Global – 1:03 AM UTC
They called it the Long Silence.
The six hours when the world held its breath.
When one hundred million people began to vanish — not all at once, not with fire or thunder, but with a whisper and a light no one could measure.
The wormholes — if they could be called that — didn't rip open the sky or tear through buildings. They flickered into existence like an afterimage, like the moment between blink and vision. Apparitions of space, brief as breath. Gone before the wind could notice.
New York City – Subway
A college student stared at her reflection in the dark window of a train. Her breath fogged the glass, though the air was too warm. A tremor ran through her chest — not pain, not fear, just wrongness.
She turned to her friend — and vanished.
A shimmer. A flicker in space. And then nothing but her scarf fluttering to the ground.
Tokyo – Shibuya Crossing
The crowd parted around a street performer who levitated above his mat, wrapped in silence. Then the silence folded inward. His body blurred for a heartbeat.
A shimmer of light — coiled, narrow, vanishing before anyone could scream.
His saxophone dropped to the pavement.
A girl watching whispered, "He went home." But she didn't know why.
Mumbai – Rooftop Garden
A retired soldier meditated beneath a cloth canopy, incense curling in the air. His breath slowed. Stopped.
Then the shimmer. A pulse of translucent light.
The nurse tending nearby gasped. Where the man had sat, only folded cloth remained. The incense still burned.
Nairobi – Market Square
A mother screamed for her son, who had been holding her hand one second, and gone the next. The fruit he carried spilled across the dirt.
Bystanders froze. No wind. No sound. Just stillness.
And a faint trace of something sweet in the air.
Siberia – Remote Observatory
An old astrophysicist stared into his monitor. Patterns formed — not data, not code, but shapes. Ancient. Familiar.
He smiled. Spoke a word no one alive had heard before.
The air behind him shimmered, folded. He stood. Faced it.
And disappeared.
Bristol – England
Ishaan walked down a quiet path behind the engineering wing, fingers flicking through the drone footage on his phone. Streetlights buzzed faintly.
Notifications bloomed across his screen:
"Spike in missing persons."
"Glitch or mass panic?"
"Global alerts triggered."
He stopped walking. The last drone frame glitched.
A figure stood in the corner. Blurred. Human. Familiar.
He tapped. Rewound. Played it again.
Gone.
He stared at the screen, heart slowly accelerating.
"I think I saw... me."
The streetlights around him dimmed. The sky seemed to stretch for a moment.
And behind his eyes, color shimmered.
Far above, beyond space and memory, the door between worlds had opened — if only for a moment. And those who heard its call had already begun to cross.