The wind was cold up here.
Ren stood at the edge of the rooftop, ten floors above a city that never looked back. The apartment complex beneath him was half-abandoned, the hallway lights flickered, and the elevator hadn't worked since he moved in. He didn't mind. It made it easier to be forgotten.
Below, the street was empty except for the distant echo of a barking dog and the low hum of dying streetlamps. It was the kind of night that didn't ask questions. The kind that let you vanish.
Ren leaned forward slightly, just enough to feel the nothingness waiting.
He didn't cry. Not because he was strong—but because he'd run out. The grief, the anger, the loneliness—they had dried up long ago. All that was left now was silence. A silence so complete, it felt alive.
He closed his eyes.
One more step.
Just one.
Then… something flickered.
Far off in the distance, beyond the rows of rooftops and cracked concrete, the night shifted.
Ren opened his eyes slowly. He wasn't sure what he'd seen, or if he had seen anything at all. But then it happened again—a pulse. Not light. Not sound. A ripple.
Like space itself had been punched.
And then—
The explosion.
But there was no fire.
No smoke.
Only darkness. A blooming sphere of black energy burst into the sky, and the world around it shivered. It pulsed again—waves of shadow rippling outward like shockwaves in thick air. Lights in that direction blinked out. A cloud of black mist swallowed several blocks and just… hovered.
It shouldn't have been beautiful. But it was.
Ren stepped back from the edge.
He stared, breath caught, heart kicking for the first time in days. Something about that explosion didn't feel human. It didn't feel real. And yet, it called to him.
Something had torn a hole into the world.
And from it… something was bleeding out.
He didn't even think. He turned, ran down the stairwell—past his apartment door, past the empty floor with the boarded-up windows, past the man who slept in the hallway with a knife under his head.
The cold wind chased him as he burst into the street and sprinted toward the growing dark.