The street did not look like the one they had crossed every morning of their lives. It did not even resemble a street at all—more like a place that had been borrowed from a dream, mangled by a force that refused to understand the meaning of restraint. The neon signs flickered and shook as if afraid, the air tasted metallic, and something in the way the shadows crawled across the asphalt made everything feel wrong. Leria did not realize she was running until her breath tore in and out of her chest, raw and shaking, her fingers locked around Eirin's wrist with a strength she'd never known she possessed.
She couldn't even hear her own heartbeat over the chaos behind them—only the world collapsing in sensations that weren't meant for humans. Slashes of light had cut through the town, the ground had cracked open like thin ceramic, and where Areen had stood just moments ago, nothing was left except a silence that screamed louder than the destruction around them.
Areen did not cry, not yet. His tears were stuck somewhere deep, sealed behind shock so dense it felt like stone sitting behind his ribs. His mother didn't look at him, not because she didn't want to—but because looking into her child's eyes meant admitting the truth. The truth that what she held was no longer the same boy she had brought into that morning. Something had been broken inside him, something fundamental, and the echo of that break vibrated through every step he took.
The street they sprinted over… it had once been ordinary. Areen remembered it in blurs: the bakery smell in the morning, the old man who watered the plants at the corner, the soft hum of life. He remembered walking with Aorin—no tension, no terror, no weight pressing down on their spines. They had talked about exams, about cartoons, about the stupid meme Aorin kept repeating until they both laughed just to stop him. Those memories followed him like ghosts now, flickering behind his eyes as his shoes splashed through puddles of dust and broken glass.
Back then, the world had been predictable. Solid. Understandable.Now it felt like every breath could be the last one permitted by forces far greater than them.
A rumble rolled across the buildings, shaking loose plaster from balconies. Somewhere behind them, a shrill cry rose—nothing human, nothing natural. Something with feathers, maybe. Or scales. Or something that should not have existed this close to civilization. Leria didn't look back. She couldn't. Her mind, usually so careful and structured, was a storm of accusations:
Why did this happen? How did this happen?Who brought this upon her child?Who unleashed things that were never meant to live here?Humans… humans did this. Of course they did. Who else could twist the world into this shape?
Her chest clenched with rage so sharp it nearly stole her ability to breathe. But beneath it was fear—pure, cold, primal fear. Not for herself. She didn't care if she was crushed under falling debris, or swallowed by the light, or scorched by the abnormal energy flashing through the sky. None of that mattered. All she cared about was the trembling hand she refused to let go of. Her son.
Areen stumbled, almost falling to his knees. She jerked him upright before he could hit the ground.
"Keep running," she breathed, though her voice barely existed
But Areen's mind wasn't only in the present. It was everywhere at once, spiraling, unraveling.Because he had seen the whole thing—the moment hope had torn itself apart in front of him. The moment the illusion shattered.
When the creature first appeared—small, bright, shaking the world as if unsure of its own weight—Areen had felt something close to awe. The kind children feel when seeing fireworks for the first time. Amazement. Wonder. A promise that maybe their dull, predictable world was opening into something extraordinary.
But the cost of extraordinary had shown itself immediately. The chaos wasn't a fight. It wasn't an attack. It was simply… natural. Instinctive. A being that didn't know how fragile humans were, how fragile cities were, how fragile the ground was beneath them. Aorin had just stood too close. That was all. Too close to something he thought was merely fiction.
And as Leria dragged him forward, Areen's thoughts twisted deeper, darker:
If something this small… something this undeveloped… could cause this much destruction by accident…
Then what about the others?What about the truly powerful ones
He remembered their names—he had grown up with posters and games and stories about them. even, The creators of land, sea, and sky,beings that controlled fabric itself. And above them all… the one whose presence defined creation, the one spoken of as the architect of existence.
If small ones could throw cars, split streets, and shatter concrete walls just by breathing wrong…What would happen if the real ones came? The true ones?How much would disappear before humans even understood what they were facing?
