The city hummed with restless energy. It was mid-morning, yet the streets were unusually crowded — not with hurried office workers or students, but with nervous groups gathered outside shops, bus stops, and market stalls. Sivahn walked silently among them, unnoticed like a shadow. His black hair hung just above his shoulders, slightly messy from a restless night. His clothes were plain — a grey shirt and worn-out jeans — blending him into the faceless crowd.
He wasn't nervous, not like the others. The whispers of panic that followed him felt distant, like background noise in a dull dream.
"Did you hear? They're saying it's big," a man muttered to his friend.
"Yeah, saw it on the news last night. They're calling it The Crimson Meteor. Some scientist claimed it's got some weird... cosmic radiation or something."
"Cosmic radiation?" the second man scoffed. "It's just fear-mongering. They said it'd miss us by thousands of kilometers."
"Then why are the networks down?"
Sivahn kept walking, tuning out the conversation. The tension was everywhere — shopkeepers peered anxiously at silent TVs; mothers gripped their children's hands tightly; even the air felt heavy, as if something unseen weighed down on the world.
He turned a corner and passed a group of teenagers — loud, restless, pretending to laugh but unable to hide the unease in their eyes.
"Man, what if that thing actually hits?" one asked nervously.
"It won't," his friend forced a grin. "Even if it did, you think we'd survive? Might as well enjoy the show."
Sivahn kept walking. Empty bravado, he thought. He knew it too well — that desperate need to pretend nothing was wrong. He had seen it in his parents, in classmates, even in himself once.
Five years of solitude had stripped those illusions away. He had no friends, no attachments, no delusions. While others feared losing what they had... Sivahn had nothing to lose.
---
The exam hall was buzzing with nervous students. Sivahn sat near the back, a quiet observer in the crowd. A girl beside him tapped her pen anxiously against her desk.
"Do you think... it's true?" she whispered to no one in particular.
"What's true?" Sivahn asked flatly.
"The meteor," she said. "They said... some government shelters are already packed. They're preparing for—"
The sound of glass shattering silenced her. Someone had kicked over a trash bin near the entrance. Fear was creeping in.
"Relax," Sivahn muttered. "If something's coming, worrying won't stop it."
The girl gave him a strange look — part confusion, part discomfort — then returned to her anxious fidgeting. Sivahn knew that look well. People never knew how to respond to someone who didn't panic.
---
The exam never started. The power cut out first — lights flickered, and the emergency generator stuttered. Minutes later, someone burst into the hall, shouting.
"It's happening! The meteor—it's visible now!"
Sivahn followed the rushing crowd outside.
The sky was bleeding.
A dark crimson streak carved itself across the heavens, a blazing red wound that swallowed the morning sun. The meteor blazed like a blackened heart wrapped in fire, larger than anything Sivahn had imagined. It tore through the clouds, casting shadows that swallowed the city whole.
"My God…" someone whispered.
"We're doomed," another sobbed.
"No... no, they said it would miss us," a man cried desperately, as though saying it enough times would make it true.
The streak grew larger, its fiery aura turning the world blood-red. The air crackled, and the ground seemed to tremble. For the first time, Sivahn felt something stir inside him — not fear, not panic... but curiosity.
Is this it?
Then it struck.
The impact was distant yet deafening — a flash of black fire on the horizon, and the sky seemed to ripple like water. The wind screamed, rushing past him in a gust so powerful that people staggered and fell.
And then... silence.
The sun had vanished. What remained was a sky of twisted shadows — black clouds swirling as if ink had spilled across the heavens. The air felt colder, heavier. It was as if the world itself was exhaling its final breath.
Then came the screams.
---
Hours passed, but the panic never stopped. Sivahn wandered through the streets, watching society unravel like string. The power grid was gone. Phones were dead. The television screens showed only static. Sirens wailed across the city — some for fires, some for riots, some for reasons unknown.
"The military's gone silent!" a man shouted.
"They're evacuating the government districts!"
"It's the end! We're being punished!"
Sivahn kept walking. People clung to their loved ones, whispered prayers, or screamed at the sky. For years, he had seen humanity's mask—the fake smiles, the empty promises, the fragile morals held together only by convenience.
Now that mask was breaking… and what lay beneath was raw, ugly desperation.
He stopped at an empty park bench, watching the city burn in the distance. The wind stirred the fallen leaves around his feet, whispering quietly. Sivahn closed his eyes.
People fear darkness, Sivahn though. But the real horror is what they become when the lights go out.
For the first time in years... the world finally seemed honest.