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By the third month, Sunview had learned how to wait.
Not patiently but habitually— with a kind of practiced stiffness, like someone breathing in polluted air for so long that breathing normally felt suspicious.
The streets closest to the orphanage were quieter now. Not empty, not abandoned, just… thinned. The sort of quiet that came from people learning which hours were safest to be outside and which were not worth the risk.
Rael noticed it on a supply run.
The corner shop two blocks down still opened, but only for four hours a day. The owner had replaced his handwritten OPEN sign with one that read ESSENTIALS ONLY. The bell over the door rang less often. When it did, everyone inside looked up automatically.
Across the road, the tailor's place was shuttered. The glass had been boarded from the inside, not because it was broken, but because someone had decided it might be.
Sunview wasn't evacuating—not officially—but the city was shedding weight.
The families with money left first for the cities with no portals in sight. Then the families with connections. Then the ones who were able to arrange their living with their relatives and friends, could afford the buses.
Those who stayed were the ones with jobs that couldn't vanish, or nowhere else to land, or responsibilities that refused to pack themselves into suitcases. Utility workers. Teachers. Temple volunteers. Medical staff. And children.
Especially children, street kids left behind and abandoned.
Dawnrise was full.
Not overcrowded yet—but every mattress was claimed, and then some. The storage room had been cleared and turned into a temporary dorm. The old play room held stacked blankets and water drums now.
Nyla had started marking inventory daily now, only supplies from military distribution centre and volunteer from the thousand river hall as well as civilian volunteers is keeping the orphanage afloat.
Rael had heard that one of the founders of the orphanage is from a family who have been serving in military for generation.
"Don't lean on the crate," she snapped when Rael brushed it with his shoulder.
"Sorry."
"That's pulses," she said. "You drop that and I'll make you count them back in."
Rael decided not to ask how that would work.
The drills had changed again.
At first, they'd been about speed. Moving away from windows. Getting into inner rooms. Counting heads.
Now they were about timing.
"How long between siren and impact?" Lian asked one afternoon, standing in the corridor with her arms crossed.
No one answered.
"Guessing doesn't help," she said. "Knowing does. Listen. Feel. Learn the rhythm."
Rael had learned that rhythm without realizing it.
Tier-1 and 2 waves—no one called them that yet, but the pattern was already there—came fast and sharp. Siren. Gunfire. Done.
Tier-3s—the big ones, as the news still called them—had a different tempo. There was always a pause. A shift in sound. Heavier weapons coming online. A deeper vibration in the air that you felt through your feet more than your ears.
And sometimes… nothing.
Just waiting.
Those were the worst.
By the fourth month, shelters became mandatory during alerts.
Not evacuations. Not full lockdowns. Just instructions that grew firmer with every broadcast.
Citizens are advised—
Citizens are urged—
Citizens are required—
Rael watched the language change the way some people watched the weather.
The orphanage itself wasn't in a high-risk zone. Dawnrise sat far enough from the portal that no one expected direct exposure to whatever comes from it. But the shelter protocols applied to everyone now.
During normal night hours, children slept in interior rooms. Windows were blacked out completely. No lights after a certain hour,but during everyone has to rush to the nearest designated shelter.
"Why?" Ren asked the first night.
Rael hesitated, then shrugged. "So nothing outside can come to us."
Ren accepted that with a numb nod, as if this was simply another rule of the world he needed to memorize.
The world gave him a lot of those lately.
The waves didn't stop.
Tier-1s were constant now—small, fast, ugly things that soldiers shot down with brutal efficiency. They died in bursts of gunfire, their bodies sometimes dissolving into streaked sludge, sometimes falling intact enough to make people uncomfortable.
Tier-2s appeared more often too. One every few days. Then one every wave. Sometimes two in a single wave, their appearance keep increasing by the day.
The city learned what bullet-resistant meant.
Not immune. Just… stubborn.
Rael watched one through the TV feed—a squat, horned thing that absorbed rounds like rain, its hide dimpling but not tearing. The soldiers adjusted. Higher caliber. Concentrated fire. It went down eventually.
But it took time.
And time meant damage.
After that, walls near the portal grew thicker. Concrete blocks stacked higher. Temporary barriers became permanent ones. The military presence stopped feeling provisional.
They weren't going anywhere.
Rumors flowed faster than supplies.
"They say one of the big ones shrugged off a tank round," someone whispered in the relief line.
"That's bullshit," someone else replied. "If that were true, we'd be dead already."
"They say the portal hums at night."
"They say the air makes people angry."
Rael heard that last one more than once.
He didn't know what to think of it.
Sunview wasn't close enough to the portal for anything… strange. Not really. People were tense, sure. Irritable. Short-tempered.
That was normal.
Wasn't it?
By month five, the media stopped pretending this would end quickly.
The language shifted again—not dramatically, just enough to notice if you were paying attention.
Containment replaced neutralization.
Rotation policies replaced deployment schedules.
Exposure time entered the vocabulary.
Rael heard that phrase for the first time while carrying food sack back from the River of Ten Thousand Currents Hall along with Nyla.
"…they're limiting front-line rotations now," one volunteer said to another. "Four days max before mandatory pullback."
"Because of casualties?"
"Not exactly."
The speaker lowered his voice.
"They say people aren't coming back the same."
Rael didn't stop walking.
He shouldn't listen.
