Leon sat by the bus window, his temple resting against the cool glass that trembled faintly with every uneven stretch of asphalt. He watched the city slide past in a way that was so mechanical and predictable that after a few minutes, individual buildings, advertisements, and people waiting at bus stops stopped registering at all. Everything blended together,exactly like the days that had been repeating themselves for months now.
Morning commute to the university.
A few hours spent sitting through classes that required attendance but rarely actual thought. A return to his cramped apartment. A quick meal made more out of habit than hunger. Then work.
Then sleep, an empty kind of exhaustion, knowing that the next day would be exactly the same.
The bus was packed with people talking too loudly, as if the sheer volume of their voices could give meaning to the things they were saying. Their conversations circled around a single topic that had dominated the media, the university, and the workplace for over a week now,the weather.
It had been behaving so illogically that even people normally immune to absurdity were starting to get irritated. How else could one describe days of blazing summer heat followed, without clouds or warning, by sudden downpours that stopped after five minutes, only to start again moments later? Then, a few hours after that, the temperature would plunge to ten degrees, as if someone were randomly twisting the world's control dial.
"You never know how to dress anymore," a woman a few seats away complained, gesturing nervously. "Hot in the morning, cold by noon, rain in the evening."
"Global warming," someone beside her replied, in a tone that suggested the words themselves were supposed to end the discussion, even if no one was entirely sure what they were meant to explain.
Leon listened with half an ear, frowning slightly. He leaned toward the same explanation himself, yet something about it all felt… off. Not frightening, just inconsistent. Like a logical error in a system that had worked well enough until now that no one had bothered to question it.
And at the exact moment that thought crossed his mind, the world exploded into light.
It wasn't a flash like lightning or a spotlight. It was something else entirely, something that, for a fraction of a second, erased image, sound, and meaning itself, leaving behind only blinding white.
Then came silence.
A silence so deep it felt unnatural.
When Leon opened his eyes, blinking and struggling to adjust, he saw something that absolutely should not have existed.
A transparent, perfectly rectangular window hovered in midair before him, filled with sharp, pristine letters that looked too clean, too precise, as if they didn't belong to reality at all.
[Essence Record has been activated on planet Earth. You may now summon your status window at any time.]
Leon didn't even manage to finish reading it, didn't have time to decide whether it was a hallucination, an advertisement, or some kind of absurd joke,before the silence was torn apart by a scream.
He turned his head to the right almost instinctively and saw a man who had been part of the weather conversation just moments ago. Now the man was clutching his head, his face twisted in agony, letting out a guttural roar that didn't sound human at all.
Then, in a single brutal instant, his body exploded.
Fragments scattered in a way so sudden and illogical that Leon's mind simply couldn't process it.
He froze, staring with wide eyes. There was no fear yet,only emptiness, a delayed reaction, as if his brain had refused to cooperate. Then more screams followed, one after another, from different parts of the bus, each ending with the same sound and the same impossible conclusion.
Before his body could send a single coherent signal to his mind, before fear could even take shape, something massive slammed into the bus.
The impact was so sudden and violent that the entire vehicle was ripped from its path like a toy. Leon felt the world tear itself out from under his feet as he was thrown against metal handrails, seats, and other passengers in a chaotic dance with no direction or control.
The only constants were pain,flaring through his arms, ribs, and neck, and disorientation so complete that he no longer knew which way was up.
The bus overturned with a dull, shattering crash.
Acting purely on instinct, Leon grabbed onto a seatbelt, feeling the sudden jerk nearly tear his shoulder from its socket. Dizziness blurred his vision, breaking the world into fragments that refused to assemble properly, while the metal shell of the bus groaned and screeched, as if unsure whether it should continue existing at all.
When everything finally came to a stop, the silence was broken only by the crackle of fire and the hiss of steam.
Leon opened his eyes with difficulty, blinking slowly. Every movement of his head sent a wave of pain through his body. It took him a moment to realize that the bus was upside down,lying in a position that completely defied what public transportation was supposed to look like.
He breathed heavily, trying to gather his thoughts, but they fell apart just as efficiently as the world around him.
And still, in front of his eyes, that same system window hovered, perfectly clear, blocking part of his view, as if reality itself considered it more important than anything else.
