The world had always been cruel to Ethan Marlowe. At sixteen, he had already learned what it meant to live in the crosshairs of others' scorn, their laughter echoing in the hallways of the school he despised. He was not ugly, nor was he brilliant enough to draw envy—he was simply different. Quiet. Thin. His voice carried little weight, his eyes tended to wander to places no one else noticed, and that was enough to make him a target.
It was raining that afternoon, the kind of relentless autumn rain that blurred the streets into rivers of gray. Ethan walked home alone, his backpack heavier than usual, not because of books but because of the jeers still clinging to him like lead weights.
"Freak," one of them had called him, pushing him against the lockers earlier that day. "What's with those eyes of yours? Always staring, like you're in another world."
Another voice, sharper, mocking: "Careful, he might hex us with his creepy silence."
Laughter followed him like a swarm of insects, buzzing in his skull even as he left the school grounds. His knuckles were red, not from fighting back, but from gripping his bag so tightly that his nails cut into his skin. He never fought back. He never could.
The streets stretched before him, empty, washed clean by the storm. The lampposts flickered uneasily as though the rain itself carried some quiet menace. Ethan walked slower than usual, not eager to return to the apartment where silence pressed against the walls like an unwelcome companion. His father worked too much, his mother had left years ago, and Ethan had long ago stopped believing that anyone would notice if he vanished into the rain.
But that evening was different. That evening the world shifted.
As he passed beneath the skeletal branches of the old oak grove at the edge of town, his foot struck something solid—a sound that did not belong among the mud and fallen leaves. He stopped, blinking through the rain. There, half-buried in the earth, something glowed faintly, a pulse of crimson against the monotone gloom.
Ethan crouched. It was a stone, no larger than his palm, smooth yet fractured with veins of fire-red light that throbbed as though alive. The rain slid off it without dimming its glow, and for a moment Ethan thought he had stumbled upon some strange piece of machinery, a discarded piece of neon technology. But the stone's warmth radiated upward, reaching into his skin.
He should have left it. Every instinct whispered that. But his hand moved anyway.
The instant his fingers touched the surface, the world went silent. The rain froze in the air, droplets suspended like shards of glass around him. His breath hitched. For the first time in his life, Ethan felt something vast—something beyond comprehension—reach into him.
Pain surged first. A fire spreading from his hand to his chest, his veins burning as though molten metal coursed through them. His knees buckled and he fell into the mud, clutching the stone, yet unable to let go. Images filled his mind in a violent rush: cities crumbling, skies bleeding black, shadows swallowing oceans. And at the center of it all, a figure—faceless, immense—its very presence infinite, suffocating, eternal.
And beneath that presence, the stone glowed, defiant, as if it alone stood between annihilation and survival.
Ethan screamed, though the sound never left his lips. The suspended rain shattered and fell all at once, drenching him. The glow of the stone dimmed, its light now hidden within his clenched fist, but he could still feel its throb against his palm, like a second heartbeat.
When the pain subsided, the world returned. But Ethan was not the same.
---
He stumbled home, his clothes drenched, his skin pale. The streets were empty, the storm's fury unrelenting. But as he walked, he noticed things he had never seen before. The patterns in the rain, the way each droplet refracted the faintest hues of light, the flicker of electricity in the streetlamps—it was as if the world had been sharpened, carved into clarity. His eyes burned with strange awareness.
At one corner, he saw a stray dog cowering under a bench. Its ribs pressed sharply against its fur. Ethan paused. Without thinking, he reached out—not physically, but with something else. A warmth spread through him, and the dog's shivering stopped. It looked up at him, eyes wide, then bolted into the night.
Ethan stared at his hand, trembling. What had the stone done to him?
When he finally reached his apartment, the familiar creak of the door felt alien. He entered the dimly lit room, dropped his bag, and locked the door behind him. The stone was still in his hand, but now it had lost its outward glow, appearing nothing more than a dark shard of crystal. Yet when he held it close, he felt the hum of its power, deep, resonant, waiting.
He collapsed onto his bed, soaked clothes sticking to his skin. He wanted to believe it was a hallucination, the product of exhaustion and loneliness. But then he remembered the frozen rain. The visions. The infinite presence looming at the edges of his mind.
He shivered, not from cold, but from knowing that the world had shifted irrevocably.
---
The next day, school was no easier. The bullies were waiting, sneers plastered on their faces. Ethan walked through the halls like a ghost, clutching his secret close to his chest.
"Still alive, freak?" one of them jeered, slamming a locker shut beside his head. The others laughed. Normally Ethan would have flinched, his silence feeding their cruelty. But today he only stared.
And something in his gaze must have changed, because the laughter faltered. For the briefest second, the air between them rippled, heavy, suffocating. The bully's smirk wavered, and though Ethan said nothing, the boy stepped back.
Ethan blinked, startled. He hadn't meant to do anything. But the stone's hum deepened in his palm, hidden in his pocket.
The rest of the day blurred past. Words were muted, faces blurred, but the awareness never left him. He could feel the threads of things—the pulse of electricity in the lights, the rhythm of heartbeats around him, the faint hum of something vast just beyond perception. It was intoxicating and terrifying.
When the final bell rang, Ethan left in silence. He did not notice the figure watching him from across the street, cloaked in the shadow of an alley.
That night, Ethan dreamed.
He stood in an endless field of ash. The sky above was black, but not empty—there was a presence, vast and infinite, filling every space, every breath. It had no form, yet its shadow covered the earth. Ethan could not see its face, but he could feel its gaze pierce through him, stripping him bare.
"You are too small," the voice said. It was not a voice, not sound at all, but a truth pressed into his mind. "And yet… the stone chose you."
The ground cracked beneath his feet. From the fissures rose rivers of black fire, devouring everything in their path. Ethan tried to run, but his legs would not move. The presence loomed closer, infinite, eternal.
"The world will end," it whispered. "Nothing resists the infinite."
And then Ethan awoke, gasping, drenched in sweat. The stone lay on his desk, pulsing faintly in the dark.
He knew then that whatever power he had stumbled upon was not a gift. It was a burden, a weight he was never meant to carry.
But it was too late. The stone had chosen.