The auditorium smelled like damp clothes and cheap floor polish. Hundreds of us were packed together on the cold tiles, a restless sea of students shifting and whispering under the dim glow of the emergency lights.
Max sat cross-legged beside me, elbows on his knees. Even he looked uneasy, which said a lot. Normally he was the kind of guy who'd joke about the school collapsing just to get a rise out of me. Now, his gaze stayed fixed on the storm outside.
It hadn't let up. If anything, it was worse.
Rain slammed against the roof in endless waves, thunder rolling in a rhythm that didn't feel like thunder at all. It dragged out, low and drawn, almost like the sky was growling.
"Been an hour," Max muttered. "Storms don't last like this, right?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Wow, genius, thanks for your groundbreaking meteorological insight."
He shot me a look. "You know what I mean."
Yeah. I did. I just didn't want to admit it.
Teachers paced along the walls, their voices clipped and rehearsed whenever someone asked what was going on. Just weather, nothing unusual. But the cracks were showing. You could see it in their stiff shoulders, the way they kept glancing at the windows like they expected them to shatter.
Another boom rattled the ceiling. A few kids shrieked. One of the younger teachers tried to calm them, but her words drowned in the noise.
The storm wasn't normal. It wasn't passing. It was… stuck.
I tilted my head, listening. The thunder came, rolled for a few seconds, faded—then, barely half a breath later, came again. Identical. Same length, same pitch. Like a recording on repeat.
My chest tightened.
"Max," I whispered, "you hear that?"
He frowned. "Hear what?"
"The thunder. It's… the same every time."
Max hesitated, then shook his head. "It's just in your head, Lucien. You overthink everything."
Maybe he was right. Maybe I was tired, jumpy. But the storm sounded wrong, like it was caught in a loop.
Time blurred. Five minutes. Ten. Maybe more. The storm never changed. Same rhythm, same pounding rain, same dragging thunder.
Students shifted restlessly. Some whispered jokes, others hugged their knees. A couple tried to nap, but the noise was too much.
My eyes wandered, and that's when I saw it.
At the far end of the auditorium, near the emergency exit, the wall… bent.
Not cracked. Not shook. Bent. Like it was made of something soft, pliable. A ripple passed across the surface, almost invisible in the red glow of the lights, but enough to freeze me in place.
I blinked hard, rubbed my eyes.
When I looked again, the wall was normal. Just concrete.
Max nudged me. "You good? You look like you saw a ghost."
"Yeah," I muttered. "Just… thought I saw something."
He gave me a sideways glance, but didn't press.
The storm roared on, endless and identical.
And for the first time, I couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't a storm at all.