The city did not sleep.
For three nights, the scar in the sky pulsed like a heartbeat. People pointed phone cameras upward, live-streaming the impossible. News anchors abandoned talk of "atmospheric anomalies." Scientists fumbled through explanations, words like electromagnetic rupture and dimensional stress filling the airwaves.
But none of them knew the truth.
Ethan did.
It was not the sky that bled. It was reality. The wound was widening, trembling as if something vast pressed against it from the other side.
And Ethan could feel the pressure.
Every time the scar throbbed, his body answered. His veins glowed brighter, his skin burned, and his heart slammed against his ribs like it wanted out. He wore long sleeves even in the rising heat, hiding the crimson lines spidering across his arms. His mother asked if he was sick. He only nodded, unable to explain that sickness wasn't the word.
He wasn't ill.
He was changing.
---
The whispers grew louder, no longer confined to night. They hissed at him during class, slithering beneath the teacher's voice. They crawled between conversations in the hallway, riding on every laugh, every murmur. Sometimes he couldn't tell if people were actually speaking to him or if the Stone twisted their voices.
Give it back.
You cannot hold it.
You will break.
At first, he clamped his hands over his ears. But that only made it worse. The whispers weren't heard. They were felt. Inside his skull. Inside his bones.
By the third day, he stopped reacting. The voices wanted him afraid. They wanted him broken.
He wouldn't give them that.
Not yet.
---
On Friday evening, the wound trembled.
The entire city felt it this time. Windows rattled. Dogs howled. Lights flickered in every building. People stumbled into the streets, staring upward in terror as the crimson scar split wider, jagged edges glowing.
Ethan stood on the roof of his apartment building, his chest on fire, his knees buckling beneath the pressure.
The wound was opening.
And something was coming through.
At first, it was only light—blinding, crimson, searing the sky. Then came the sound, a groan deeper than thunder, like the earth itself was being torn apart.
And then the shadows spilled.
They poured from the fissure like smoke, but smoke that moved with intention. Tendrils of darkness writhed across the horizon, coiling down into the city. Where they touched, streetlights burst. Cars stalled. Whole blocks fell into darkness.
Screams rose. Sirens blared.
And still, no one else saw the figure at the heart of it.
The infinite shadow loomed above the scar, its faceless head tilted downward, watching. Chains of red light bound its form, but the bindings strained, cracks running along them like glass under pressure.
Ethan dropped to his knees, clutching the Stone. His chest burned as if his ribs were splitting apart. Blood filled his mouth, metallic and hot.
The villain's voice rolled across the city, deafening yet aimed directly at him.
"You cannot resist me. The door opens, and when it does, you will burn."
The Stone flared, searing his flesh. Its fire screamed inside him, demanding release.
And for the first time, Ethan did not fight it.
He let it out.
---
Flame erupted from his body, invisible to those around him but blazing bright against the shadows. His veins glowed, his eyes burned, and a wave of crimson light burst outward from the rooftop.
The nearest tendrils recoiled instantly, writhing, hissing like living things. Where the light touched them, they splintered into shards of smoke and vanished.
Below, people gasped and pointed—not at Ethan, but at the shadows collapsing in the streets, at the sudden spaces where darkness had writhed. They saw pieces of the battle now. The world could no longer pretend.
Ethan staggered to his feet, trembling. The fire coursed through him, tearing at his insides, but he held it. For one breath, one heartbeat, he stood against infinity.
The villain's form shifted above the scar, its faceless head drawing back slightly.
"You burn yourself for nothing," the voice thundered. "Every flame you kindle only feeds me when you fall."
Ethan spat blood into the wind, his body shaking. "Then I won't fall."
The scar pulsed violently, the fissure stretching wider, crimson veins spidering across the sky. The villain leaned closer, vast enough to swallow the horizon.
And then—silence.
Not peace, but a pause.
The tendrils froze. The wound stopped trembling. The infinite shadow stilled.
Because something else had stirred.
Ethan felt it before he saw it. A presence, sharp and burning, not the suffocating weight of the villain but something closer—familiar.
From the far edge of the rooftop, a figure stepped into the crimson glow. Cloaked, faceless, holding the shard of red that pulsed like the Stone.
The same figure from the grove.
Their voice layered flame over echo.
"You have woken the fire too soon."
Ethan staggered, his vision doubling. "Help me," he whispered.
The figure tilted their head, the shard blazing brighter.
"No. Not yet. You must burn first."
And with that, the world split open.
The scar above the city tore wider, and the first true piece of infinity began to descend.