricity and shadows and something that made my skin crawl.
By the time I reached Maya's street, I was running through crowds of confused people who were all looking at the same thing.
Maya's apartment building was still standing, but it looked like a bomb had gone off in the parking lot. There was a huge crater in the concrete, and every window in the building was shattered.
But that wasn't the weirdest part.
The weirdest part was the sky above the building. It was turning black, but not like a regular storm. This darkness moved like it was alive, reaching down toward the earth with what looked like shadowy arms.
"What the hell is that?" I heard someone behind me whisper.
I didn't know, but my feelings told me Maya was in terrible danger.
I pushed through the crowd of onlookers and emergency workers until I reached the building's front door. The lobby was wrecked, but I could hear voices coming from the fourth floor. Maya's room.
The ladder was a mess of broken concrete and twisted metal, but I climbed it anyway. Every step felt like walking through invisible spider webs that clung to my skin and made me want to run away yelling.
But Maya was my friend. My best friend. And if she was in trouble, I was going to help her whether I understood what was happening or not.
I reached the fourth floor and found Maya's apartment door fully destroyed. Through the opening, I could see three adults and a small kid standing by the windows, all of them staring up at the unnatural darkness above.
"Maya!" I called out.
They all spun around, and what I saw made me take a step backward.
Maya looked like she'd been through a war. Her clothes were torn, she had cuts on her arms, and her hair was white with dust and debris. But her eyes were sparkling with a soft silver light that definitely wasn't normal.
Beside her stood a tall man with silver eyes who radiated danger like heat from a fire. He moved like a hunter, and every instinct I had told me to run from him as fast as possible.
The third adult was an old man who looked at me with sharp, intelligent eyes that seemed to see right through to my soul.
And the child...
"Oh my God," I breathed. "Ethan?"
Maya's four-year-old son looked totally different from the last time I'd seen him. His eyes were solid gold now, not the green they'd always been. And when he looked at me, I felt like I was being inspected by something ancient and powerful wearing a little boy's face.
"Sarah," Maya said, her voice filled with relief and fear. "You shouldn't be here. It's not safe."
"No kidding," I said, looking around at the destroyed flat. "Maya, what happened? What's going on?"
Before she could answer, the dangerous guy stepped protectively in front of both Maya and Ethan. "She's human," he said in a deep voice that made my spine tingle with fear.
"She's my friend," Maya said definitely. "Sarah, this is Kai. Kai, this is Dr. Sarah Chen. She's been helping me for five years."
Kai studied me with those disturbing silver eyes. "How much does she know?"
"Nothing," Maya said quickly. "She doesn't know anything about... about what we are."
But that was a lie, and I think they all knew it.
"Maya," I said slowly, "I've known you weren't entirely human since the day you healed that dying horse with your bare hands."
Maya's face went pale. "Sarah, I can explain—"
"You don't need to explain anything," I interrupted. "I don't care if you're a witch or an alien or whatever. You're my friend, and something terrible is happening here. So tell me how I can help."
The elderly guy stepped forward. "Dr. Chen, I'm Elder Marcus. And I'm afraid there's nothing any human can do to help with this particular problem."
He pointed toward the window, where the live darkness was spreading faster across the sky.
"Those are called Void Feeders," Marcus explained. "They're entities from the space between worlds. They consume entire realities, leaving nothing behind but nothingness."
I looked at him. "You're serious."
"Completely serious," Marcus said sadly. "And they're here because a magical explosion tore holes between worlds."
I looked at Maya, then at the obviously magical man beside her, then at little Ethan whose eyes now glowed like golden fire.
"Okay," I said, shocking myself with how calm I sounded. "So we're dealing with reality-eating monsters from other worlds. What's the plan?"
Ethan spoke up in a voice that sounded too old for his young face. "The plan is that I have to become something that's never existed before. Something strong enough to close all the dimensional tears and send the Void Feeders back where they came from."
