"Watch out!!!"
The scream ripped through the air just as the sound of snapping rebar reached a deafening pitch.
At the very last second, Margaret appeared like a blur of motion.
She didn't just move; she threw her entire body weight into a tackle, colliding with Wyne's ribs.
The momentum carried them both across the dust-slicked floor, their limbs tangling as they slid.
A heartbeat later, a three-ton slab of reinforced concrete—a chunk of the grand mezzanine—hammered into the exact spot where Wyne had been standing.
The impact was cataclysmic.
A shockwave of pulverized stone and grit exploded outward, stinging their skin and clogging their lungs.
The floor beneath them groaned, trembling under the weight of the new debris.
Wyne lay flat on her back, her chest heaving in shallow, panicked jerks.
Her vision was a haze of gray soot and flickering emergency lights.
Reality felt like a distant, distorted dream until Margaret's hands clamped onto her shoulders, hauling her upward with a strength born of pure adrenaline.
"Move! Wyne, get up! We have to find cover now!" Margaret's voice was a jagged rasp.
They scrambled through the choking fog, their shoes slipping on glass shards and spilled champagne from the shattered tables.
They dove into a narrow, reinforced alcove near the structural supports of the ballroom—a small corner of the world that still possessed a ceiling, braced by heavy steel beams that seemed, for the moment, to be holding back the weight of the dying tower.
They collapsed against the cold, vibrating wall.
Both were breathing in ragged, broken gasps.
Wyne was in a state of total shock, her eyes darting toward the darkness as if expecting the shadows to grow teeth and consume her.
"Don't… D-don't zone out like that, Wyne…" Margaret muttered, her voice trembling.
She leaned her head back against the stone, her knuckles white as she gripped her knees to keep them from shaking.
She turned to look at Wyne, only to see an expression that was rapidly descending into a catatonia.
"...We don't want the floor to become a mud of blood from flattened flesh... like what happened to the others near the stage."
Margaret's voice dropped to a terrified whisper.
She wanted to say something heroic, something to pull Wyne back from the edge of the abyss, but the words felt like ash in her mouth.
She had re-entered the tower expecting a heartfelt reunion, perhaps a tearful apology between friends separated by bitter conflict.
She had imagined a scene of warmth amidst the cold, but reality had presented her with a charnel house instead.
Margaret peered cautiously around the edge of their shelter.
She watched the dust motes dancing in the beams of failing lights, listening to the distant, muffled screams of those still trapped under the heavier ruins.
Every few seconds, a fresh tremor would rattle the alcove, sending a rain of plaster dust down upon them.
"We'll be safe here, I think… the beams are reinforced steel," she whispered to herself, gulping back a sob that threatened to break her composure.
Meanwhile, Wyne wasn't listening.
She was retreating.
She crawled an inch further into the deepest, darkest part of the corner, her back pressing against the cold stone until it bruised her spine.
She stared at the floor with the unblinking, hollow look of a terrified animal.
Subconsciously, the world outside—the fire, the soldiers, the tower—ceased to exist.
The memory of the last few minutes began to loop in her mind like a grotesque film reel that wouldn't stop spinning.
She saw the faces of students her own age, girls she had shared a chemistry lab with and boys she had seen in the hallways, vanish in a heartbeat.
She saw teachers—people with families and mortgages and favorite books—snuffed out by falling masonry before they could even formulate a scream.
"No… No… No… No…"
Wyne's hands flew to her head, her fingers clawing at her scalp as if she could physically pull the memories out of her brain.
Tears began to flow profusely, carving muddy tracks through the soot on her cheeks.
The salt stung her eyes as the droplets fell—from eye to cheek, from chin to the dust-covered ground.
Every sound was amplified to a deafening roar.
Every groan of the building was a death knell.
She knew there were powerful people out there—Yuri, the General—trying to play God and save everyone, but she had seen the bodies.
They were failing.
Many were still dying.
The count was rising with every second that passed.
As someone who had spent her life dancing on the edge of death due to the slow, agonizing crawl of cancer, Wyne couldn't help but internalize the agony.
Sickness was a thief that stole you piece by piece, but this?
This brutal, instantaneous crushing?
It was a million times worse.
The idea of the ceiling finally giving way, of her lungs being flattened before she could take one last breath, sent a wave of primal terror through her.
She curled into a tight ball, her forehead resting on her knees, yet she felt as if she were floating in a freezing void.
She gripped her head so hard her knuckles turned white, her entire frame racking with a violent, rhythmic tremor.
The rumble of the collapsing tower intensified.
The screams of the dying felt like they were vibrating inside her own marrow.
Her traumatized mind began to flow aggressively, a river of dark thoughts overflowing its banks and drowning her senses.
She began to flinch, her body jerking as if she were being struck by invisible whips.
No one was hitting her—it was just pebbles.
Small bits of plaster and stone falling from the fractured ceiling above.
But to Wyne, in her fractured state, each pebble felt like a mountain.
Each tiny impact was a harbinger of the final, flat crush she knew was coming.
She was convinced that in any second, the world would turn black and heavy.
