Global panic reigned. In Elena's room, the sudden, silent death of her laptop, phone, and every other electrical device—all failing without warning—finally triggered her own panic. The fear, however, was short-lived. Within a minute, Elena too was plunged into unconsciousness.Her head striking the armrest of the couch with a dull thud.
A hush fell over Castgos, an unnerving silence that spread across the entire planet. Not a single living being remained awake; the mysterious energy had claimed the consciousness of every creature, not just on Castgos, but across the solar system and trillions of galaxies beyond. The concept of time ceased to exist. The mysterious energy, an unstoppable force, flowed through everything and nothing, leaving no trace of its passage, as if reality itself had been erased.
An indeterminate period passed—time, as it were, stood still. Then, as if awakening from a timeless sleep, the universe stirred. Castgos, and with it every living thing, every atom, every particle, blinked back into existence. Consciousness returned. At first glance, a fragile normalcy had returned. The world appeared as it had before the cataclysmic energy surge, but this veneer of familiarity masked a reality far more profound and unsettling. The universe had been irrevocably altered. Castgos itself had expanded to an incomprehensible 103 times its original size, a change mirrored in the smallest subatomic particles. The reality known to the inhabitants of Castgos—their very understanding of existence—had been fundamentally reshaped, forever changed.
Global silence descended; chaotic clouds churned above. Disoriented, Elena's head throbbed, a dull ache behind her eyes, she blinked, her gaze slowly taking in the familiar, yet strangely alien, landscape of her bedroom. The floral wallpaper seemed to swim before her.
Before she could piece together the fragments of her memory, a cacophony erupted from beyond her apartment door – shouting, crashing, a desperate, urgent scramble of sound. Instinct, raw and primal, kicked in. Without a second thought, she scrambled out of bed, her bare feet hitting the cold floor. Her vantage point, the corridor overlooking the street below, had become her personal theatre of human drama. From her top-floor apartment, she'd often watched arguments unfold, petty squabbles escalating into theatrical displays of anger.
A teenager living alone, she'd cultivated an almost morbid fascination with the street's chaotic energy. A weird habit, certainly. Today, however, as she stepped out into the hallway, the dizziness that had plagued her since regaining consciousness intensified. The familiar scene outside her door, usually a source of voyeuristic amusement, swam before her eyes, blurring into a hazy, indistinct mess. The regret was immediate, sharp, a cold fist clenching around her heart. This time, she wished, with a sudden, chilling clarity, that she hadn't been watching.
What she saw unfolding below was not a petty argument, not a typical street brawl, but a scene ripped from a nightmare. The chaos wasn't confined to shouting and shoving; it was a brutal, violent aggression. Figures, indistinct at first through the hazy film of her dizziness, gradually resolved themselves into horrifying clarity. The sounds that had initially drawn her out – shouting, crashing – now resolved into the more specific and terrifying horror .
Jagged bolts of lightning split the sky, illuminating the horrifying scene below in stark, flickering light. Each strike was accompanied by a deafening roar, a thunderclap so intense it felt as if it were tearing through her eardrums, leaving a ringing silence in its wake. The unbearable volume was a physical assault, a wave of sound that threatened to drown out the already terrifying screams rising from the street. The lightning illuminated a scene that defied explanation. Strange creatures, unlike anything she'd ever seen, moved with unnatural speed and grace amongst the struggling figures. Bizarre, bioluminescent plants, their forms twisted and alien, floated and swirled through the air, colliding with and seemingly interacting with the animals below. Some creatures sported wings that ended in the grotesque heads of flowering plants, others possessed tentacles that writhed and lashed out with unsettling fluidity. The very fabric of reality seemed to be unraveling, the boundaries between plant and animal, earth and sky, dissolving into a terrifying, surreal chaos.
"This is a nightmare, right?" she whispered, staring at the winged fish.
"How can fishes have wings?"
"This isn't real," she screamed, the words a desperate mantra against the encroaching madness. Her voice, thin and reedy against the thunder's roar, was swallowed by the storm and the cacophony below. Yet, the desperate cry offered a fragile anchor, a flimsy shield against the terrifying reality unfolding before her eyes. She needed to believe it, to convince herself that this impossible, nightmarish scene was nothing more than a hallucination, a fever dream brought on by her injury. But even as she shouted, a cold dread coiled in her gut, whispering that this was, horrifyingly, real.
Elena slammed her eyes shut, then ripped them open, slapping her cheeks hard. The world remained unchanged; the nightmare persisted. Fire-breathing beasts, ice-spewing horrors, and lightning-wielding creatures rampaged through the streets. Vicious plants snaked after fleeing people, while abandoned cars littered the chaotic scene.
Before Elena realized this nightmare was her new reality, a sharp pain shot through her shoulder, Elena screamed, wrenching her shoulder free from a creature's jaws. The laptop she'd been holding, forgotten in the chaos, crashed to the floor. Survival instincts surged, and Elena ran—only to trip over her own laptop, ending her sprawling. Struggling to her feet, she twisted her head and met the gaze of a fierce brown wolf, its teeth bared in a ferocious snarl. A scream ripped from Elena's throat as the wolf's claws ripped into her abdomen, blood blooming across the wound. She collapsed, her head striking the unforgiving tiles.
Few seconds before she lost consciousness, a blinding flash erupted from her laptop, lying discarded on the floor. The screen emitted a searing, silver light, far brighter than any normal display, striking the bizarre, winged creatures – a wolf-like with unnaturally long legs – before expanding in a blinding wave that enveloped Elena completely. The intense light consumed her vision, silencing her scream, stealing her breath as the searing energy engulfed her from head to toe, plunging her into darkness just as quickly as the light had appeared.