At eight in the morning, New York City woke up, bleary-eyed and full of sorrow for a thousand wrong choices. The air was sour and the food carts' old oil blended with the smell of burnt coffee and car exhaust. In the cool morning light, steam ascended from manholes like the city's own breath, thick and heavy. As folks walked by like caffeine-starved shells of humans, taxis honked their morning symphony.
A businessman in a wrinkled suit held his phone like it was his last chance. His knuckles were white on the screen. College students walked slowly down the walkways with heavy loads on their backs. Their attire from the day before told stories they would rather forget. The city's heart pounded through steel and concrete, marking the point where millions of people came together before they spread out into the gray sprawl.
I weaved through the student flood in Washington Square Park, shifting my bag as I dodged the walking dead. Freshmen stumbled toward overpriced coffee carts with the desperation of the truly addicted. The arch loomed ahead, framing the sky in a perfect contradiction of permanence and change. It was the eternal story of New York, a city that demanded attention and pressed into every available space as if it feared being forgotten.
Beyond the smog-choked horizon, the moon waited.
It was hidden and patient. I had always felt its presence as something ancient, older than nations and older than the gods themselves. It was a silent guardian that had witnessed empires rise and fall while students stressed about exams that would matter for maybe five years. Speaking of which, my impending torture session with Professor Langley was about to begin.
My phone buzzed, cutting through my cosmic contemplations.
Jake: Yo, Nate, what class you got this semester?
I smirked, already knowing his reaction. Jake had survived exactly one Langley lecture before switching his major to something less abrasive.
Me: Astrophysics with Langley.
Three dots appeared instantly on the screen.
Jake: Damn, bro. My condolences.
I stifled a laugh, dodging an e-scooter rider who had declared a personal war on the laws of traffic. Jake was not wrong about Langley. The professor could turn the elegant mechanics of exoplanets into a two-hour rant about why seventeenth-century scholars were idiots.
Jake: You bringing a pillow?
Me: Nah, but I might need a coffin by the time he is done.
Jake: RIP to your GPA if you fall asleep again. Want to grab lunch after? Assuming you survive.
Me: If I am still conscious, sure. See you at noon. Pray for me.
I pocketed my phone and climbed the Silver Center steps. Warm air hit me, saturated with the scent of cheap coffee and academic stress. Students clustered everywhere, debating whether attendance was really necessary or questioning their life choices. Someone was currently murdering a jazz standard at the lobby piano. The melody limped along, occasionally hitting the right notes by pure accident.
I scanned the crowd out of habit and found Aurora Reyes. She leaned against a pillar near the elevators, scrolling through her phone. Her deep blue eyes flicked up as I approached, catching the morning light streaming through the tall windows.
"Ready for another semester of suffering?" She arched an eyebrow. Aurora had a way of making everything sound like a challenge. It likely came from years of kendo training, she was always ready for the next strike.
"As ready as I can be," I replied.
She tucked a strand of rose-gold hair behind her ear, a gesture I had seen countless times but never grew tired of watching. "Langley is in a mood today. I heard him ranting to some poor TA about how modern scientists no longer respect the art of discovery."
"Let me guess. We are all slaves to technology who have forgotten the beauty of pure observation?"
"Close. He said telescopes are making us lazy because the Hubble is essentially cheating." She rolled her eyes. "Come on. Let's get seats before the carnage begins."
We entered the lecture hall. Dull conversation filled the space as students filed in, each carrying their own blend of anxiety and resignation. The theater-style seating stretched down toward the podium where Langley would soon begin his assault. I dropped my bag near the middle, close enough to see the board but far enough to avoid becoming a target for chalk projectiles. Aurora settled beside me, pulling out her notebook with the efficiency of a seasoned survivor.
Outside, the city rumbled on, oblivious to cosmic mysteries. I should have been excited for the final semester before graduation, but something felt off. It was like standing at the edge of an invisible cliff, sensing the drop without seeing the ledge. The feeling had been growing for weeks, a persistent itch between my shoulder blades.
My gaze drifted to the windows. Somewhere up there, invisible in the daylight, the moon followed its ancient path. I could almost picture it. It was patient and watchful. The universe was vast and unknowable, and every answer we found only revealed ten new questions.
A flicker of light filled my vision. I blinked hard, but the light remained.
A screen, translucent and glowing, hovered in the air directly in front of me. Blue text floated like an augmented reality display, except I was wearing no gear.
[Moonfall Has Begun. Your Class Has Been Assigned. May Luna's blessings be upon you.]
My pulse spiked. The words did not fade. Around me, students shifted nervously. Some rubbed their eyes while others whispered urgently, gesturing at the empty air. A girl two rows down stared straight ahead, her mouth slightly open in a silent gasp.
The screen flickered and changed.
[Main Class: Astral Equationist (★★★★★)]
Five stars glittered next to the title like a cosmic achievement badge. My brain catalogued the detail, but the rest of me struggled to process the impossible. Reality was being coded and quantified.
A bloodcurdling scream tore through the room.
It was raw and primal. It was the kind of sound humans were not meant to make. My head snapped toward the noise. A girl in the front row convulsed violently, her spine arching at an impossible angle that should have snapped her bones. Her textbook tumbled to the floor, its pages fluttering like dying birds.
She collapsed between the seats. Her limbs twitched spasmodically as her skin began to change. It blanched to a porcelain white that looked luminous under the fluorescent lights. Cracks spread across her face like fine china dropped on concrete. Dark, ink-like veins spread beneath the surface, pulsing and racing along her neck.
Professor Langley stopped mid-sentence, his chalk hovering inches from the blackboard.
Then, her eyes snapped open.
They glowed silver. It was not a poetic silver, it was an actual, pulsing light where her irises should have been. Looking into those inhuman eyes, I understood with a cold, terrifying clarity. Whatever looked back at us was no longer a student.
The screaming erupted like a dam bursting. Reality fractured as more bodies hit the floor, their skin cracking and their eyes igniting with that same lunar fire.
The era of humanity had ended in under sixty seconds.