Rain hammered Belgrade like it wanted the city dead. Saint Dimi clutched the strap of his torn backpack and ran.
His left eye was already swelling shut. Johanna's last slap had split his lip open; he could taste blood mixing with the cold water streaming down his face. Thirteen years old and he still couldn't outrun her voice.
"You ruined everything!" she had screamed, glass bottle in one hand, the other already swinging. "Your father left because of you! I should've never kept you!"
The apartment door had slammed behind him so hard the hinges screamed. Now the streets were empty except for the neon bleed from closed kebab shops and the distant wail of sirens that never came for kids like him.
Saint's sneakers slapped through puddles reflecting broken streetlights. He didn't know where he was going. He just knew he wasn't going back. Not tonight. Not ever.
He cut left into the narrow alley behind the old textile factory, the one the city had forgotten. The walls here were covered in faded graffiti and mold. His lungs burned.
His ribs ached from where she'd kicked him yesterday. But the alley was darker than the street, and darkness felt safer.
That was when the air tore open.
It started as a low hum, like a broken transformer. Then the bricks on the left wall shimmered, rippled, and split. A vertical slash of violent purple light ripped straight through reality. Wind howled out of it, carrying the smell of ozone and wet metal and something sweet-rotten underneath. The rain around the tear froze mid-fall, hanging like tiny glass beads.
Saint skidded to a stop, sneakers squeaking. His heart slammed against his bruised ribs.
"What the hell…?"
The portal pulsed. Inside, he saw glimpses—floating stone ruins wrapped in glowing vines, a sky with two moons, a city of rusted towers that looked like they'd been built by machines and then abandoned by gods. It should have looked beautiful. Instead it looked hungry.
Behind him, he heard Johanna's voice echoing down the alley. She was coming. She always came.
Saint looked back once. Then he looked at the tear in the world.
He jumped.
The portal swallowed him whole.
Falling. Not down—sideways, inside-out, every direction at once. Colors he didn't have names for screamed past him. His stomach flipped. His scream never made it out of his throat.
Then gravity remembered him.
Saint slammed into hard, cracked earth. The impact knocked the air from his lungs. He rolled, coughing, tasting dirt and copper. The portal snapped shut above him with a sound like a gunshot.
He was on his back in a ruined courtyard. Massive stone pillars lay toppled like broken teeth. Vines the color of dried blood crawled over everything, pulsing faintly. Two jagged moons hung low in a bruised-purple sky, one of them cracked straight down the middle. In the distance, towers of black metal and flickering neon stabbed upward, connected by swaying bridges that looked like they were made of bone and wire.
This wasn't Earth.
Saint pushed himself up on shaking arms. His backpack had torn open; a half-crushed pack of biscuits and his only clean shirt spilled out. Blood from his split lip dripped onto the dirt.
A low growl came from the shadows between two fallen pillars.
He froze.
Something stepped out tall, lean, covered in dull green scales that looked like they'd seen better days. A humanoid reptile. Worn leather wraps around its waist, a cracked metal bracer on one forearm, and eyes that glowed faint yellow in the dark. It held a jagged bone knife in one clawed hand, but the hand was trembling.
The creature boy? looked almost as scared as Saint felt.
"You… new?" the reptile hissed in a voice like gravel under boots. "Portal fresh?"
Saint scrambled backward until his spine hit stone. "Don't don't come any closer!"
The reptile tilted its head. "Name Shed. Not here to eat you. Most new ones get eaten by Mark's crew anyway." He glanced over his shoulder, nervous. "You bleed loud. Bad idea."
Before Saint could answer, heavy metallic footsteps rang out from the other side of the courtyard.
A voice boomed, crackling with static and old-country drawl.
"Well now… looks like we got ourselves a fresh arrival."
Out of the shadows rolled a seven-foot robot. Chrome body pitted with rust and bullet scars, long leather duster flapping in the wind, a cracked silver star pinned to its chest that read SHERIFF in faded letters. One glowing red eye flickered. The other was dark, cracked. A revolver the size of Saint's arm rested in a holster made of scrap.
Sheriff's head tilted with a mechanical whirr. "Boy, you smell like fear and Earth rain. That's a bad combination 'round these parts."
Shed hissed softly. "Sheriff. Not now. Mark's patrol is close."
Saint's brain was still trying to catch up. Robot cowboy. Reptile kid. Two moons. He opened his mouth, but all that came out was a cracked whisper. "I just… I just wanted to get away."
Sheriff's single good eye narrowed. "Most folks who come through the tears say the same. Then the Director's dogs find 'em."
A new sound cut through the night—engines. Low, hungry, getting louder.
Shed's scales flared with panic. "Too late. Mark."
Three hover-bikes screamed over the broken wall, thrusters spitting blue fire. On the lead bike sat a man in scarred tactical gear, face hidden behind a cracked visor. Twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight, built like he enjoyed hurting people. A jagged scar ran from his left ear to his jaw. Mark.
He killed the engine and dropped to the ground, boots crunching on stone. Two goons flanked him, rifles up.
