The hallway smelled like bleach and despair. I hated both.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, flickering like dying stars.
My reflection stared back from the glass door, dark hair, dull eyes, skin too pale to look human.
"Three weeks left," the doctor had said.
Three weeks. Funny how time suddenly feels real when you're running out of it.
I shoved my hands into my pockets and started walking. Every step echoed. Too loud. Too empty.
"You gonna mope all the way home?"
The voice was back. Smug. Familiar. Like a roommate I never asked for. "Don't start."
"Oh, I'll start. We're dying, Kael. Might as well enjoy the encore."
I ignored it. Outside, the air was cold, too clean, too sharp. I lit a cigarette I didn't remember buying. Smoke curled upward, grey against the colorless sky.
That's when I saw it.
A crack. Floating in midair. Thin, trembling, impossible. It pulsed, like the world itself was trying to breathe through the wound.
"See that? Told you the end was near."
The voice wasn't mocking anymore. It sounded… reverent?
Wind howled through the fissure.
A soundless whisper.
A pull, insistent, impossible to ignore.
My chest tightened.
My vision blurred.
And for one heartbeat,
I thought I was standing at the edge.
staring into the precipice of my own end.