The morning began like any other in New York City too fast and too loud.
Leon Caelum Rivera rolled over in his cramped Bronx apartment, silencing the third alarm with a practiced slap. The faded digital clock read 7:48 AM, which meant he was already thirteen minutes behind. Again.
He groaned, pulling himself out of the warm cocoon of blankets. Steam hissed from the radiator, and the hallway buzzed faintly from his neighbor's morning salsa playlist. This was the rhythm of the city, a constant, low hum of life.
In the mirror, Leon looked tired. He always looked tired. Twenty-one years old, caramel-brown skin, sharp eyes that always seemed to be watching the world instead of living in it. He kept his thick hair tied up in a short bun, clean fade along the sides. The edges of his jaw held the shadows of a beard that never fully committed.
He brushed his teeth, tossed on his courier uniform dark jacket, high boots, messenger bag slung over his shoulder. His phone buzzed with three missed texts from Julian.
Julian: "Bro. Where you at? Dispatcher is on a warpath."
Julian: "C'mon. You're gonna make us both look bad."
Julian: "Get your on the 4 train. Now."
Leon smirked. Some things never changed.
He slung on his headphones, grabbed his half-eaten protein bar, and jogged down four flights of stairs into the New York morning.
Trash trucks. Shouting vendors. Horns from cabs. He passed Mrs. Elkins watering her plants with recycled soda bottles. She gave him a smile, same as every morning.
"Running late, sweetheart?" she asked.
"When am I not?" he called back.
He liked this part of the day. The sprint between chaos and routine. Where you could almost pretend you had control.
The sidewalk was slick from last night's rain. Leon ducked into the bodega near the station. The owner, a middle-aged man named Samir, tossed him a bottle of cold brew from the fridge.
"You still owe me from Tuesday," Samir said, grinning.
Leon pointed to his head. "It's all up here. Credit is faith."
"You keep spending faith like it's free."
Outside, the station entrance loomed dirty tiles, flickering lights, and the usual ocean of commuters streaming downward. Leon tapped in with his MetroCard and jogged for the downtown platform.
The train was packed. Wall-to-wall people, shoulder to shoulder. Leon squeezed in next to a college kid asleep against the door and an old man muttering into a cracked flip phone.
He stared at his reflection in the glass. His mind drifted. To the job. The deliveries. The creeping feeling that he was living a version of someone else's life like this wasn't what he was supposed to be doing.
There was always something in him. A restlessness. A pull.
Today, it hummed louder than usual.
He looked around. The lights flickered once. Then again.
No one reacted.
Then, all at once, everything *stopped*.
The train froze mid-motion. The sounds vanished. Even the sway of the rail car stilled. Leon looked around in panic.
A shimmer passed through the windows. Like heat off asphalt, but vertical, spiraling.
Then: a crack.
Not in glass, but in *reality*.
A seam opened, just beyond his reflection. Soft at first, like stretching skin. Then it tore.
Light spilled in, colorless and infinite.
Leon didn't scream.
He reached forward.
And the world pulled him in.
Time slowed.
In those stretched final seconds, memories surged, uninvited and vivid.
His mother's voice, raspy with fatigue, telling him to take care of himself before her last shift at the hospital.
Julian, punching his shoulder in the rain after they'd failed a delivery, laughing like it didn't matter.
That one girl, Mira, who used to sketch constellations on his arm with a pen during late-night coffee runs.
All of it flashed through him in fragments, not as memories, but as *roots*, trying to hold him in place.
But the pull was stronger.
Around him, the frozen train and passengers blurred like melted wax. He watched the world fray at the edges. The air shimmered, not with light, but with *possibility*. Like the universe itself had taken a breath, and was about to exhale him somewhere else.
His phone screen cracked in his pocket, the cold brew burst in his bag, and the windows shattered inward without sound.
He was yanked forward.
Not falling, not flying. Just *unmade*. His body dissolved into data, memory, thought, and something else, something ancient.
The tunnel became stars.
Then silence.
And then,
Impact.
He woke not to pain, but to a sensation of density. Like every atom had been rewritten. He was lying on something hard. Cold. Not concrete. Not metal. Something…else.
Above him, alien constellations glittered. The sky was deeper than it had ever been. Colors he didn't have names for bled into one another.
He gasped.
Air filled his lungs like it was new. Electric. Alive.
Then a voice. Distant, echoing, calm.
"He's stabilized."
And just like that, the Earth was behind him.
His story had begun.
Blurs of motion shifted around him.
He blinked slowly, adjusting to the strange gravity pressing down on him. Shapes moved through the darkness, humanoid, but clad in armor that shimmered like molten crystal. One of them knelt beside him.
"Vitals nominal," said a voice, feminine, sharp, and focused.
Leon turned his head slightly. The figure removed their helmet.
A girl. No, something more than a girl. Her eyes glowed faintly with streaks of indigo. Her hair floated slightly, as if underwater. She looked young, but her presence said otherwise.
"I'm Echo," she said plainly. "You're not supposed to be here."
Leon coughed. "Thanks for the welcome."
Another figure stepped forward taller, bulkier, silent. The insignia on his chestplate bore a crest he didn't recognize: twin rings surrounding a blade of light.
"Crimson Aegis Corps," Echo continued. "Tenth Division. We're soldiers. You landed in the wrong drop zone, stranger."
Leon tried to sit up, wincing.
"Leon," he muttered.
Echo raised an eyebrow. "That your name?"
"Yeah."
She studied him for a long moment. "Well, Leon... wherever you're from, you've just stepped into something a lot bigger than you."
The wind howled across the barren ridgeline. Behind them, a ruined structure loomed under the starlight, burned out, still steaming. Something had happened here. A battle?
Echo looked back at her squad, then at Leon again.
"Bring him to Fort Veridion," she ordered. "He's coming with us."
As they lifted him, Leon's vision blurred, but not before he caught one last glimpse of the sky.
It wasn't just different.
It was alive.