A fissure split open in the asphalt behind them with a crack like thunder, cutting through his thoughts. Dust sprayed into the air. The ground rippled as if something enormous had shifted deep beneath the surface, waking from a long sleep.
Leria tightened her grip on him, pulling him into the alley beside their apartment complex.
When they reached home, the door shook behind them as she slammed it shut. The air inside was still, quiet—but that quiet felt wrong too, like a silence waiting to be violated.
Areen collapsed onto the floor, his breath shaking. Liria locked every bolt on the door, though she knew locks meant nothing against what had appeared today.
Then the power went out.
The television screen flickered and then snapped into darkness.But the broadcast did not die—it shifted to emergency backup generators somewhere far away. A harsh static line cut through the black, then images emerged again—grainy, unstable, but unmistakable.
Not just their town.Not just their country.
Everywhere.
In forests, animals fled wildly—deer, wolves, elephants, creatures of every habitat sprinting as though chased by death itself. But the predators weren't humans. They weren't other animals. They were things with glowing eyes, strange markings, bodies that reflected powers nature had never permitted on Earth.
Some forests burned blue, or green, or purple—fire that didn't obey physics. Some trees froze solid in midsummer heat. In some regions, the water of entire lakes rose upward in spirals as if pulled by unseen hands.
Birds in the sky were fighting creatures that could cut air with invisible blades. Swarms of fish thrashed as things beneath the water glowed and twisted currents into spirals that flipped boats like toys. Military helicopters circled in confusion—until one was sliced cleanly in half by something moving too fast to see.
Animals fought Pokémon.Humans fought Pokémon.Pokémon fought each other.Chaos fought order everywhere.
And everywhere… humans were losing.
Then came the global footage—cities across continents, monuments collapsing, communication lines failing. Nations scrambling to understand what was happening, governments demanding explanations from each other because someone, somewhere, must have caused this. But no one had. No one could have predicted it.
It wasn't an invasion.It wasn't a war.It wasn't even intentional.
It was a world reshaping itself.
Leria stared at the screens, her hands trembling. Her mind screamed at her to do something—call someone, run somewhere, find a shelter—but the world offered no direction. No hope. The system itself was failing on every level.
A low hum filled the room.
Not from the TV.From outside.
Areen lifted his head. His breath froze.
A glow had appeared in the sky—white, pure, expanding slowly like a blooming star. It wasn't sunlight. It wasn't electricity. It felt too alive, too deliberate, too powerful. Like an eye opening for the first time.
Government forces across the world seemed to see it at the same time. Surveillance cameras caught it from satellites, drones, jets. Subtitles and frantic translations ran across the bottom of every screen:
UNIDENTIFIED AIRBORNE SPHERE DETECTEDSIZE INCREASINGPOWER LEVEL UNKNOWNALL NATIONS ON HIGH ALERT
Then a missile launched.
Not from their country.From far away—a military base desperate, panicked, believing that maybe, just maybe, if they struck early, they could stop whatever was forming in the sky.
The missile streaked upward, cutting a thin line of smoke against the horizon.
Leria covered her mouth.Areen felt his stomach turn cold.
The world held its breath.
The light in the sky expanded slightly, as if acknowledging the attack.
Then it changed.
Not violently. Not explosively.Almost gently
A ripple—vast, silent, effortless—spread outward. Not fire. Not radiation. Not electricity. Just… erasure. Light so absolute it erased shadow. Light so complete it swallowed sound.
The cameras caught only one final image before the signal cut:
A country gone.An entire landmass erased from the map as if drawn in chalk and wiped clean by a single, careless hand.
Silence claimed the world.
Liria sank to her knees, tears finally breaking free. Eirin felt something inside him go still, as if fear itself had reached a point it could not surpass and simply… froze.
The TV flickered and died for real this time. No power left. No signal.
The world outside their window was quiet, too quiet.
And overhead, the white sphere pulsed once—slow, deliberate—shadowing the Earth in its glow.
The fracture of hope had begun