"Ethan, no," Maya said desperately. "There has to be another way."
"There isn't," Ethan said sadly. "I can see all the possible futures, Mama. In every one where I don't change, our world gets eaten by the darkness."
"Transform into what?" I asked, though I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer.
Ethan looked at me with those ancient golden eyes. "Into the first Dimensional Guardian. A being that exists in all realities at once and can control the walls between worlds."
"But you're four years old," I said weakly.
"Not anymore," Ethan answered. "The power aged my mind and soul. My body is still small, but inside, I'm much older now."
I looked around at these people who had clearly been through something impossible and painful. Maya was holding back tears, Kai looked like he wanted to punch something, and Marcus seemed resigned to some terrible fate.
"What happens if Ethan becomes this Guardian thing?" I asked.
"He saves our world," Marcus said softly. "But he can never be fully human again. He'll exist partly in every dimension simultaneously. He'll be powerful beyond belief, but also terribly alone."
Maya started crying then, and I understood why. They were asking this child to abandon his humanity to save everyone else.
"There has to be another option," I said firmly. "There's always another option."
That's when Ethan looked at me with a face that chilled my blood.
"There is one other option," he said slowly. "But it would require a real volunteer. Someone willing to serve as an anchor point while I make the transformation."
"What kind of anchor point?" I asked, though something told me I already knew where this was going.
"A life anchor," Ethan stated. "Someone whose humanity would help keep part of me linked to this world. But the process would burn out a regular human's nervous system in minutes. They would die in pain to save billions of lives."
Everyone stared at me as understanding dawned.
"You're looking for someone to sacrifice themselves," I said.
"We're not asking anyone to do that," Maya said quickly. "Sarah, absolutely not. I won't let you—"
"I'll do it," I interrupted.
The room went totally silent.
"Sarah, no," Maya whispered.
"Maya, yes," I answered. "You said it yourself - I've been helping you for five years. This is just... a bigger kind of help."
I looked at Ethan, whose golden eyes were filled with sadness and thanks.
"How long would I have?" I asked him.
"Maybe ten minutes of consciousness," he said honestly. "Long enough to help me finish the transformation. Then the human brain just... shuts down from the stress."
"And if I don't do it?"
"Everyone dies," Ethan said bluntly. "Our entire reality gets consumed by the Void Feeders."
I took a deep breath and made the easiest choice of my life.
"When do we start?" I asked.
But before anyone could answer, the moving darkness above us suddenly stopped spreading. It hung in the sky like a frozen black storm, and then slowly began to speak in a voice that came from everywhere at once.
"FOOLISH MORTALS," the darkness said. "DO YOU THINK ONE SMALL GUARDIAN CAN STOP US? WE HAVE BEEN FEEDING ON REALITIES SINCE BEFORE YOUR UNIVERSE WAS BORN."
The voice paused, and when it continued, there was amusement in the cosmic dread.
"BUT WE ARE CURIOUS ABOUT YOUR LITTLE HYBRID CHILD. PERHAPS WE WILL KEEP HIM AS A PET WHEN WE DEVOUR YOUR WORLD."
Ethan's eyes burned brighter, and power rolled off him in waves.
"I won't let you hurt anyone," he said, his young voice somehow carrying enough power to make the building shake.
The darkness laughed, a sound like reality tearing apart.
"CHILD, YOU CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE WHAT WE ARE CAPABLE OF. BUT PERHAPS A DEMONSTRATION WOULD BE... EDUCATIONAL."
The black sky started to descend toward the building, and I realized we were about to discover firsthand what it felt like to be eaten by living emptiness.
That's when Ethan grabbed my hand.
"Dr. Sarah," he said quickly, "I'm sorry, but we're out of time. The change has to happen now."
Golden fire burst out of his small body and flowed into me through our joined hands.
The last thing I thought before my human mind burned away was that Maya was going to be so angry at me for dying without saying goodbye.