The window was cold
He sad down alone Sitting alone , looking out at the sky, thinking to himself why me as he pressed his hands against the wall.
feeling every crack in the paint, every scratch in the glass. Behind him voices rose. Yelling. Arguing. Shouting. He didn't turn. The glass was solid. Real. Tangible. An anchor Something to hold onto while the rest of the world slipped out of his control And fell far out of His reach.
Alone with nothing but his thoughts, and the dream of something far away something new Something that isn't this.
Then he looked outside the window and he could see the city moving like a wound that never healed.
Cars crawled over cracked asphalt, tires skimming broken metal. Neon flickered on shattered windows, bruised and jagged. People moved with purpose. Heads jerking. Phones in hands. Mouths moving. Shadows stretched and twisted under flickering lights, bending over the cracks in the pavement as if alive. Rouge's eyes followed them. Counting. Analyzing. Memorizing. Everything wrong. Nothing mattered.
All I could think of was a dream of being far from all of this, a dream of an escape from the noise.
When suddenly
A crash from the kitchen. Ceramic. A plate. Broken. Noise. He didn't look. If he looked he gave it power. If he gave it power, he lost control.
One. Two. Three
The floor trembled. Barely at first. A low hum through the tiles. Threading into his knees. Rouge gritted his teeth. Grabbed the wall. Paint flaked under his fingers. The vibration grew. Insistent. Twisting in his chest. Alive.
The air thickened. Breathing felt wrong. Wet. Heavy. Like swallowing cloth soaked in rot. His ears rang. High. Thin. Slicing into his skull. Heart thumping. Pulse echoing in his temples.
"Dad?" His voice was small. Fragile. Wrong
No answer
Lights flickered once. Twice
The walls shook
And then it started
The floor lurched beneath him. Tiles cracked. Dust fell in clouds from the ceiling. Rouge froze. Tried to move. Brace. Hold on. Arms hit the ground. Nothing. No weight. No pressure
Panic flared. Sharp. Alien. He tried to scream. Nothing
A crack split the air
Light tore across the kitchen. Jagged. Thin. Shadows bent toward it. Twisting. Crawling along surfaces at impossible angles. The hum of the city warped. Clawing at his ears. His body refused him. He wanted to move. Couldn't. Tried to step. Feet didn't respond. Tried to turn. Nothing
The apartment bent. The ceiling folded downward. Walls cracked. Stretched like paper. Rouge stumbled, clinging to what he thought was floor. It dissolved beneath him
The city vanished. Streets, cars, people. Gone
The world tore open
Buildings folded over themselves, fracturing into impossible angles. Streets split into chasms straight into shadows that weren't shadows. Colors bled where they shouldn't. Light fractured in jagged lines. Dust, metal, water, smoke, swirling, twisting, alive. The smell of iron, rot, ozone burned.
Rivers of molten light ran through streets that no longer existed. Towers fell upward. Cries from the city, warped and distant, echoed far away, though no one could exist there anymore. Windows shattered into prisms. Cars folded like paper. Streetlamps stretched impossibly high. Flames crawled along their surfaces.
The tremors grew. Every surface pulsed. Every corner shifted. Every fracture throbbed. A distant roar vibrated through the sky. Massive. Ancient. Moving somewhere Rouge could not imagine
Dust, light, shadows, metal, fire, water. Spinning together in living chaos. Colors burned in vision. Fractured into shards. Stabbing at anything trying to focus. Sounds split and multiplied. Overlapping. Distant yet inside his skull. He tried to scream. Tried to move. Couldn't
The city was alive. Or dead. Or both. Impossible angles. Impossible physics. Impossible sounds. Rouge's mind tore at the edges of understanding.
When the storm passed… silence
Rouge opened his eyes. Or he thought he did. Darkness pressed into him. Velvet. Endless. Thick. No floor beneath his hands. No ceiling above. No walls. No air. No direction. Nothing to hold onto
A faint hum pulsed somewhere. Not in his ears. Inside him
And then…
A voice
Soft. Mechanical. Everywhere. Nowhere
"System initializing"
Rouge tried to speak. Failed
Another sound followed. Soft. Alive. Shuffling. Waiting. Sliding through nothing
He tried again. To call out. To scream. To move. Nothing
The world held its breath
Rouge felt his mind stretch. Torn between memory and what he could not understand. A memory of warmth. A sound of voices. A city he had walked a thousand times. All gone. Swallowed. He tried to grasp it. Could not. His body felt like it belonged to someone else. Or maybe nothing at all
The hum grew. The sound of systems booting. Circuits activating. Cold intelligence waking in the dark. He was watching. Not watching. Aware. Powerless.
His chest rose. Or it didn't. His hands rested. Or they didn't. Reality slipped like water through fingers that weren't there. Every thought a shard. Every feeling broken. Every instinct screaming but unheard
And then… silence
Just the hum. The system. The waiting
Rouge understood one thing. Or perhaps only felt it
He was not awake. Not alive. Not entirely himself. Something was coming. Something watching. Something that had begun while he slept in a world that no longer existed