Ethan Cole began his mornings the same way he ended them—quietly, with a cup of weak coffee and a thought he could never quite finish.
The radiator in his apartment hissed and popped like it resented being awake, which made two of them. The sun hadn't risen yet, just flirted with the edge of the skyline like it wasn't sure it was worth showing up today. A thin line of gray light pressed through his window, cutting across the floor like a boundary between two worlds: the life he lived, and the one he kept waiting to begin.
He scratched his beard absently, barefoot on cold linoleum, flipping through a file folder of client reports. Sleep tugged at his brain like an undertow. He ignored it. Paperwork first. Always. That was the job.
Most days, Ethan worked twelve hours, sometimes fourteen. A state social services counselor for the city of Linwood, he specialized in cases no one wanted: repeat offenders, broken homes, runaways, and the permanently invisible. He didn't carry a badge or a gun, but his work took him to places that made both seem like good ideas.
He didn't love the job.
But he loved the people.
That was the difference.
He dressed in layers, the kind that could take him from a client meeting to a homeless shelter without needing to change. His coat had more patches than fabric. His boots were reliable, scuffed, and dry—enough for the slush that pooled along Linwood's crumbling sidewalks. He zipped up and headed out.
The streets were wet with a gray mist that smelled like car exhaust and fried food. Shopkeepers unrolled metal grates. Buses hissed and groaned as they pulled away from stops. A stray dog darted across a crosswalk like it had somewhere important to be.
Ethan walked five blocks to a cafe run by a woman named Karima, who brewed coffee strong enough to wake the dead and sweet enough to make them stay. She handed him a cup without speaking. He nodded in thanks.
Back outside, he sipped it slowly, watching the city stretch its limbs. Linwood was aging. It creaked, cracked, sagged in places. But it still breathed. And if you were patient, you could hear its heartbeat under the noise.
That's what Ethan listened for.
His first appointment was in a community shelter called The Branch, tucked behind an old church and decorated with fading murals of birds in flight. The staff was good, though overworked. Ethan met with a teenage girl named Nova, who hadn't spoken much since she was found sleeping in a school stairwell. Today, she said three words: "I'm still here."
He wrote them down in his notebook like they were gold.
Later came a visit to a re-entry housing unit, where a man named Darryl asked Ethan to help him get his driver's license back. Then a middle school where a boy with a fractured wrist refused to name the person who hit him. Then a voicemail from a young mother named Alina who'd missed her second court date.
By the time the sun set, Ethan had stopped checking his phone. He just moved from place to place, the way blood moves through veins—quiet, unnoticed, keeping the body alive.
The rain began at dusk. A fine mist at first, then heavier. The city dimmed. Headlights smeared across wet asphalt. Storefronts glowed like ghosts.
Ethan's coat clung to his shoulders by the time he left his last stop: a halfway house with flickering lights and a staff reduced to two. He'd walked halfway to the bus stop before realizing he hadn't eaten.
He ducked under the overhang of a corner store, trying to shield his folder from the rain. His stomach growled. Inside, the light buzzed. Cheap sandwiches. Overpriced soda. A tired clerk behind glass.
But something else cut through the noise.
A voice. Then another. Low, sharp. Arguing.
He turned, following the sound down the side of the store. An alley, dimly lit, half-choked with trash bags. At the far end, three figures surrounded a fourth—pressed against the wall, hood soaked, face tilted down.
Ethan hesitated.
It wasn't his job.
It wasn't safe.
He stepped forward anyway.
He cleared his throat. "Hey."
All four heads turned. The one against the wall flinched.
The tallest of the three—maybe seventeen, face hidden behind a red scarf—stepped forward. "You lost?"
"No," Ethan said, calm but firm. "You're not from this block."
"We didn't ask for a tour guide."
"Then walk away."
The tension snapped tight, invisible wires between bodies. One of them laughed. Another shifted, hand twitching near his waistband. Too practiced. Too deliberate.
Gun.
Ethan raised his hands slowly. "No one wants trouble."
"You already brought it, old man."
"I'm just asking you to leave him alone."
"He owes us."
"He'll pay some other way."
The one with the gun moved first.
The sound was louder than expected. A single crack of thunder in a metal canyon.
Ethan didn't feel the pain at first. Just pressure. Heat. Then a sudden, awful clarity.
He stumbled.
The folder slipped from his hand and scattered on the wet ground—names, dates, progress notes smeared in rain.
He fell.
He hit the pavement and didn't get back up.
Above him, the city flickered—light bleeding into shadow, windows blinking one by one. He could hear footsteps running. Then silence.
Rain tapped against his face.
He couldn't move.
But he could still think.
Did I do enough?
He expected darkness.
Instead, he found light.
Not bright. Not blinding.
Just—warm.
He stood. Or floated. Or existed in a way he couldn't define.
All around him: nothing. But not the void. Something softer. Like the pause between heartbeats.
He breathed, though there was no air. He moved, though there was no space.
Was this death?
It didn't feel like an end.
It felt like a question.
A presence—not a voice, not a form, but a presence—spoke to him.
Or perhaps it was just his own thoughts, finally echoing back.
"You gave everything," it said.
"I didn't give enough," he answered.
"You died for a stranger."
"I lived for them too."
"And now?"
"I don't want it to be over."
"Then it won't be."
The light around him shimmered.
A pulse—slow, steady. Like a heartbeat.
He felt it in his chest, though his body had no shape.
And suddenly, from that beat, came a sound.
A whisper.
No words, just intention.
And then—a spark.
Small. Fragile. Real.
It floated in front of him, golden and pulsing.
He reached out, not with fingers, but with something deeper.
The spark flickered.
Then flared.
All at once, the nothing around him twisted.
Shapes emerged.
Color.
Gravity.
A sky, vast and violet, curved into being above him. Ground unfurled beneath his feet—soft, warm, rich with unseen potential.
He gasped.
A world.
His world.
He didn't imagine it.
He manifested it.
Not by will.
But by being.
He fell to his knees in the soil and wept.
Not out of sorrow.
But wonder.
From death, he had become something else. Not a god. Not quite.
But a beginning.
A spark.
A first word.
A root note in a song yet to be sung.
He stood slowly.
Above him, stars flickered—newborn and unburdened. Beneath him, the soil pulsed with energy. In the distance, a mountain range split open like a smile.
He looked at his hands. They glowed faintly.
"I'm not done," he said aloud.
The wind answered, carrying the sound of his voice like scripture.
No one heard him.
Yet.
But they would.
He had not been chosen.
He had chosen himself.
And from that choice, the Verse was born.