Chapter 4: Things That Shouldn't Move
Aria Solenne left her apartment at 8:17 AM.
Exactly on time.
The sky was strangely bright for morning, painted in streaks of orange and red like a sunset was trying to bleed through the wrong side of the day. Her fingers tightened around her book bag as she walked, head down, steps steady.
Something felt off.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just wrong.
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The streets were too quiet.
The birds weren't singing.
And the traffic lights blinked out of sync—green… then red… then both at once.
She passed a man on the sidewalk who was staring straight ahead, unblinking. She slowed, just slightly. He looked pale. His lips were cracked. One eye twitched.
And when she passed, she heard it.
A whisper, soft and jagged:
"Not yours. Not yours. Not yours."
She didn't turn around.
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Her campus was the same—technically.
The buildings still stood.
Students still moved through the halls.
But they moved differently.
Like actors in a play where the script had been burned.
In her literature class, half the students were missing. The professor's hand trembled as he wrote on the board. Outside, the same man from earlier stood at the window, staring in.
Still whispering.
No one noticed.
No one but her.
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At exactly 10:03 AM, it happened.
A girl in the front row gasped.
Then convulsed.
Then screamed—a sharp, unnatural sound that made Aria's skin crawl.
People leapt up. The professor rushed to her.
But the girl's eyes were wrong. Black veins spread across her face like roots. Her mouth foamed. Her spine cracked.
And then she lunged.
Chaos followed.
Desks overturned. Students screamed.
Blood splattered the whiteboard.
Aria didn't move at first. Her mind went still, like water freezing mid-ripple. The girl's body thrashed. Someone was already bitten. Someone else jumped out the window. The professor screamed something—but it was drowned in the noise.
And through it all, Aria watched. Frozen.
Until she heard the flower whisper in her mind:
"Run."
So she did.
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She ran.
Down the stairwell. Across the courtyard. Past the screaming. Past the rising.
Until the world was a blur.
Until her lungs burned.
Until she stopped—
And saw the sky open.
The red crack from before had widened—
And something was looking through.