CHAPTER 1 — "The First Crack"
The sky blinked.
Just once.
It wasn't a thunderclap. No divine voice booming down. No trumpet, no alarm. Just… a blink. Like the world skipped a frame.
And for a brief moment—a fraction of a second, really—a screen hovered above the world like a god's whisper typed into code:
[ WARNING: NEGATIVE KARMA OF PLANET REACHED 99% ]
[ SYSTEM STABILITY CRITICAL. SCALES WILL BREAK SOON. ]
And then it was gone.
The clouds returned. The sky was blue again. Birds flew by, unbothered. And the people of Earth... didn't even notice.
Well—almost no one.
Aarav blinked hard, shielding his eyes from the sun overhead. His phone buzzed with some meme from his group chat, but his eyes were fixed on the sky. "What the hell was that?" he muttered.
People walked past him on the sidewalk, headphones in, coffees in hand, chasing buses, staring at screens. Not a single person looked up.
He chuckled nervously. "Probably a drone ad or something," he lied to himself, but his palms were cold, his chest tight. It wasn't normal. It wasn't.
He tried to forget it.
He shouldn't have.
It began at 2:14 p.m.
The sky over the City turned red.
Not sunset-red. Not warm or poetic. It was bleeding. As if someone had torn a hole through space itself, and light—raw and angry—was seeping through the wound.
People screamed. Phones rose to capture it. Every news channel crashed under server load in seconds.
And then... the cracks spread.
From sky to land, from highways to homes, hairline fractures began to appear in thin air—some two meters tall, some like massive, vertical chasms ripping through the skyline. They glowed like hot metal, pulsing, humming with something not of this world.
And one by one, they opened.
[ THE NEGATIVE KARMA HAS EXCEEDED CONTAINMENT LIMITS. ]
[ THE FIREWALL IS BROKEN. ]
[ THE WORLD IS NOW VULNERABLE TO INVASION. ]
This time, everyone saw the window.
Floating above buildings, cities, oceans, deserts. Language no longer mattered—each saw it in their mother tongue. Children cried. Planes nosedived. Satellites failed.
Then... the first monster stepped through.
A single goblin, about three feet tall. A jagged knife in its hand. Green skin, red eyes, panting like a rabid dog.
Then ten more.
Then a hundred.
And not just goblins—hulking orcs, insectoid beasts, winged serpents, eyeless giants. Some so massive their bodies tore through buildings just trying to fit through the crack.
Blood painted the roads. Sirens screamed. The world, as humans knew it, was over.
Aarav was still staring at the sky, frozen.
One of the cracks had formed just a street away, its red glow reflecting in the windows of his apartment complex. He couldn't move. He couldn't scream.
And then, just like that—
A smaller window blinked into existence before his eyes.
Floating. Waiting.
[ You have been chosen. ]
[ Connecting to Akashic Records... ]
[ Synchronization Initiated. Please remain still. ]
A sharp pain stabbed through his temple. He gasped, clutching his head, dropping to one knee as static filled his vision and thoughts not his own flooded into his brain.
But just before he passed out—
He saw it.
A face.
Vast, ancient, watching from the other side of the crack.
Smiling.
Not a monster.
Something greater. A being who had written the rules long before time was born.
The world wasn't ending by accident.
Someone had written this.
TO BE CONTINUED…