"New meat," Mark said, voice flat. "Director pays double for ones that still got both eyes. Kid, you just made my quota."
Saint's legs wouldn't work. He was thirteen. He was bleeding. He was in another world.
Sheriff stepped in front of him without being asked, duster flaring. "Now, Mark, you know the rule. Fresh arrivals get one warning shot. Then I get to be… persuasive."
Mark laughed once, short and ugly. "Your warning shots stopped working the day the Director wiped half your memory, tin man. Step aside."
Shed crouched low, claws digging into the dirt. His yellow eyes flicked to Saint. "Run when I say."
Mark raised his rifle.
Sheriff's arm blurred. The revolver was suddenly in his hand. One sho—deafening ripped the rifle from Mark's grip and sent it spinning into the ruins. Mark cursed and drew a wicked curved blade instead.
"Playtime," Mark snarled.
The courtyard exploded into violence.
Shed launched forward with a reptilian shriek, tackling one of the goons. Claws flashed. Blood sprayed across ancient stone.
Sheriff moved like something built for war, not law. He closed the distance on Mark in two strides, metal fist cracking against the man's helmet. Mark staggered but answered with a slash that carved sparks across Sheriff's chest plate.
Saint didn't think. He just ran.
He scooped up a loose chunk of stone the size of his head and hurled it with everything he had left. It smashed into the second goon's knee. The man howled and went down.
Shed was already there, bone knife flashing. One clean cut. The goon stopped screaming.
Mark roared and drove his blade straight at Sheriff's throat. The robot caught the wrist, twisted, and slammed Mark into a pillar hard enough to crack the stone. But Mark was smiling behind the visor.
"Director's gonna love this one," he hissed. "Says the kid looks familiar."
Sheriff's red eye flickered. For a split second the robot froze, like the word had short-circuited something deep inside.
Saint didn't wait. He grabbed Shed's arm. "Come on!"
They ran.
Sheriff covered their retreat, revolver barking twice more. Mark's remaining bike exploded in a fireball that lit the ruined courtyard orange.
The three of them sprinted through a collapsed archway and into a narrow ravine of floating rubble. Gravity here was broken; chunks of stone drifted like lazy islands. Saint's stomach lurched every time his feet left the ground for half a second.
Behind them, Mark's voice echoed, furious but already calling for backup.
They didn't stop until the ravine opened into a small cave mouth hidden by glowing vines. Sheriff shoved them inside and sealed the entrance with a fallen slab that looked like it weighed a ton.
For a long moment the only sound was heavy breathing and the soft click-whirr of Sheriff's damaged systems.
Shed wiped blood from his claws. "You fight like scared prey," he told Saint, but there was respect in the hiss. "Not many new ones last ten breaths against Mark."
Saint slid down the cave wall until he was sitting, knees to his chest. His whole body shook. "I don't… I don't belong here. I just wanted to get away from my mom."
Sheriff holstered the revolver. The red eye dimmed, almost gentle. "Most of us didn't belong anywhere, kid. That's why the tears spit us out."
He reached into his duster and pulled out a small metal canteen. He offered it. Saint took a sip—water, but it tasted like lightning and rust.
Outside, distant engines growled again. Closer this time.
Sheriff's head tilted toward the sealed entrance.
"Boy," he said quietly, "you got a name?"
"Saint."
The robot's eye flickered again, longer this time. A glitch of static crossed his faceplate.
"Saint," Sheriff repeated, like the word tasted strange. "Funny. Director's been looking for a Saint."
Before Saint could ask what that meant, a new sound filled the cave—not engines, but a deep, resonant chime. The air in front of them shimmered. A holographic projection bloomed to life, projected from a hidden emitter in the rock.
A figure appeared.
Tall. Cloaked in a heavy black robe that swallowed the light, hood pulled low. The face was hidden behind a smooth, featureless mask of dark metal. Across the mask ran a single glowing red visor line that pulsed slowly, like a scanner tracking prey. No eyes. No mouth. Just that cold horizontal slash of crimson light.
When the figure spoke, the voice rolled out deep and distorted—mechanically lowered, layered with static, nothing like any human throat Saint had ever heard.
"Welcome to Veyra, boy," the Director said. The red line flared brighter for a moment. "I've been waiting a long time for you to arrive."
Saint's skin prickled. Something in the cadence felt… off. Familiar in a way that made his stomach knot, but the voice was too deep, too wrong, too masked. It couldn't be. It was impossible.
The hooded figure leaned closer to the projection, robe shifting like liquid shadow.
"Try not to die before we meet. There's work to do."
The hologram winked out.
Saint stared at the empty air where the masked Director had stood. His heart hammered against his ribs, but he couldn't place why the words had landed like a punch he'd felt before.
He didn't scream. He didn't cry.
He just whispered, so soft only he could hear it:
"I ran from the wrong monster."
Outside, Mark's engines grew louder.
The real world—the one with two moons and robot sheriffs and reptile outcasts—waited.
And somewhere in it, the Director was already watching.