The dark, distorted shadow pressed closer,
its outline bending and unbending like a figure carved from liquid glass.
Then the rupture split wider, soundlessly—
a silent tearing motion that cut straight through the sky.
The shadow vanished, swallowed back by the glare, but something else surged outward in its place:
a wave of colorless light, folding and refolding like origami made of atmosphere. It raced downward toward the city in a sheet of warped reality.
When it hit—
—everything shifted.
The plaza tiles rippled as though they had become liquid for an instant. Entire buildings flickered between their real shape and distorted reflections, each frame slightly misaligned, like the world had been shaken out of place.
A long crack tore through the ground, zigzagging directly across the plaza. Its edges glowed faintly with the same pale energy that had exploded from the sky. The light inside the crack wasn't static; it shimmered, rippled, and pulsed like a heartbeat.
Someone gasped, "The ground—it's… glowing—"
Before they could finish, the crack widened.
A sudden vacuum-like suction pulled toward it, dragging loose objects—bags, paper, a dropped boot—straight into the widening gap. The tiles peeled upward as if being lifted by invisible hands, then twisted and dissolved into that pulsing light.
A new tear formed inside the crack—
a smooth oval of trembling brightness, hovering just a few inches above the broken pavement.
A portal.
The air vibrated around it, a low hum building into a droning resonance that rattled the metal supports of the nearest buildings.
Across the city, more ruptures appeared—
sharp lines of light slicing open walls, blooming like vertical wounds in the air. One tore open on the side of a tower, spilling dimensional distortion across its structure until windows melted into one another like wet paint.
Another erupted inside a closed transit station—its doors bulging outward as waves of pale energy poured into the streets.
A third manifested above the street like a suspended whirlpool of light, rotating in place with a slow, ominous elegance.
People screamed and ducked as one portal burst open right above them, raining down sparkling particles that clung to skin like cold dust. The particles vibrated, humming faintly, leaving trails of pale afterglow when brushed away.
The energy spreading through the city made the air feel heavy—dense—
as if breathing required effort, like inhaling through water.
Distantly, over the shaking rooftops, an explosion of white light signaled another rupture tearing open in a neighboring district.
And then another.
And another.
All across Pangia, cities on every horizon lit up with vertical streaks of glare.
Sky-rips cracked overhead.
Ground fissures glowed like veins of living light.
Buildings buckled under waves of warped reality.
The entire world was being punctured—
hundreds, thousands of times over—
by expanding, trembling portals that hummed with alien energy.
One portal near the plaza quivered violently, its glow sharpening into a thin, blade-like shimmer.
The hum deepened—
—and something pressed against the inside of it.
A shape.
Tall.
Wrongly jointed.
Its edges flickered as if struggling to remain coherent in this world.
The surface of the portal bulged outward with a wet, stretching sound, like skin pulled too tightly.
The shape pushed again—
bending the light outward—
its arm, or what resembled one, sliding forward through the trembling membrane.
A clawed hand broke through.
Then another.
The creature dragged itself out of the portal, its body shifting between solid and translucent shapes, as though deciding which form belonged here.
It stepped onto the broken pavement—
its feet cracking tiles with each slow movement.
Behind it, inside the portal's shimmering depths, more silhouettes moved, crowding toward the threshold.
The hum grew louder.
Deeper.
Hungrier.
The monsters were coming through.
And the energy leaking with them spread outward in a slow, creeping wave, bending gravity, warping time, and making the very air throb like a living thing—
—as another portal cracked open only a few steps away.