If someone asked me what kind of father I was before the world changed, I'd probably tell them I was "good enough." Not extraordinary. Not terrible. Just a man doing his best.
The truth is, I spent most of my life waiting for the universe to make sense. I just never expected it to answer back.
We walked through the forest in cautious silence, the moon cutting silver paths between the trees. Lyra walked beside me, her hands clenched tight to keep the sparks hidden. Orion stayed on my other side, gaze drifting between reality and whatever voices whispered to him.
Zara led the way, moving with slow, steady confidence — a soldier's gait even though she wasn't on duty anymore. Every few steps she glanced over her shoulder, checking angles, reading the shadows. I was grateful. I was terrified. And I was exhausted.
"Let's stop here," she finally said, pointing to a clearing beneath a large twisted tree with roots that glowed faintly blue. "We'll rest for a bit. The worst of the predators avoid the glow."
"The glow?" I repeated.
"It burns them," she said simply.
I didn't ask how she knew.
We sat. The kids leaned against me, both still trembling. The forest hummed with the sound of unfamiliar insects and distant calls of creatures I didn't want to imagine.
It wasn't the time for comfort, but I knew they needed grounding — something human in this wild, alien world.
So I began with the simplest truth.
"Hey," I whispered. "You two remember the old days?"
Lyra let out a half-laugh, half-sob. "You mean last week?"
"No," I said softly. "Before everything started going strange."
Orion rubbed his eyes. "Dad… things were strange for months."
And he was right.
Three months before the Rebirth Event, the world had already begun to unravel — gently, quietly, the way ice cracks beneath your feet before you fall through.
The news had been full of stories that didn't fit together; mass whale strandings in every ocean. Rare metals forming naturally on rooftops after thunderstorms. Unexplained global temperature fluctuations hot mornings, freezing afternoons. Animals migrating in impossible directions.
Every government spokesman said the same thing; "It's climate anomalies, unusual, but not dangerous."
But people weren't buying it. Scientists weren't buying it. Even the late-night comedians weren't buying it. Then there were the dreams, people all over the world reported the same strange visions, forests growing overnight. Spirals of light in the sky. Beings made of smoke or stone. The earth "breathing" like a living creature. The sound of something coming
I had dreams too, though I never told the kids. In mine, the moon cracked open like an egg.
Lyra spoke first, hugging her knees.
"Remember when the animals at the park started acting weird? The monkeys kept staring at us like they knew something."
I smiled faintly. "Yeah. I thought someone was feeding them energy drinks."
Orion nudged her. "Or maybe they were staring at you, because you never stopped eating your fries."
"I was sharing!"
"You threw one at them."
"Because they hissed!"
The banter was weak, but it was the closest thing to normal we'd had all night.
Zara crouched beside a glowing root, scanning the perimeter. She wasn't listening — or so I thought — until she spoke in a low voice that made Lyra fall silent.
"They weren't staring because of fries."
Lyra blinked. "What do you mean?"
Zara turned, her expression serious but not unkind.
"Your animals were reacting to seismic waves and atmospheric shifts long before humans could. The military had reports about it."
I felt my stomach tighten.
"What kind of reports?"
She hesitated, then sat down opposite us.
"Since you're already in this mess, you deserve the truth."
The kids leaned closer.
"For months," Zara said, "we were tracking energy spikes all over the world. Not nuclear. Not geological. Something else. Something… older."
"Older?" Orion echoed.
"Older than recorded history," Zara said. "Older than civilization."
I swallowed. "And the government knew?"
Zara scoffed. "The governments were panicking. The corporations were thrilled."
That caught Lyra's attention. "Why would they be thrilled?"
"Because they thought it was a resource," Zara said.
"A new kind of energy. A chance to get rich."
She scraped a line into the dirt with a stick.
"But the spikes didn't act like energy. They acted like—"
She paused.
"—heartbeat patterns."
A chill ran through me.
"Heartbeat?" I repeated.
"Yes. Like the earth had a pulse… and it was getting stronger."
Orion shivered. "I heard it tonight, right before everything broke. A pulse. A rhythm. Like it was calling."
Zara nodded slowly. "You're not wrong."
I stared at her. "Why didn't they tell the public?"
Her eyes hardened.
"Because they didn't want people to panic. And because they were wrong about what was coming."
She leaned back, looking up at the shimmering leaves above us.
"They thought they could contain it. Harness it. Profit from it."
Lyra frowned. "But they couldn't."
"No," Zara said.
"No one can contain something this big."
A heavy silence fell over us.
The kids huddled closer, and for a moment, I remembered who they were before the universe shook them awake.
Lyra Marek — 15.
A storm in human skin.
She had my stubbornness and her mother's fire, literally now.
Before this, she loved sketching, climbing trees, and arguing with the news anchor on TV like he could hear her.
She once punched a bully for mocking her quiet brother.
I got called to the school.
I pretended to be angry.
I was not.
Orion Marek — also 15, though he always felt older.
Gentle. Thoughtful.
Loved astronomy, puzzles, and books thicker than his wrist.
He always said he could "feel" things others couldn't — moods, tension, lies.
I used to think he was just highly empathetic.
Turns out he was psychic.
They were born premature, two minutes apart, in a storm so violent the hospital lost power. The nurse joked that the weather was celebrating their arrival.
Maybe it wasn't a joke.
Maybe the universe had been waiting.
"What about you?" Orion asked Zara quietly. "Something must've happened to you before the world… changed."
Zara's face tightened, old pain flickering behind her eyes.
"We lost an entire recon unit in the Maasai Mara," she said.
"No bodies. No distress signal. Just… gone."
Lyra leaned forward. "What did they see?"
Zara picked at the dirt.
"They sent one message before they vanished."
She took a breath.
"It said:
'The forest is moving.'"
My heart dropped.
The kids stared in shock.
Zara's voice grew darker.
"Our commanders told us it was a malfunction. Said to ignore it. But it wasn't just the Mara. Teams went missing in:"
Northern Siberia
The Congo Basin
The Australian Outback
Deep ocean trenches
"Entire squads," she said, "erased like chalk on a board."
"Why?" Lyra whispered.
Zara looked at her with a grim, quiet certainty.
"Because nature wasn't sick.
It was waking up.
And it didn't want people watching."
A long silence followed.
Even the glowing tree above us seemed to dim, listening.
Finally, Zara stood and dusted off her hands.
"We should move. The farther we get from the city, the safer you'll be."
"Safer?" I repeated.
"In this?"
She looked at the forest, at the glowing roots, the impossible leaves, the shifting shadows.
Then she looked at Lyra's trembling fire and Orion's hollow eyes.
"With me?" she said. "Definitely safer."
I gathered the kids to their feet.
"Come on," I whispered. "Stay close. We'll figure this out together."
Zara led the way, and we followed — a father, two supernatural children, and a soldier who knew far more about this new world than she was ready to admit.
The forest swallowed our footprints as quickly as we made them.
Because the world hadn't just changed.
It was alive