Chapter 1 (Part I)
7:00 PM.
I know the exact minute because my phone tells me, because the song restarts at the wrong lyric, because the noodles have stopped steaming and started sweating. Seven in the evening in Delhi always feels like a held breath. The day has not let go yet, and the night has not decided whether it wants to be kind.
The room smells like masala and damp concrete. I am sitting on the edge of my bed with a plastic fork in my hand, lifting noodles that keep slipping back into the cup like they are tired of trying. Spotify murmurs a Hindi song I have been avoiding all week. The kind where the singer sounds like he is apologizing to the universe for existing. I did not choose it. The algorithm did. It knows when you break.
I smile at nothing. It is a habit. A reflex. Six years of learning how to look fine while something chews at the inside of my chest.
My phone lights up with no notification. Just the screen waking on its own, pale and judgmental. Seven-zero-zero.
I think of her. I think of how silence can last longer than shouting. I think of how easy it was for her to leave and how difficult it is for me to stay anywhere without feeling temporary.
I twirl the fork. Overthinking again. I tell myself to stop. I never listen.
Outside, the city hums. Cars. Vendors. A distant train. Life performing its usual trick of continuing. The building across the street stands half-finished, concrete ribs exposed like a thought that never learned how to end. Someone left a floodlight on at the top floor. It flickers once, steadies, then flickers again.
That is when the song skips.
Not a clean skip. Not buffering. The same line repeats, the same word stretched thin, like a memory refusing to move forward. My thumb taps the screen. Nothing happens.
The light outside flickers again.
I feel it before I see it. A pressure change. Like when an elevator starts moving but your eyes are closed. My ears pop softly. The room feels smaller, not physically, but emotionally. As if the air has decided it wants to be closer to me.
I look at the window.
There is something on the rooftop of the unfinished building.
Not a shape. Not a person. More like… absence wearing motion. The air above the roof is darker than it should be, bending the light around it. Black, but not the kind you can point at. The kind that stains the idea of seeing.
I laugh under my breath. Nervous humor. Chill guy behavior. My brain offers explanations like a magician pulling scarves from his sleeve. Pollution. Shadow. Eye strain. Heartbreak does strange things to vision.
The floodlight goes out.
For half a second, the rooftop disappears. Then the light snaps back on and the blackness is closer. Not moving fast. Not moving slow. Just… arriving.
My phone vibrates.
No call. No message.
Just vibration.
The song dies. Not fades. Dies. Silence floods the room, heavy and immediate. The city noise outside drops with it, like someone closed a door on the world.
I am suddenly aware of my own breathing. Too loud. Too human.
I stand up without remembering deciding to. The noodles tip over and spill onto the floor. I do not care. My feet stick to the tiles as I step closer to the window.
The thing on the roof does not react to me looking at it. That makes it worse. It does not acknowledge. It does not threaten. It does not perform.
It simply is.
The air between us looks wrong. Like heat distortion without heat. Black threads unravel and curl back into themselves. No smoke. No source. Just the suggestion that something has been exhaled for a very long time.
Somewhere below, a car alarm screams once and cuts off mid-note.
I check the time again.
7:00 PM.
The minute has not moved.
I blink hard. Once. Twice. The rooftop is still there. The presence is thicker now, sagging over the edge like a curtain being drawn by an invisible hand.
I think, very calmly, that I am not alone.
The thought does not come with panic. Panic arrives later. This comes with certainty.
My phone vibrates again, longer this time. The screen lights up, not with a notification, but with static. White noise crawls across the glass. Then a single word appears, black text on white.
RECHANGER
I drop the phone.
It hits the floor face down. The vibration continues, rattling against the tile like a trapped insect.
I back away from the window. My heart finally remembers its job and starts trying to escape my ribs. The room feels colder. Not winter cold. Hospital cold. Clean and indifferent.
The lightbulb above me flickers.
Once.
Twice.
The third flicker does not return to light.