"Hey Wyne, I think the cracking is slowing down…" Margaret's voice drifted over, sounding like it was coming from the bottom of a deep well. "Wyne, are you listening…?"
Wyne didn't move.
She didn't blink.
"Wyne…? Are you…"
Margaret turned, her concern finally overriding her own fear.
She saw her friend in the throes of a total mental collapse.
It wasn't just a trauma reaction; it was a soul fracturing under the weight of an impossible reality.
Margaret began to crawl toward her, her knees scraping on the grit, reaching out to return the favor of all the times Wyne had stood by her during the worst of her own trials.
Suddenly, the pressure in the room shifted.
A sudden, immense weight spread itself throughout the entire tower, a silent roar of influence that made Margaret stumble and squelch to the side as if the gravity had doubled.
Wyne's eyes snapped open, and she let out a piercing, jagged scream of pure, unadulterated panic.
"No, No! Don't crush me!! I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die!!!"
She shrieked at the ceiling, her voice raw and breaking.
Margaret tried to grab her arm, to anchor her to the present.
"Wyne… calm… calm down… look at me!"
Margaret urged, her voice cracking as she tried to shout over the sound of shifting stone.
But the pebbles continued to fall.
Every second, it got worse.
Every second, the air felt heavier, thicker with the scent of ozone and ancient dust.
Wyne gritted her teeth so hard they threatened to shatter.
She gripped her hair, her head shaking relentlessly in a cycle of pure panic.
She was continuously flinching, her body jerking dramatically as each tiny piece of debris grazed her skin.
To her, these weren't pebbles—they were the first few drops of a tidal wave of stone.
"No, no no…!"
She was squirming in the corner, trying to phase through the very wall to escape the death she was sure was coming.
Every second was longer than the last.
Each impact felt larger.
She knew that in these moments, hope was a lie.
She was just waiting to become another wandering soul in the ruins, another name on a list of casualties that would be read on the news tomorrow.
Again… she had no specific trauma of falling buildings.
But the idea of her actually "dying" in a way that was so violent and so final... it terrified her.
It stripped away the girl and left only the victim.
「Waa! Look at her, she has cancer! Get away from her, quickly!」
「She might infect us if we breathe the same air, go back into the no-no square, Wyne!」
「Are you an 'infected'? My mom says people like you are bad luck.」
「Teacher, is cancer a disease? Really? Then I don't want to touch her... she looks like she's melting.」
「Wyne, don't cry… don't worry, your twin sister is just sleeping… I know she looks pale, but that's just how sleep looks.」
「Hey, I'm sorry but… I don't want to be friends with you anymore. My parents say it's too sad to be around you.」
These words… these memories… they were the ghosts almost a decade ago.
They were the scars that had never truly healed, the voices of children who didn't understand that words could kill just as effectively as any disease.
These flashes of memory… they seemed to last for an eternity, though the biological clock in her brain said it had only been minutes.
Five minutes? Six? Seven?
Seven…
Now that she thought about it, she remembered a scientific article she had read once.
It said that the human brain remains active for seven minutes after the heart stops—a final, frantic dream-state where the subconscious plays back the most significant moments of a life.
Come to think of it, she couldn't hear the screaming anymore.
She couldn't feel the vibration of the tower.
The crumbling of the stone and the snapping of the steel seemed to have stopped.
She couldn't seem to open her eyes, but she felt a strange, haunting nostalgia.
The memories were making her feel a little bit nostalgic.
It was a sad sight, a life defined by hospital beds and whispers, but she found herself strangely glad to have experienced it all.
At least she had been there.
At least she had existed.
「…She once told me that… the people who neglected me because of my sickness, they all missed out. They missed out because she knew I was friendly the entire time. She was the only one who saw me, not the cancer. And she was right. They did miss a whole lot of parts about me.」
「Since that day… they missed out on my death as I lived within that day. It was a day I wouldn't forget until the day I truly died. And perhaps… this is that day. And this time, I'm the one who's missing out. I'm missing out on everything that should've come later. The graduations, the first loves, the quiet mornings… it's all gone」
As Wyne willingly surrendered to the dark, a familiar pair of arms reached out to her through the void.
They moved slowly, gently, wrapping around her trembling body to comfort her.
It wasn't Margaret's desperate, sweaty grip.
It wasn't the rough touch of a stranger or a soldier.
Surprisingly, it was a presence that felt like sunlight—warm, golden, and impossibly calm.
.
.
.
.
.
"You're not missing out, Wyne. Not today."
.
.
.
.
.
Hearing those words, Wyne's eyes snapped open.
The darkness was gone, replaced by the flickering, dusty reality of the alcove.
She lunged forward, her hands grasping at the empty air in front of her.
"Trizha!" she gasped, her voice a desperate plea.
But the girl wasn't there.
There was no golden light, no saintly figure.
There was only Margaret, who was sitting perfectly still, staring at the ceiling with wide, unblinking eyes that were previously trembling with fear.
Wyne was left in a state of profound confusion.
She looked left and right, her head spinning as she searched for the girl she had just heard.
She was sure… she was absolutely certain that she had felt her presence.
The warmth of Trizha's skin had collided with hers, a physical sensation that had grounded her soul.
