"I hope you achieve your dream, son."
My father's voice was barely audible over the rhythmic thrum of the ship's engines and the frantic crying of gulls circling the port. He looked older than he had just a year ago—his shoulders slightly more rounded, his eyes carrying the weary weight of a man who had spent forty years trading his soul for a "good" life.
I stepped onto the small bridge to the ship, my backpack feeling like a lead weight. "My dream, huh?" I muttered to myself, the words tasting like ash.
I leaned against the cold metal railing of the deck, watching the shoreline of my home slowly shrink. To everyone else, I was the success story. I'd graduated. I'd secured a scholarship to study abroad. I'd even won this "free trip" in a lucky draw—a literal ticket out of the mundane. But as I looked at the people on the pier, I didn't see a community. I saw husks. I saw people who lived for the two-day "breathing room" of the weekend, only to drown again on Monday.
I had always wondered if there was another way, but reality is a cruel teacher. The 0.01% who escaped the grind were gamblers who got lucky. I wasn't a gambler. I was just... a passenger.
"AAAh—"
The scream shattered my cynicism like a hammer to glass. It was high-pitched, primal—the kind of sound a human makes when their brain simply cannot process what their eyes are seeing. I turned my head toward the bow.
A woman was slumped against a stack of luggage, her finger trembling as she pointed at the sky above the harbour. I followed her gaze, and for a heartbeat, my brain refused to render the image.
It was a dragon. Not a graceful creature from a movie, but a jagged, obsidian nightmare that seemed to swallow the light around it. It didn't fly so much as it warped the air, hovering above the water with a predatory stillness. Behind it, the sky wasn't blue anymore. It was tearing open. A swirling, violet-black vortex—a gate—was hemorrhaging smaller, winged shapes that descended upon the city like a plague of locusts.
Is this it? I thought. A strange, cold calm washed over me. At least it's cooler than dying in an office cubicle.
BOOM.
The explosion wasn't just a sound; it was a physical force that slammed into the side of the ship, nearly tossing me into the churning wake. Heat waves rolled off the land, smelling of scorched stone and something metallic—blood. The captain, driven by a panicked survival instinct, threw the engines into full throttle. The ship groaned, pivoting sharply away from the slaughter.
I watched the port disappear into a shroud of smoke and fire. My family was back there. My father, with his tired eyes and his hopes for my future, was somewhere in that inferno. I felt a sick, hollow pit open in my stomach. I wanted to scream, to jump overboard, to do something, but the sarcasm of the doomed was the only shield I had left.
"And here I thought boats were safer than planes," I whispered, my knuckles white as I gripped the railing.
*******************************************************************************************
Hours passed in a blur of static. The ship's radio was a chorus of dying civilizations. London, New York, Tokyo—the "Gates" were opening everywhere. The world wasn't just being attacked; it was being overwritten.
Despair on a ship is a heavy thing. It smells like unwashed bodies and salt, and it sounds like low, rhythmic sobbing. I sat on the deck, staring at the horizon, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It didn't take long.
The ship didn't just shake; it heaved. A massive, wet shadow rose from the depths, blocking out the sun. I looked over the side and froze. A giant eye, the size of a carriage, was staring directly at me. It was an anatomical impossibility—a nightmare birthed from a whale mating with a crocodile, with the undulating tentacles of an octopus sprouting from its neck.
A tentacle, thick as a redwood tree and covered in hooked suckers, descended.
The world turned into a cacophony of splintering wood and screaming metal. I remember the sensation of falling—the freezing shock of the ocean water hitting my skin—and then, nothingness.