Darkness settles, thick and patient.
I hear something then. Not footsteps. Not breathing. A sound like fabric being dragged slowly across concrete, stretched thin enough to whisper.
It is not in my room.
It is not outside.
It is everywhere the sound is not.
I squeeze my eyes shut. When I open them, the walls are still my walls, the bed is still my bed, the noodles are still bleeding sauce onto the floor. Reality clings stubbornly to its props.
But the window is no longer a window.
It is deeper now. Longer. As if it has learned how to be a corridor.
And in the reflection, behind my own face, I see movement that does not belong to me.
I think of all the times I was afraid of being left alone.
I think of how small that fear feels now.
The vibration stops.
The silence leans closer.
And somewhere far away, on another clock, in another country, someone else looks up at their world and feels the same wrongness slide into place.
The minute does not move.
7:00 PM holds its breath.
INDIA – DELHI
The evening is calm enough to feel fake.
Traffic hums like a tired animal. Vendors shout prices that no one listens to. Somewhere a pressure cooker whistles, impatient. The sky still holds its color, the moon pale and intact, pretending it plans to stay.
Then the moon vanishes.
Not fades. Not hides.
It is removed.
The stars follow, one after another, clicking off like switches flipped by an unseen hand. The sky becomes a flat black lid slammed shut over the world.
People stop walking.
A man on a scooter loses balance and falls, scraping his knee. He laughs, embarrassed, until he looks up and forgets how laughter works. Phones rise. Voices overlap. Someone shouts "eclipse" without conviction.
Then the purple circle appears.
It tears open the sky without tearing it. Perfectly round. Vast beyond scale. Glowing from nowhere, with a color too deep to belong to light. It presses down on the city, not physically, but mentally, like a thought too large to fit inside a skull.
Every sound dies for half a second.
Then the voice enters.
Not from the sky.
From inside.
"My children.The time is over.We shall escape now."
A woman collapses in relief, crying, hands clasped together. A man screams at the top of his lungs, animal and wordless. A child starts laughing because fear hasn't learned him yet.
The black presence moves.
At first it looks like heat distortion. Shadows thickening where they shouldn't. Then the shadows detach.
A man standing under a streetlight watches his own shadow rise up and wrap around his legs. He tries to step back. His feet don't come with him.
His ankles invert.
Bones snap outward through skin, white and wet. He drops, howling, clawing at the asphalt as the darkness climbs his torso. His ribs bend inward one by one, folding like cheap plastic. When his lungs collapse, air forces its way out of his mouth in a long, choking whistle.
The shadow tightens.
His chest caves completely. His heart bursts with a dull, meaty pop. Blood sprays upward, suspended for a second, then sucked back into the black like it belongs there.
A group runs.
They make it ten meters before the street itself turns against them. Shadows spill from beneath cars, coiling like living tar. One man trips. The shadow grabs his head and twists.
His neck does not break cleanly. Vertebrae grind. His face keeps turning long after it should stop, skin tearing at the jaw, eyes popping free and dangling by cords before being crushed back into his skull.
A bus tries to accelerate.
The black presence enters the engine bay.
Metal implodes inward with a scream that sounds almost human. The front of the bus folds, passengers crushed into seats, seats into passengers. A woman is driven backward so hard her spine punches out through her back and pins her to the rear wall. She is alive for three seconds, screaming until her lungs rupture and foam pours from her mouth.
The bus compresses into a block of metal and meat.
It drops once.
Then the purple light pulses.
The block flattens.
Delhi becomes a slaughterhouse without walls.
HONG KONG
The city notices the sky before it understands it.
Neon still burns. Ferries still cut the harbor. Elevators still rise. Life keeps moving for several seconds after the stars disappear, because cities like this are trained to ignore the sky.
Then reflections betray reality.
Glass towers show a black that isn't depthless but thick, like oil smeared across infinity. The purple circle ignites above the harbor, enormous, flawless, hovering with the patience of something that knows it will not be refused.
