The sky shattered before the world could scream.
It began with a sudden snap of silence—unnatural, absolute.
A sound erupted above them — a tearing, world-ending THUMP that fractured the air itself. It wasn't thunder. It was something far more ancient and wrong. Something that didn't belong in this world.
It felt like the sky had been ripped apart by the fists of some sleeping god. The pressure of it smashed down on Kuro's chest like a boulder, making his heart stutter, his vision pulse, and every bone in his body ache with the shock. He gasped or tried to — the air had been sucked out of the world.
High above the sky, splitting the sky in two like a jagged wound in a painting — a vertical tear, hundreds of meters tall, running crimson and black, its edges jagged like shattered glass, pulsing with otherworldly light. From within, things moved, too fast to comprehend. Silhouettes of impossible geometry — and voices.
Moans. Whispers. Screams.
A soundscape that didn't belong to any realm he knew, a cacophony of suffering and seduction, calling out with language that wasn't meant to be understood.
The Reality Tear.
Then came the crimson and violet lightning along with thunder forked violently through the sky above the carriage, ripping across the heavens in jagged patterns, illuminating the street in flashes of dreadlight. The clouds churned like boiling oil, and then, without warning, it began to rain—but not with water.
Thick, heavy drops slapped the cobblestones, each one tinted a deep, meaty red, not merely coloured but almost viscous, like the diluted blood of gods. Where it landed, the stone hissed faintly, as if recoiling. The smell was unmistakable. Not iron. Rot.
And then the bells began.
One. Then another. Then all of them.
Across the city, the great iron bells tolled in unison — not the usual chime for fire or uprising, but the continuous, frantic clang-clang-clang of full breach protocol, a sound not heard in a thousand years. Their echo reached every home, and every soul in the city.
"The Veil… it's torn," Kuro whispered, realizing the implications with bone-deep dread.
Inside the swaying carriage, Kuro barely had time to register what is happening when Elara gasped sharply beside him. "No…" she whispered, voice trembling. She reached for him, her fingers ice-cold. Her mouth opened to speak, but she hesitated, her eyes glued to the storm beyond the glass window. Her lips parted again, "It hasn't come this deep in a thousand—"
She didn't finish.
The horses screamed.
The carriage lurched violently to one side as the beasts reared, whinnying in maddened terror, their eyes rolling back into white. The coachman yelled something unintelligible above the growing storm. The world became a spinning chaos of shouts, thunder, and jerking motion. The carriage nearly overturned, one wheel lifting completely off the ground.
"Easy! EASY!" the coachman bellowed from above, trying to wrest control from the chaos, but it was no use. The horses were beyond reason, eyes red from the rain, nostrils flaring with horror.
There was a metallic clank, followed by the snap of releasing harnesses. The carriage pitched forward slightly as the weight of the animals was suddenly gone. Through the smeared windows, Kuro saw them bolt into the crimson haze, vanishing into the blood-mist like terrified phantoms.
Then came the coachman's shout, this time directly outside the carriage door.
The door was thrown open, and his face appeared—soaked, streaked in red, wild-eyed. "You have to run!" he gasped. "Back toward the Archives! It's eating them—the shops, the people—everything! MOVE!"
And then something took him.
It wasn't a clean hit. There was a sickening crack, a blur of motion, and a dark tendril the width of a man's thigh smashed through his skull, caving it inward with a grotesque squelch. The man's eyes popped wide as the top of his head collapsed like a crushed gourd. The tendril didn't pause. It shot forward, the coachman's now-headless body twitching and swaying for a heartbeat before dropping like a broken puppet, strings severed.
Blood fountained. Kuro stared in raw disbelief as the tendril withdrew, dripping viscous gore, vanishing into the haze.
Shops across the street exploded outward.
Wood shattered, glass flew like shrapnel, and people—merchants, customers, children—ran. Or tried. A man staggered out of a lanternmaker's storefront, mouth open in a silent scream, only to be pulled backward by something unseen. A wall collapsed behind him, as if crushed by an invisible fist.
Another shop—an old bookstall—was simply consumed. The entire structure crumpled inward, as if it had been inhaled, and when the dust cleared, only wet splinters and screaming remained.
More tendrils. Black, glistening, and unnatural, they lanced through walls and windows. One speared through the side of a baker's house, dragging out a woman by her ribs, her scream devolving into a gargle as the tendril shook her like a ragdoll before hurling her across the square.
The creature followed.
It wasn't a beast. It wasn't anything natural. It was a towering, twitching abomination, formed from a thousand wrong geometries and slithering motion. Its skin, if one could call it that, was ever-shifting—a mix of bone, pulsating organs, and plating that didn't reflect light properly. Eyes blinked and rolled across its surface, too many and too misplaced. Its limbs changed as it moved—one moment claws, the next blunt, battering masses of chitin.
Its mouth was the only consistent part—a massive vertical slit lined with circular rows of teeth that clicked and spun and dripped with red saliva. It let out a sound again—a scream that sounded like the sky ripping.
And it turned toward the carriage.