The air was too quiet.
It was the kind of silence that hung thick and wrong, like the whole world was holding its breath. Outside her apartment window, the sky was painted in dull bruises of purple and gray, clouds rolling with unseen weight. The streets were nearly empty. No honking. No music. Just the occasional bark of a restless dog and the steady tick of Julyah's wall clock.
11:57 PM.
She stood in the center of the room, surrounded by the last of her packed gear: a field bag, a knife strapped to her thigh, and the old, rusted bracelet that had started it all lying cold and unassuming in her palm.
It was deceptively simple, blackened metal with faint, faded lines etched along its surface. When she'd first found it in that charity bin, she thought it was junk. When it pulsed on her wrist for the first time, she thought it was haunted. Now, with everything she knew, she didn't think.
She decided.
Julyah took a deep breath and slid the bracelet over her wrist one last time.
Nothing happened. At first.
Then the metal heated. Fast.
She gritted her teeth, fingers twitching as a searing burn raced up her arm, not pain exactly, but pressure. A shift. Like reality pulling taut around her bones. She gasped, stumbling back into the wall as the bracelet tightened, the lines glowing faintly, pulsing in sync with her heartbeat.
One beat.
Two.
Three.
The metal dissolved into her skin like smoke.
It was gone.
But in its place, etched across her wrist and curling along the inside of her forearm, was something alive. A glowing flower tattoo, soft pink light dancing like morning sun through stained glass. Its petals shimmered, half-unfurling every few seconds, like it was breathing.
She didn't scream.
She didn't blink.
She knew.
The moment it finished blooming, the world shifted.
A breeze that wasn't there lifted the edge of a tarp near her gear. Her duffel bag unzipped itself. The box of canned goods rattled in place.
And in the center of her mind, clearer than any spoken word, was a menu. An inventory.
Every item she'd ever packed into those containers… every bullet, every canned bean, every book… was there. Organized. Categorized. Accessible by thought.
Her eyes widened.
With a single mental nudge, she willed the knife in her hand to vanish, and it did. Not into thin air, but into that glowing memory-space. Her personal vault.
She summoned it back, and it reappeared in her grip, clean and cold.
Next, she tested weight. Her full field bag, twenty kilos, disappeared with a blink. She danced in place, unburdened. Light. Nothing on her back.
Then she summoned it again and nearly wept with relief when it dropped back into her arms, perfectly intact.
She exhaled, trembling with adrenaline.
No one would ever steal from her again.
She wouldn't have to bury supplies, guard them, hide them in hollow walls.
She was the storage space now.
And her mind was the map.
The flower pulsed once more, brighter than before.
A gift from the old world.
Or maybe a seed planted by the new one.
Whatever it was, she had no more time to wonder.
Because far above her apartment, beyond the city's flickering lights, the first glint of the meteor shower split open the sky—
And the world began to fall.