The scent of stale toast and unspoken expectations clung to the air of the modest apartment in a bustling Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood, a familiar morning ritual. Kael, a gangly fourteen-year-old, pushed a piece of half-eaten bread around his plate, the crust already hardened. His younger brother, Leo, a blur of endless energy, was already wrestling with their sister, Mia, over the last spoonful of cereal. Their mother, Sarah, a woman etched with the subtle lines of constant effort, presided over the chaotic scene from the sink, her back to the table.
"Kael, come on, eat up," she whispered, her voice tired but firm, speaking in rapid-fire Portuguese. "You'll be late for school."
'Ok', he nodded in response, knowing better than to argue. In their small, cramped world, Kael was the anomaly in short the weird one. Leo his younger brother was the charming, effortlessly bright one in short the golden boy, Mia the beautiful and sweat angel of the family . Kael, however, was the quiet observer, the one who preferred the solitude of a dusty book to the erratic energy of his family . He was the black sheep, not out of rebellion, but just out of the basic difference in how he perceived the world. He saw the cracks, the difficulty to notice imperfections, where others saw only the surface.
This often led to a quiet friction, a sense of constantly being out of step. He grabbed his worn backpack, the straps digging into his shoulders. "Até logo (meaning: See you later)....,why do i even bother" he mumbled, already halfway out the door. he often felt disconnected from the normal way of leaving for people his own age.
He met Jax and Orion at their usual corner, near a faded mural of a football legend. Jax, already a head taller than Kael, with a restless energy that seemed barely contained, was kicking at a loose pebble. Orion, slender and constantly lost in his own thought, was tracing patterns on a dusty shop window with a finger.
"Fala (meaning: what's up?), Kael," Jax greeted, a wide grin splitting his face. "Ready for another thrilling day of... study?" He emphasized the last word study with a sarcastic eye-roll.
"As thrilling as it gets," Kael replied, a small smile playing on his lips. Jax is a loud, impulsive, and extremely loyal kind of guy. Orion, on the other hand, was the quiet counterpoint, seeing things others missed, his mind a maze of intricate thoughts. They were his chosen family, the ones who understood his silence.
As they entered the bustling school hallway, filled with the excited chatter of teenager in short girls giggling and gossiping while boys talking about wrestling and showing of their non existing muscles , Kael's gaze instinctively drifted towards the bulletin board, where the latest announcements were meticulously posted. Near it, a figure of quiet authority stood, her dark hair pulled back neatly, her brow furrowed in concentration as she reviewed a notice. Estelle. Class representative, top student, and the object of Kael's entirely unspoken, entirely hopeless crush. She moved with an effortless grace, her presence a calming anchor in the school's usual chaos. He admired her quiet confidence, the way she seemed to hold the universe in her gaze even before the idea of a "universe eye" was anything but fantasy. He quickly averted his eyes before she could catch him staring.(what a weird guy am i right?)
They shuffled into their science class, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Professor Almeida, a man whose enthusiasm for geology far outstripped his students' interest, was already at the whiteboard, sketching diagrams of planetary orbits.
"Now, turma (class)," Professor Almeida boomed, tapping a pointer against a drawing of Earth, "we've been discussing celestial bodies, specifically near-Earth objects. While the probability is incredibly low, imagine, for a moment, the impact of a significant extraterrestrial object. A meteor, for instance, large enough to... well, to truly alter the course of life as we know it."
Just as he spoke, a faint, almost invisible tremor ran through the classroom. The lights flickered, and a low, distant rumble began, growing rapidly in intensity. The sound wasn't of thunder, nor an earthquake. It was something deeper, more resonant, a sound that seemed to tear at the very fabric of the air. Professor Almeida paused, his pointer frozen mid-air, a look of dawning horror spreading across his face. The rumble intensified, becoming a deafening roar, shaking the very foundations of the Escola Estadual (school) . Outside the window, the sky, moments ago a dull grey, began to glow with an unnatural, terrifying brilliance.