"Disappear…" he rasped, irritated in a way that was almost absurd given the situation, waving a hand in front of him more out of frustration than belief.
The window vanished instantly.
That single, unnaturally obedient reaction made his stomach clench even tighter. It meant this wasn't a hallucination.
When he released the belt and slumped heavily to the side, looking around the bus interior, whatever illusions he had left were stripped away in an instant.
Blood was everywhere,smeared across the ceiling, walls, and seats, mixed with body parts in a way so brutal and chaotic that it was hard to tell what had once been human and what was now just another piece of meat.
The sight hit him with a delay, like a wave revealing its true force only after it crashed.
A violent, instinctive urge to vomit surged up. He clenched his teeth, swallowing hard, trying to suppress it, while his mind,rather than analyzing the situation,seemed to switch into emergency mode, shutting down everything except a single, panicked thought.
He had to run.
He had to get out.
He whispered it to himself like a mantra, glancing around frantically, until his gaze landed on the back of the bus. Thick smoke obscured the view there, and from within it came low, inhuman growls,sounds too deep and too rhythmic to belong to someone who had been complaining about the weather just minutes ago.
His heart began to hammer wildly.
Staggering, Leon moved toward a window, planning to smash it and escape. Halfway there, he slipped on something soft and slick, losing his balance. When he looked down, he saw he was standing on a human arm, torn off just above the wrist.
He recoiled instinctively, slamming his back into a seat. His eyes fell on the chair beside it, where a woman had been sitting earlier. Now her body lay headless and armless, her torso shredded, and beside it, as if carelessly placed there, rested a single eyeball staring into nothing.
This time, his body couldn't take it.
Leon doubled over and vomited, shaking violently, as if his body were trying to purge not just the contents of his stomach, but the awareness of what he was seeing. When he finally lifted his head, tears pooled at the corners of his eyes, and his hands trembled so badly he could barely keep them still.
The words he whispered sounded less like a plan and more like a desperate attempt to stay conscious.
"I have to… I have to get out…" he choked out, his voice thin, hoarse, and unnaturally high, as if it belonged to someone else.
He swallowed, his throat burning, and shook his head lightly, forcing himself to move. Standing still felt worse somehow.
Breathing in shallow, broken gasps, Leon pushed himself upright. Pain spread through his entire body, but he knew,deep down,that if he stopped now, if he let fear completely paralyze him, this place would become his end.
The bus, just another part of his monotonous routine that morning, would turn into his grave.
Gathering what little courage he had left, Leon staggered to the nearest window. His heart pounded so loudly in his chest that it drowned out every other sound.
Without thinking, he struck the glass with his hand.
When it didn't give, he hit it again, harder, faster, more desperately, like speed alone could make up for his lack of strength or reason. After several frantic attempts, the window finally cracked with a dry snap, breaking apart into jagged fragments.
He didn't hesitate for a second.
Leon squeezed through the opening, ignoring the pain as sharp edges tore into his arms and sides, leaving burning lines in their wake. His body spilled out onto the asphalt, nearly lifeless, his knees slamming into the hard surface with such force that he hissed in pain as his pants instantly darkened with blood.
For a brief moment, he lay there, gasping, his face almost pressed against the ground.
When it finally sank in that he was outside, that there were at least a few meters between him and the bus, a trembling sigh of relief escaped his chest, deep and tight, like he had just narrowly avoided certain death.
The relief lasted less than a second.
Leon lifted his head and looked ahead.
What he saw made his mind freeze all over again.
The world beyond the bus wasn't safer. It wasn't more normal. It looked like the aftermath of a catastrophe on a scale too vast to comprehend at a glance.
Abandoned cars stood at unnatural angles, smashed into one another, into streetlights, into building walls. Some had doors hanging open, others shattered windows. Dark stains and splashes of blood marked the asphalt, sidewalks, and facades, silent proof of people who had vanished just as suddenly and violently as the bus passengers.
Slowly turning his head, disbelief etched into his expression, Leon tried to grasp the scale of what had happened.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, hollow, stripped of emotion, like that of an observer rather than someone trapped inside the disaster.
"This… looks like a total apocalypse…"
And for the first time since the world had flared with light, it truly hit him.
This wasn't a local nightmare he could simply run away from.
This was a new reality,and he would have to survive in it.