The day was ordinary. Almost painfully so.
The sky arched like a flawless dome, a clear and endless blue unmarred by storm or smoke. Its brilliance was the sort that lured children into chasing kites through crowded streets and drew old men onto porches with folded newspapers and cooling tea. The city itself pulsed with the rhythm of humanity's ceaseless dance. Cars rolled along asphalt rivers, their horns barking in sharp counterpoint. Street vendors fanned smoke from their stalls, hawking spiced meats and sweet breads, while neon-painted malls thrummed with voices weaving together in a hundred tongues. Doors chimed, shoes slapped against concrete, and laughter spilled from a knot of teenagers gathered near an ice cream stand.
The world moved like a machine of flesh and sound, each cog too focused on its own spinning to notice anything beyond its narrow orbit. Nothing miraculous. Nothing divine. Nothing that hinted that the skin of the world was about to tear.
But in a forgotten alley, pressed between two damp-bricked buildings that carried the scent of mold, oil, and old smoke, the ordinary began to unravel.
At first, it was no more than a shimmer, the kind that rises from hot pavement in summer heat. A wavering distortion, easy to dismiss, hidden where no eyes lingered. But the shimmer did not fade. It grew. It pulsed faintly, a single line trembling in the air as if the world itself had cracked.
Then came the sound.
It began as a low, resonant hum, too deep to belong to any machine, too primal to be dismissed. It throbbed through the narrow walls, set dust trembling, rattled cans against concrete. The line widened, tearing open like glass under strain, until a jagged wound stretched across the air. Light bled from it, pale, shifting, unearthly light spilling shadows in directions they should not have moved.
The hum deepened. The air grew heavy, pressing against lungs, making breath come ragged and shallow. The crack split wider, its edges sparking as though unseen hands clawed the fabric of the world apart. And then, with a sound like thunder dragged through water, the portal opened.
A gash of radiance tore into the nightless day.
From within came no warmth, no welcome, only the weight of another place. A battlefield's smoke. A sky scarred by fire. Screams pressed against the rift as though eager to escape, muffled yet urgent, like echoes of a dying world. For an instant, the alley was not an alley. It was a wound bridging realms, an artery spilling the pain of one world into another.
And then, something fell through.
He stumbled, almost crumpling as he emerged from the light. A man, though in that moment he seemed more specter than flesh. He was tall but hunched, every step burdened by pain. His garments clung to him in tatters, stitched from fabrics coarse and foreign, alien to this city of cotton and polyester. The coat that hung from his shoulders was shredded and blackened, soaked in blood that was not all his own. Gashes scored his skin, his ribs protruded like broken ridges beneath his flesh, and each breath he dragged was ragged, edged with the rattle of death.
In his arms, he carried something wrapped tightly in cloth.
The man staggered against the wall, knees buckling, leaving a smear of red across the stone as he fought not to fall. His grip on the bundle was desperate, fingers trembling, yet unyielding, as though the life of the world itself lay within. A cough ripped from him, wet and sharp, staining the ground crimson. He leaned against the bricks, chest heaving, his eyes dim with exhaustion yet alight with a fire both wild and desperate darting down the alley.
The portal behind him flickered. Once. Twice. And then it collapsed with a hiss, its edges folding inward like dying embers, the hum fading into silence. The wound, sealed. The shimmer vanished.
The alley was ordinary again. Ordinary, save for the man.
He pressed his back against the wall, every muscle quivering with the need to move, every instinct screaming that he was not safe. He had seen them. The shadows that tore through the battlefield, cloaked in fire and smoke. He had heard their laughter when they slaughtered, their voices like iron scraping across stone. If they had marked the child, if they had glimpsed him fleeing with it, then even this world, untouched, naive, and blind to the rifts, would not be safe.
The bundle stirred.
A faint, fragile sound rose from within: the whimper of an infant.
The man froze. For a heartbeat, all the agony burning through his body seemed to still. Slowly, reverently, he sank to one knee and pulled the cloth aside.
A baby's face lay nestled within. Pale, soft, fragile, smeared faintly with blood not its own. Its eyes remained shut, lashes damp, tiny fists clenched against its chest. Around its neck, on a silver chain too fine for human hands to have forged, hung a ring. Plain. Unadorned. Yet thrumming faintly with light, a pulse, slow and steady, like the echo of a heartbeat not its own.
The man's lips parted. A whisper trembled from him, broken, half-prayer, half-confession.
"Forgive me…"
And in that moment, the world around him fell away.
His mind was no longer in the alley but was engrossed in what happened a few minutes ago. He was back amid fire, among banners trampled in blood and ash. He heard the shrieks of the dying, the clash of steel, the sky torn by lightning that was not born of storm but of war. He saw her. The woman's face, streaked with dirt and blood, her arms trembling as she pressed the infant into his grasp. Her voice was fierce despite its breaking: Run. Protect the child. No matter the cost.
He had sworn then, with blood still dripping from his blade, with his people's cries still ringing in his ears. Sworn by every god who had turned from them, sworn by the bones of his ancestors: he would not fail.
Now, here he was. Torn across realms. Hunted. Standing in a city that knew nothing of the war raging beyond its veil.
The baby whimpered again, a thin, plaintive sound. The man drew the cloth tighter, hiding the ring's glow, shielding the child's face from the gaze of a world that was not ready to see. His jaw clenched, his teeth bloodied. He could not rest. He could not falter. Not while the child still breathed.
With a groan like stone splitting, he pushed himself upright. His body screamed, his ribs burned, blood dripped steadily down his arm but he moved. He had no right to stop.
Above the alley, the sky was impossibly blue. So blue it hurt his eyes. So blue it mocked the crimson haze of the world he had fled.
He did not linger. He staggered forward, dragging himself into the rhythm of human streets, swallowed by neon, smoke, and the indifferent tide of life.
Behind him, unseen, the air shivered once more. Just faintly. Like a ripple across still water.
The rift was closed.
But not healed.