And yet… she was nowhere to be found.
Instead, she saw the world had changed.
The destruction of the Prom Tower—a catastrophe that everyone had expected to end in a final, crushing collapse—had magically stopped.
The silence was deafening.
Only the occasional clink of a small pebble falling could be heard outside their corner.
For some reason, nobody was screaming anymore.
It was as if the entire world had gone silent, or as if time itself had been frozen by a divine hand.
"Margaret? Hey…" Wyne called out softly.
She slowly pushed herself up, standing on shaky, trembling feet after her mental breakdown.
She approached her friend, who was still staring blankly at the ceiling.
"What are you looking at? Where's Trizha? Did you see her? I swear she was here a second ago... she touched me, Margaret."
Wyne's voice was thick with confusion.
Margaret slowly lowered her head, her gaze shifting to Wyne with a look that was hollow and unreadable.
"...I thought so too, but…"
Slowly, Margaret lifted her arm.
Her finger trembled as she vaguely pointed upward, toward the layers of concrete and the shattered glass floors above them.
There was nothing in the immediate ceiling—it was just cracked plaster—but Wyne was slow to realize that Margaret wasn't pointing at the architecture.
She was pointing at something beyond the tower.
"...She's up there."
The words were spoken in a low, reverent tone.
Margaret looked back to where she had been staring, her eyes fixed on a point far beyond the physical world.
This made Wyne all the more confused.
She couldn't process the statement.
Unable to make sense of it, she turned her gaze from Margaret toward the exit of the alcove where they had hidden.
She noticed then that the air felt different—thicker, charged with an energy that made the hair on her arms stand up.
She slowly walked toward the exit and emerged from the shadows.
Margaret followed close behind, her footsteps silent on the grit.
Both were driven by a desperate curiosity: what could possibly cause such a total silence in a matter of seconds?
As Wyne stepped out into the main ballroom, she was hit by a flash of light from above.
She shielded her eyes with her arm, blinking against a radiance so pure it felt like witnessing the first sunrise after a thousand years of night.
When her vision cleared, she saw the truth.
Every survivor on the first floor—hundreds of them—had stopped.
They weren't running.
They weren't tending to the wounded.
They were all standing perfectly still, their faces turned upward, staring blankly at the ceiling.
It wasn't just confusing; it was disturbingly strange.
First, Trizha had appeared to Wyne in the dark.
Now, the entire population of the tower was entranced by something invisible.
For all Wyne knew, everyone was still in their right mind, yet they were all drawn to the same silent source.
But the question remained… what was up there?
A few dozen yards away, amidst the wreckage of the grand entrance, Yuri Calypso landed on a pile of broken marble.
She was panting softly, her high-tech arm cannons smoking and radiating a dull heat.
She had spent the last several minutes intercepting falling beams and pulverizing massive chunks of stone to protect the students below.
She straightened her back, her joints popping, and began to walk forward.
She approached General Koby, who was standing like a sentinel near a group of terrified survivors.
He was speaking into his walkie-talkie, his voice low and urgent.
"Airforce Squad, this is General Koby speaking. Respond immediately."
Koby stared at the ceiling, his jaw set in a hard line.
He didn't even look at Yuri as she approached.
"Airforce Squad, are you there? I need an aerial check-up on the rooftop. Now!"
There was no response.
Only the hiss of static.
He tried again, his finger tightening on the transmit button.
To no avail.
The silence on the other end was absolute.
He switched frequencies, calling for the troops waiting outside the perimeter.
"This is General Koby. Someone answer!"
"Thi-this is Lieutenant Kelvin speaking, sir!!"
The response was frantic, the voice on the other end cracking with fear.
"Sir, we have a situation! The Airforce pilots... they got distracted! The pressure from the roof, sir! They all lost control of their aircraft and crashed into the ground floor! I repeat, the birds are down! They just... they stopped flying and fell, sir!"
General Koby nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing. "I see. Copy that. Hold the perimeter."
He clicked the radio off and tucked it into his pocket.
Yuri stepped up behind him, her arms crossed over her chest.
"Hoy, Koby! You're trying to find out where that pressure came from, right?"
Yuri's voice was a shout, echoing in the silent ballroom.
"Relying on your little soldiers to find that out… is surely what I call 'overestimating' your assets! They're just humans, after all."
General Koby clicked his tongue in irritation.
"It's not overestimating. It's protocol," he said in a low tone that barely contained his disdain for the woman.
"Eh, protocol doesn't matter right now," Yuri said, her eyes flashing with personal hatred. "You have those fancy 'advanced senses,' don't you? I don't care how ridiculous it sounds, just tell us what the hell is happening up there before this tower finally decides to finish the job."
She glared at him, waiting.
General Koby sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to carry the weight of the entire day's tragedy.
He finally turned his head to look at her, his expression more serious than Yuri had ever seen it in all their years of professional rivalry.
"You know, I'm surprised that you weren't able to register what's up there yourself, Yuri Calypso," he said, his voice dropping to a low, reverent hum. "Go ahead and call me ridiculous. Call me a fool for what I'm about to say. But believe me or not…"
He paused, looking back toward the heavens.
"...Up there is a God."