Phones come out everywhere at once. Millions of lenses tilt upward. A thousand livestreams begin.
The voice arrives.
Not loud.
Close.
"My children.The time is over.We shall escape now."
A man on a footbridge laughs. Nervous. Loud. He opens his mouth to say something sarcastic.
His shadow detaches.
It peels off the concrete like wet paper and rises behind him. Before he can turn, it hooks under his jaw and snaps his head backward. The crack is sharp, precise. His mouth stays open, words unfinished, as his spinal cord tears and sprays a thin arc of blood across the railing.
His body doesn't fall.
The shadow holds him upright while his legs give out, knees folding backward until the bones punch through skin. Then it releases him.
He drops in pieces.
Across the street, a woman screams and runs.
She makes it three steps.
The black presence drops from above like a vertical ocean. It slams into her shoulders, driving her straight down. Her femurs explode upward through her hips. Bone shards tear through her abdomen and chest, ripping organs apart on their way out. Her scream becomes a wet gargle as her lungs are crushed flat and forced out through her mouth in a red froth.
Blood sprays outward, coating the pavement, splashing onto shoes of people who are still frozen, still processing.
They don't stay frozen long.
Panic detonates.
Crowds surge, bodies colliding, tripping, climbing over one another. In the chaos, the shadows multiply.
They pour out from beneath cars, from doorways, from the thin dark lines between tiles. They rise like liquid given shape.
A group of five runs toward the MTR entrance.
The first is grabbed by the ankles. His feet are yanked backward so hard his knees dislocate and spin around uselessly. He slams face-first into the stairs, teeth exploding out of his mouth in a spray of white and red.
The shadow tightens.
His legs are pulled straight out of his hips with a sound like wet cloth tearing. He keeps screaming until the darkness wraps his throat and crushes, collapsing his windpipe.
The others don't stop.
They reach the turnstiles.
The black presence arrives before the train.
It floods the station in a wave.
People are lifted off the ground and compressed together, bodies forced into bodies, ribs snapping as torsos flatten. A man is crushed so hard his eyes pop free and slide down his cheeks before bursting. A woman's chest caves inward, her heart rupturing inside her ribcage, blood pouring out of her mouth and nose in thick ropes.
The floor becomes slick.
Blood pools, ankle-deep, flowing toward the tracks like rainwater finding a drain.
The train arrives anyway.
Its doors open onto a massacre.
The black presence surges inside.
Passengers are ripped from seats, limbs torn free and slammed against metal walls. A man is thrown so hard his skull caves in on impact, brain matter splattering across the windows. Another is folded in half backward, spine snapping, his head driven into his own chest until bone protrudes through skin.
The train lights flicker.
Then go dark.
Screams echo for four seconds.
Then silence.
Above ground, the harbor churns.
The purple circle reflects off the water, its glow trembling as the surface begins to boil. Black shapes rise from the depths, wrapping ferries, crushing hulls inward. Metal screams. People jump into the water.
They don't surface.
Bodies are dragged down, crushed by pressure until they rupture. Blood blooms beneath the surface, dark clouds spreading and colliding until the harbor looks like it's bleeding.
On a rooftop, a man drops to his knees and prays.
The shadow behind him listens.
Then it pushes forward, driving its way through his back. His ribs burst outward like shattered doors. His heart is punched free through his chest, still beating for a second in open air before being crushed into pulp.
His body slides off the roof, leaving a wet smear behind.
Across the city, it happens everywhere.
Alleys fill with bodies stacked wrong, limbs twisted, heads crushed flat. Streets become rivers of blood, flowing around abandoned cars. The black presence moves without pattern, without haste, killing because killing is the function assigned to it.
Cameras keep rolling until hands are broken, until eyes are crushed, until there is no one left to film.
The neon goes out.
The harbor stills.
Hong Kong ends not with a single scream, but with thousands cut short mid-breath.