Three years ago, the sky cracked open above a city that no longer existed.
The world had never seen anything like it.
At first, the people thought it was a trick of the light, a celestial event, maybe a new star, or a flare. But as the jagged rift widened in the air, as colors beyond description pulsed from within, they realized it was not just a strange sight.
It was a warning.
The first rift.
In the heart of the city, people had gathered, pointing upward in awe, fear, and disbelief. The rift was not space. Not a wormhole. It was something else—something foreign.
And then, without a moment's notice, the city vanished.
There was no explosion. No storm. No catastrophe.
Just an empty void. A perfect circle, the size of a mile-wide crater, where once there had been bustling streets, crowded buildings, and thousands of lives.
No rubble. No ashes. No trace.
The air had simply… swallowed it.
By the time the second rift appeared a month later, the world had stopped pretending it was some sort of freak accident. Scientists called it "The Disappearance." Governments panicked. Military powers mobilized. But there was no explanation. Only more rifts.
The third rift had brought an even greater horror. A third city was swallowed—its entire population erased without a trace. And then, a month ago, the fourth rift appeared. But this time, it was different. It didn't just open in the sky. This time, it opened inside the city.
And the people who witnessed it had no idea that he—a forgotten face—would be standing right at its edge.
---
He had noticed something strange at first—nothing major, just small moments of confusion that didn't add up. At first, it was simple. A forgotten name on an online form. A half-forgotten greeting from a colleague who had just met him.
But then it became worse.
One day, he entered a store. A small convenience shop near his apartment, one he frequented for years. He picked up a bottle of water, placed it on the counter, and waited for the cashier to scan it.
"How can I help you?" the cashier asked, his voice flat, as though he had never seen him before.
He frowned. "I—"
The man blinked, his eyes darting to the counter, then back to him. "Sorry, when did you get here?"
"I've been standing here for a while. I just—"
The cashier shook his head, confused, but not in the way someone forgets. This was different. It was as if the very concept of him had been erased from the man's mind.
"Are you going to pay?"
He glanced at the counter, and his money, which he had just placed, was gone.
His stomach twisted. The bottle of water he held? Still there, as if untouched.
But everything else? Vanished.
The world, for the first time in years, seemed to have forgotten him.
---
Later that night, as darkness covered his room, he sat in front of his bathroom mirror. It had always been his sanctuary. His reflection was a comfort. But tonight, it would betray him.
When he moved, his reflection did not move in sync.
At first, it was subtle—a delay. His right hand raised. His reflection's left hand followed. He took a step forward. The reflection did not move.
His breath caught.
He reached up to touch his face, and the reflection's face did not mirror his actions.
It stood still. Watching.
Then, to his horror, it grinned.
Not a smile—a grin.
A deliberate, knowing expression that he had never made.
He stumbled back, eyes wide, his heart racing. The reflection… wasn't him anymore.
---
It didn't make sense. None of it did.
He remembered the day of the fourth rift, standing at its edge when the ground had shifted beneath him. It wasn't like a normal earthquake or a tremor—it was as if the world itself had stretched and bent, trying to expunge something.
He had been too close.
Too close to something that should have consumed him.
But instead, it had left him like this.
Unstable. Forgotten. Adrift.
He could no longer deny that something about him had changed.
And as time passed, he began seeing things. Shadows in the corner of his eyes. Unnatural distortions. Creatures that shouldn't exist, moving in and out of focus.
Things no one else could see.
---
It was another one of those days. A day where the strange had become the norm. He was walking home, trying to keep a low profile, but the odd sense of being watched never quite left him.
And then, he turned down a street he didn't recognize.
This was a neighborhood he knew well. He had walked these streets a hundred times. But this one—this street—didn't belong here. The buildings, old and decayed, looked as if they had been forgotten by time itself. The windows were dark, almost hollow. As though they were never meant to exist.
He took a few more steps, but something didn't feel right. The air was heavier here. The ground beneath his feet was uneven, shifting, as though the street itself was alive.
At the end of the road, there was a figure—or perhaps it was an entity—waiting.
Not a person. Not a thing from the normal world.
Just eyes.
Hundreds of them.
Floating in the air, arranged in spirals. Some large, some small. Some barely visible, hidden behind flickers of dark light. But every single one of them was focused on him.
He froze, his heart pounding in his chest.
And then—
They blinked.
The eyes moved, shifting as if they had a mind of their own. He stood, rooted in place, his body feeling heavier with each passing second. They were watching him.
A voice suddenly broke the silence, a voice that came not from the entity, but from the air itself.
"Ah. A misplaced one."
The street distorted around him. The buildings bent, cracked, and reshaped themselves, melting like wax. The ground beneath him crumbled, and the whole world seemed to tear apart.
He staggered back, his legs failing to carry him.
He wasn't falling.
He was being pulled in.
"You should not exist," the voice continued, "And yet, here you are."
And then—
A choice appeared before him.
Three glowing words, hovering just beyond his reach.
[ Run ]
[ Listen ]
[ Step Forward ]
The instinct in him screamed to run.
But then, he remembered what had happened every time he tried to escape. No matter where he went, no matter how far he ran, the world had erased him, as if he had never been there in the first place.
This time, maybe—just maybe—he should step forward.
The choice lingered, just as his existence had. Unstable, forgotten, and waiting to see what the world would do with him next.
---
To Be Continued…