The first thing Aran felt was cold.
Not the icy kind that bit into your skin, but the still, heavy chill of nothingness—a void that hummed with silence and a single ticking sound, distant but clear. His fingers twitched against cracked stone, his back pressed into a frozen floor. His eyes fluttered open, and the sky above him was painted in hues of dusk—deep purples and reds, not of a sunset, but something dying.
Something ending.
He sat up, his breath hitching as pain lanced through his skull. Images flickered in his mind: a train screeching off its tracks, his phone clutched in his hand, a text message unsent. And then, nothing. Black. Oblivion.
Now—this.
Aran was on the outskirts of a city in ruin. Tall towers leaned against one another like broken bones, their glass eyes shattered, the wind weaving through them like a whispering ghost. A massive digital screen, half-lit and flickering, pulsed one message:
7 DAYS REMAIN.
"What... is this place?" Aran whispered, staggering to his feet.
A voice echoed in his mind, soft and feminine.
"You have been given another chance."
He whipped around. No one.
"The world you now inhabit ends in seven days. You, Aran, are the variable. The anomaly. Save it, or fall with it."
His fists clenched. "Who are you? Show yourself!"
Silence. Then, a single light flared from the sky like a falling star. It streaked toward the center of the city, crashing with a deep tremor that rippled through the cracked ground.
His feet moved before he could think. His instincts screamed that this was the start.
The Stranger in the Alley
An hour later, Aran navigated the broken streets, avoiding collapsed highways and twisted metal. He passed lifeless bodies—some fully intact, others… scorched, with their shadows burned into the wall behind them. It was clear this world had already known apocalypse.
He turned a corner and froze.
A girl stood before him, back to the wall, three masked figures cornering her with jagged blades in hand. Their skin was cracked and blackened, glowing faintly beneath like molten rock.
"Stay away!" the girl shouted, wielding a metal pipe.
Without thinking, Aran rushed forward. The pipe she held swung wildly, but it was clear she had no combat experience. The monsters lunged—
And Aran moved.
He didn't know how.
A surge of power exploded through his legs as he sprinted. He tackled the first creature, grabbing the rusted blade from its clawed hand and slashing upward in one clean.