Chapter One (cleaned)
People in lab coats frantically paced around a small room, voices sneaking through hurried breaths as they argued over what had just happened. They were interrupted by a loud crash as a lanky man threw his chair over.
"Get ahold of yourselves and just look at the damn screen!"
All eyes snapped to the screen situated in the center of the room. Their mouths fell open in amazement—or maybe fear. On the screen was a dark mass surrounded by swirling motion, completely encompassed by a deep blue haze.
"This is 24 miles south of our position. Formerly an oceanic plateau, it has collapsed into a deep ravine with this structure sitting in the middle. We're receiving reports across the globe of similar geologic inconsistencies, along with devastating coastal flooding. Sea level is rising a foot every two hours with no signs of stopping."
A woman reached into the pocket of her lab coat to grab her buzzing phone. She gasped and scrambled to type something. Looking up at the now-silent room, she shakily announced:
"The whole west coast is gone. It—It's been completely covered."
The room fell quiet before the rest of the researchers reached into their pockets, checking the news as more and more places were swallowed by the waves. One man's face paled as he sent a photo to the central screen.
"At the border of the newly formed coast, a boat lucky enough to escape the initial wave was found washed up. It has strange damage and no survivors."
In the photo, the only thing visible other than the ruined boat was a large, vaguely man-shaped figure standing a few meters away in the water.
The silence that followed was thick and suffocating. Someone in the back whispered, "That… that isn't human," but no one dared respond. The only sound was the hum of machines struggling to keep up with the endless stream of incoming alerts—flood warnings, seismic spikes, atmospheric anomalies—each tone another nail in the coffin of the world they thought they understood.
Another alert flashed on the wall monitors, this one a live satellite feed. Landmasses along multiple coastlines were shifting—literally sinking—like soft clay being pressed from below. Mountain ranges buckled as if something beneath them was pushing upward or feeding, stretching the world's crust in ways no model could explain. A trembling realization spread across the room: this wasn't just a disaster. This was an event, synchronized, global, and deliberate.
There was only one thought they all shared:
The world they once knew was gone.