The fairly empty streets sat austerely in the glimmer of the disappearing sun. Walking down was a young woman. She was relatively beautiful with golden eyes, a feature that seemed to catch the last light of day and hold it like a secret. Her long black hair flowed behind her, and though she wore a simple white blouse and jeans, there was something about her presence that felt out of place—like a song played in the wrong key.
She didn't notice the strange silence of the city at first. No birds chirped, no distant hum of traffic. Just the soft crunch of gravel under her feet and the whisper of the wind through the skeletal trees lining the street. She had been walking for what felt like hours, though she had no idea how long she had been in this place.
Then, the sky changed.
A deep, unnatural shadow stretched across the horizon, swallowing the last light of the sun. The air grew cold, and the wind carried with it a sound—like distant whispers, or maybe the sigh of something ancient waking up. Isono stopped, her breath catching in her throat. Something was wrong.
And then, the world around her cracked.
A blinding light erupted from the ground beneath her feet, and in an instant, she was no longer on the street. No longer in the world she had known. She was falling—through time, through space, through the veil of reality itself. And when the light faded, she found herself standing in a world that should not exist.