He did anyway.
"They snap faster," the man continued. "Bad decisions. Overreaction. Some freeze up, some get reckless. Defence says it's stress."
"And it isn't?"
The man hesitated.
"They wouldn't shorten rotations if it was just stress."
"maybe they are giving front liners a break?"
That night, Rael dreamed of shouting.
Not words. Just sound.
He woke with his heart racing and no memory of what he'd been afraid of.
He told himself it meant nothing.
Media talked about research on those monsters being uderway.
What the public saw were conclusions without context.
Studies ongoing.
No confirmed anomalies.
Further data required.
What leaked out came in fragments.
A university lab overseas reporting instruments failing near a portal.
A medical journal quietly retracting a paper after peer review disputes.
A clip of a scientist snapping at a reporter, then apologizing too quickly.
The monsters didn't help.
In the fifth month, a Tier-3 appeared overseas—one that didn't just smash and bite.
It burned.
The footage was shaky and distant, but unmistakable. A plume of fire erupted from the creature's flank, sweeping across a defensive line. Another clip showed a different scene—something like a shockwave rippling outward, tossing debris as if gravity itself had hiccupped.
The broadcast cut away fast.
The official explanation came later.
"Unknown biological discharge."
Rael stared at the screen.
Nyla snorted from her chair. "That's a new one."
They killed it eventually. Heavy weapons. Coordinated fire. The thing fell.
The media told that it's under study but autopsy footage or anything of the sort never aired.
What did circulate—quietly, selectively—were the aftereffects.
"They can't find anything," Teren said one evening, leaning against the wall as the TV murmured.
"Anything for what?" Miko asked.
"For how it did that," Teren said. "Fire. Electricity. Sand. Pick one."
Rael said nothing.
He remembered the way the Tier-3 had movedin the footage. Deliberate. Confident. Like it knew that it's superior than others.
The government tried to keep control of the narrative and somehow media outlets were reminded of "responsible reporting standards." Certain words stopped appearing.
But leaks have a way of slipping through cracks.
A host speculated about extradimensional physics and got pulled off air mid-sentence. A blogger published a compilation of soldier testimonies before private talks got banned and their site went dark. A foreign outlet ran a headline that stayed up for a while before disappearing but rumors remained.
People noticed.
They always did.
By the sixth month, Sunview felt… stretched.
Not broken. Not collapsing.
Just pulled taut.
The orphanage ran smoothly on the surface. Rations held. Drills were followed. The children slept, laughed, argued.
But the adults watched each other more closely.
Lian snapped once—really snapped—when a volunteer dropped a crate of bottled water. Her anger flared hot and sharp, then vanished just as quickly, leaving her staring at the floor like she didn't recognize herself.
"I'm fine," she said when Nyla asked.
Nyla didn't look convinced.
Rael noticed smaller things too.
A soldier on TV who laughed too hard at nothing.
A news anchor whose voice trembled when talking to soildiers for no obvious reason.
A commentator near the portal site who grew increasingly hostile over the course of a panel discussion, then apologized at the end like he'd been possessed.
No one said anything out loud.
Not yet.
The joint briefing came at the end of the sixth month.
It wasn't announced in advance.
The Defence Command seal appeared on screens worldwide, unaccompanied by music or urgency. Just… there.
Rael sat on his mattress, Ren asleep against his side, when the feed began.
The spokesperson didn't smile.
"Over the past six months," she said, "Defence Command and international research bodies have conducted extensive studies on the phenomena associated with portal activity."
Her phrasing was precise. Practiced.
"Based on accumulated data," she continued, "we have identified a consistent, measurable influence present in proximity to portals and certain hostile entities."
Rael leaned forward.
"This influence," the woman said, "is emitted in the form of crimson particulate wisps observed during engagements and post-neutralization events."
The room was silent.
"Long-term exposure to this emission," she went on, "has been correlated with emotional destabilization in affected individuals."
A ripple moved through the orphanage.
Ren shifted in his sleep.
"For clarity," the spokesperson added, "this effect manifests as heightened emotional response and reduced impulse control, irrespective of emotional valence."
In other words—it didn't matter if you were angry or happy or afraid.
It amplified everything.
"While the exact nature of this emission remains under investigation," she said, "its properties do not conform to any known physical or biological composition currently understood by our scientific models."
Rael's breath caught.
"Accordingly," the woman concluded, "Defence Command, in coordination with global research partners, will refer to this phenomenon as chaos energy."
The word landed heavily.
"The hostile entities associated with portals will be designated chaos beasts."
There it was.
A name.
"Revised rotation protocols and exposure limits are being enacted effective immediately," the spokesperson said. "These measures are preventative and based on observed data. There is no cause for panic."
She paused.
"Further details will be provided by authorized personnel only."
The feed ended.
No dramatic music. No reassurances.
Just silence.
"So," Teren said quietly, breaking it at last. "They named it."
Rael nodded.
Names mattered.
They meant the world had stopped pretending this was temporary.
Outside, beyond taped windows and concrete walls, the portals still hung over fields and cities and seas, bleeding crimson wisps into a sky that no longer looked entirely its own.
Inside Dawnrise, children slept, adults whispered, and Rael lay awake beneath a cracked ceiling, understanding settling into him like weight.
This wasn't just a siege.
It was adaptation.
And the war had finally learned how to speak.