Some doors are meant to stay closed, not because of the locks, but because of the monsters waiting beyond them.
The sun was just beginning to bleed over Riverside School, its warm glow stretching long shadows across the cracked pavement like dark fingers reaching for something unseen. Summer had arrived early—too early—making the air thick and strange, as though the whole city was holding its breath.
Quinn sat slouched on the edge of the roof, earbuds pumping music into his ears, a barrier between him and the noise drifting up from the courtyard below. The world looked exactly the same as it always did—cars humming, students joking, teachers hurrying—but something inside him felt tilted, as if today sat slightly off-center from reality.
He couldn't explain it. He just knew it.
"Yo, Quinn!" Riley's voice cut through his music, familiar and loud enough to ignore physics.
Quinn pulled out one earbud.
"Hey, Riley."
Riley stepped onto the roof with his usual energy, eyes already narrowing in playful suspicion. "What drags you up to the rooftops every morning?"
Quinn shrugged. "I like the view. It's… peaceful. Easier to think up here."
"Fair. But come on—Ms. Mira just got to class." Riley tapped his watch dramatically. "Or were you planning to skip again?"
"Huh? No way. I'm a good student."
Riley smirked. "A good student, huh? Yeah, sure. Maybe you just like daydreaming in the back row."
Quinn flushed faint from embarrassment, Riley was always quick to tease.
"Oh, shut up," he muttered, trying not to smile.
Riley burst out laughing anyway. "Dude, that face! You're basically a tomato!"
"Quit laughing or we're gonna be late, egghead," Quinn said, brushing past him toward the door.
Riley gasped dramatically. "Egghead? Seriously? Take it back—hey! Quinn! Get back here!"
Their voices faded into the hallway as they shoved and joked their way toward class—just two friends starting what should have been another normal day. Another predictable morning. Another page in a story that hadn't turned strange yet.
But stories have a way of shifting when you least expect it.
---
A few blocks away, far from the chatter of Riverside students, the control room of the Nexus Foundation hummed with cold, sharp energy. Massive screens flickered with readings that looked impossible, even to the scientists who had built the instruments.
The Nexus Foundation wasn't ordinary. It wasn't even government-level. It was something far beyond—an organization dedicated to mapping the fractures between dimensions, studying the places where reality bent, buckled, or tore.
Today, something was happening on their monitors—something they had long anticipated.
Dr. Aris Thorne stood rigid in the center of the Nexus Foundation's observation chamber, the cold glow of his datapad reflecting across his glasses. Before him hovered a shimmering, impossible shape—non-Euclidean, folding and unfolding as though geometry were only a polite suggestion. It pulsed faintly, a wound stitched into the air.
Across the room, Dr. Elara Vance moved between a halo of holographic controls, her fingers tapping rapid-fire sequences into floating interfaces. The shifting light painted restless colors across her features, giving her an almost spectral look.
"There's a fluctuation in the Higgs-field alignment," Aris murmured, his eyes never leaving the anomaly. "Compensate by point-three percent on the secondary emitters."
"Already on it," Elara replied. She slid a control upward, and the aperture shimmered in response. "Casimir resonance is holding. Aris… it's stable. We're actually maintaining a stable aperture."
"'Stable' is generous," he said, his voice dry but tinged with awe. "This thing's drinking enough power to light a small continent. But the harmonic frequency hasn't collapsed, and we're no longer peeking through a keyhole."
He took a slow breath. "We've cracked the door open."
Elara's grin grew wide, bright, and disbelieving. "Look at these readings. The particle decay isn't behaving like decay at all—it's translation. Aris, the laws of thermodynamics in there aren't just bent. They're rewritten."
For the first time in hours, Aris allowed himself a small smile. "Confirm full recording of all dimensional bleed. I want spectrographic mapping on that light. We can't even perceive the wavelength directly."
"It's beautiful," Elara whispered, stare fixed on the impossible shape. "Beautiful in a way that hurts to look at. Like witnessing a color humanity was never meant to name."
She flicked through a line of diagnostics. "Sensors are reading at—wait—one hundred and ten percent. We're getting—"
BZZZZT.
CLUNK.
The chamber's low hum deepened into a growl, rattling the metal floor. The aperture rippled violently, its edges flickering like a reflection disturbed by a stone thrown into water.
Aris's head snapped toward her. "What was that? Elara—report!"
"I don't know!" Her voice pitched higher as she scanned the frenzied displays. "Power draw just spiked off the charts—but it's not coming from our grid. Aris… it's feedback. We're getting energy from the other side."
"That's impossible." His voice cracked like a whip. "The barrier is one-way. Shut it down. Emergency containment—now!"
"I'm trying!" Her hands flew, but the console lights blinked stubbornly red. "The primary shutdown isn't responding. It's like—like something is holding it open."
The air thickened, buzzing with static. The strange, luminous aperture pulsed—slowly at first, then faster. A rhythm. A heartbeat. A message.
"The containment field is destabilizing!" Aris shouted. "We're losing it!"
"We need to kill the power now, Doctor!" the head security officer barked from across the room.
But before anyone could react, the pulsing stopped.
The aperture snapped into perfect clarity—too perfect. No longer a ripple. No longer a window. Not yet a doorway.
Something more deliberate.
An invitation.
The twisting geometry convulsed. A piercing whir erupted from its center, like metal shearing against reality itself.
"What just happ—"
The anomaly ruptured. A blinding blast tore through the chamber, swallowing the room in a violent surge of force and light. Equipment shattered. Consoles imploded. The entire lab vanished in a flash so bright it burned through every sensor within miles.
---
Seconds Earlier
The school bell rang, echoing through Riverside School. Students spilled into the hallways, laughing, shouting, living the familiar rhythm of break time—fifteen minutes to breathe before the day marched on.
Quinn stared out the classroom window toward downtown, a strange tension coiling in his gut.
"Hey, Riley… did you hear that?" Quinn asked quietly.
"Other than the bell and a bunch of kids yelling? Nope." Riley took a bite of his sandwich. "You're hearing ghosts again, brother."
"Maybe," Quinn muttered. "Just felt weird for a second."
"Imagination or not, dude—we've got fifteen minutes to eat. Let's go."
"Yeah, yeah. I'm coming."
Riley nudged him. "Are all nerds this weird, or is it just you?"
"I'm not weird, dummy. I just—never mind. Let's go eat."
"Whatever you say, champ."
Whether it was instinct or coincidence, Quinn's gut twisted again.
Something was wrong.
Something big.
---
At the Same Moment
The explosion erupted from the Nexus Foundation, the shockwave rippling outward from the epicenter like an invisible tidal wave.
Quinn and Riley had barely sat down in the cafeteria when a tremor rattled the windows. Forks clattered. Conversations faltered.
"Hey—yo, Quinn," Riley stammered, eyes widening. "Wh-what… what is that?"
Quinn looked up.
His jaw fell open.
The sounds of laughing students, scraping chairs, cafeteria chatter—everything faded into a distant, muffled haze.
He stared through the window, frozen in place.
Something impossible was blooming over the city.
Something the world had never seen before.