The world didn't end in fire or thunder.
It ended with a sound I'll never forget.
A thin, high crack (like someone dragging a diamond across a windowpane you can't see). The first ones who felt it weren't staring at the sky. They were just breathing, and suddenly the air turned thick, metallic, wrong.
I freeze in the middle of the crosswalk. People bump into me, curse, keep moving. The sun's brutal, bouncing off every piece of glass in the city. Someone's laughing about something stupid on their phone. A delivery truck beeps its dumb little song in reverse.
Then the sky… wrinkles.
Not dark, not light—just gone. A straight line splits the blue like a bad edit in a video. It widens, slow at first, then hungry. The edges peel back and there's nothing behind them except a kind of depth that makes my stomach drop.
That's when the screaming starts.
People run. Bags hit the ground. A phone skitters across the pavement and lands showing a lock-screen photo of a fat corgi asleep on a couch. I don't move. My legs have decided this can't be real, and my brain is too busy trying to measure it.
Angles. Trajectories. The way light bends wrong around the tear.
Something steps through.
It's shaped like a person the way a crash-test dummy is shaped like a person. Matte black plating that eats the sunlight. Fingers too long, ending in things that definitely aren't fingernails. Heat ripples off it; the asphalt under its feet bubbles and smokes. It tilts its head—not face, exactly—toward the street, scanning.
My mouth goes dry. Every survival instinct I have screams run. I don't.
There's a tug behind my ribs, sharp and greedy.
It looks at me.
Just for a second, its head dips. Barely anything. But I feel it in my spine: the way a wolf lowers its chin when it sees another wolf.
"Move, idiot!" Some guy in a suit shoves past me, almost knocks me over. Sirens are starting up somewhere, getting louder, angrier.
The thing's arm hums. A blade slides out of its forearm—dull red, wavering like desert air. It takes one step. I take one too, sliding my weight forward like I'm stepping onto a subway car right before the doors close.
This is insane. I know it's insane.
My hands are empty. The only thing even close to a weapon is a steel bollard some Amazon van sideswiped last week—it's leaning drunkenly out of the sidewalk. I grab it anyway. The metal's hot enough to hurt.
It lunges.
The blade whistles over my head as I duck; I feel the heat kiss the back of my neck, smell my hoodie starting to melt. Everything narrows to lines and motion. Its hip joint stutters half a degree too far; the opposite knee is half a beat slow. I see the next swing before it starts.
I move.
The bollard slams into the seam between two plates. It doesn't sound like metal on metal—it sounds like hitting a gong made of meat. Something hisses out, red steam that smells like pennies and ozone.
It screeches, this horrible static wail.
"Come on," I mutter. My voice doesn't even shake. "Show me what you've got."
It swings low. I jump, land on its forearm, use my weight to drive the blade into the street instead of my legs. Sparks. My knee finds a gap under what I guess is its ribcage; I jam the bollard deeper into the split I made at the hip. Leverage. Just like Archimedes said—give me a place to stand and I'll move the damn world.
Something inside it cracks, wet and final.
It staggers. Heat slaps my face; the smell of burning tar makes me gag. People who were running have slowed down, phones out, because humans are awful and we always need to see how the story ends.
The tear in the sky widens, like something on the other side just took a deeper breath. A bigger shadow moves behind it.
Not good.
"Finish it," I whisper, not sure if I'm talking to the thing or to myself.
It throws itself at me. I ride the momentum, spin around its shoulder, and bring the bollard down with both hands right where neck meets body. The impact shoots pain up my arms. Something gives. Red light inside it flickers.
Still not dead.
The blade stabs backward. I let go and drop; it passes so close I feel my hair singe. Somewhere a woman screams my name—no, not my name, just a scream.
No time.
I hook my fingers into the seam I opened and pull.
Skin on my palms splits from the heat, but the plates peel back like a tin can. Inside there's no blood—just glowing latticework, beautiful and alien and furious. My hand finds a rod of crystal-bone running through the shoulder joint. It's vibrating, singing under my skin.
Take it.
The thought isn't mine. It's older, hungrier.
I yank.
The rod comes free with a sound like biting a live wire. The creature shrieks, collapses, legs folding wrong. The rod burns, but my hand closes around it like it was made for me. Suddenly the world is nothing but numbers—distances, angles, probabilities—laid over everything like graph paper.
Then the cold hits.
It pours into my head and takes something on its way out. A memory? A piece of me? I don't know. I just know I'm suddenly… lighter.
The rod clatters to the ground, still glowing. I sway, empty.
"Hands in the air!"
Reality snaps back. A police drone buzzes overhead; an armored van screeches to a stop and spits out four tactical guys in brand-new "Extraterrestrial Threat" gear. One of them sees me, the dead thing, the glowing pin on the ground, and hesitates.
"Back away from the entity!" he shouts.
I'm not sure if he means the dead one or me.
I lift my hands. They're already healing—blisters shrinking like someone hit fast-forward on my skin.
Overhead, the tear rips wider. Something huge and jointed starts pushing through.
"Second breach topside!" someone yells.
The cop who hesitated is still staring at me.
"Kid," he says, softer. "You okay?"
I look at my palms. Almost smooth already.
"No," I say. My voice sounds borrowed.
"On your knees. Slow."
I could drop. I could bolt. The rod is right there by my shoe, pulsing gently like a heartbeat.
I try to remember the way my mom used to hum while doing dishes, the exact smell of her shampoo when she hugged me goodnight. It's gone. Just static where it used to be.
The hunger inside me stirs, hopeful.
I bend down, pick up the rod, and everything clicks into place like I never lived without it.
The cop raises his rifle.
Above us, the sky screams.
And I smile—just a little.
Because whatever I lost, I think I just found something else.