Shattered Veil

Cipher Voss stood in the middle of the street, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps. The city around him was silent. Not the quiet of a sleeping town, nor the eerie hush before a storm—this was something else. A void. A space where sound should exist but simply didn't.

He turned slowly, his eyes scanning the buildings, the empty roads, the streetlights flickering in and out of existence as if they, too, were unsure whether they belonged here. His fingers clenched into fists. Only minutes ago, this street had been alive with movement, with people, with the comforting hum of a world going about its routine. Now, it was just... gone.

Cipher reached for his phone, his fingers trembling as he unlocked the screen. No signal. No notifications. No timestamps. The digital clock simply read: 00:00. It didn't change.

"This isn't possible," he muttered, his voice swallowed by the oppressive silence.

He took a step forward, the sound of his boot against the pavement oddly muted. He tried again—lifting his foot higher and stomping it down. The impact barely made a sound, as if the world itself refused to acknowledge his presence.

Then he saw it.

A distortion in the air, hovering just beyond the nearest intersection. It shimmered and twisted like a mirage, bending the light around it in unnatural ways. His breath caught in his throat. He had seen something like this before. Not in reality, but in fleeting moments of dreams he could never fully remember upon waking.

As he took a cautious step forward, the distortion pulsed, expanding outward in jagged waves before snapping back into itself. And then, for the briefest second, he saw movement within it. A figure—tall, thin, humanoid—but wrong. Its proportions were stretched, its head tilting at an angle too sharp to be natural. And its eyes…

Cipher staggered back as pain lanced through his skull. A searing white-hot agony, as if something was tearing through his mind, unraveling memories he hadn't yet lived. He clenched his jaw, forcing himself to remain standing, to fight against the overwhelming sensation that he was coming apart at the seams.

The distortion pulsed again, and the figure stepped forward. Cipher had only a split second to react before the entire world around him flickered—

And reset.

Suddenly, the noise of the city returned. Cars rushed past. Pedestrians moved along the sidewalks, engaged in conversation. The streetlights shone steadily. The world had resumed as if nothing had happened.

Cipher was still standing in the middle of the street, but now he was surrounded by people who didn't seem to notice him. A man brushed past him, muttering something under his breath. A woman adjusted her bag strap, glancing at her phone as she walked by.

Cipher's breathing was ragged. His heart pounded against his ribs. He turned sharply, looking back toward the intersection where the distortion had been.

Nothing.

No shimmering air. No twisted figure. No evidence that anything had changed at all.

But Cipher knew better. His head still ached, his vision still swam with the remnants of something he couldn't explain. He reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone once more.

The screen flickered, glitching for a fraction of a second before stabilizing. And then he saw it.

The time had moved forward exactly one minute.

Cipher swallowed hard. Whatever had happened, whatever he had seen—it wasn't just in his head.

Something had rewritten reality.

And he was the only one who knew.