Chapter 30: The Fractured Horizon
The stars above them still twisted unnaturally, their shimmering constellations reshaping into unfamiliar patterns. It was as if the sky itself was being rewritten—one piece at a time.
Kai's breath was steady, but his mind raced. The underground facility had been hiding something—not just knowledge of the Moon's destruction, but the existence of beings beyond human understanding.
And one of them had just awakened.
The creature they had barely escaped from was unlike anything he had faced before. It had slipped through reality, bending the very fabric of time and space. If more of them were out there—
Kai exhaled sharply. No. Can't think like that now.
They had to focus on surviving.
Juno was the first to speak.
"Okay, tell me we're not just gonna stand here and admire the sky while that thing crawls its way back up here."
Reyes had already pulled out her handheld scanner. The device flickered, its readings erratic. "No life signs… but that doesn't mean anything. That thing wasn't alive in a way we understand."
Kai turned back to the facility entrance. The steel doors remained sealed. There was no movement. No sound.
But the air felt wrong.
"We need to put distance between us and this place," he said. "Now."
Juno didn't argue. "Agreed."
They set off across the ruins, moving fast. The land stretched out before them, an endless expanse of twisted highways and broken cities swallowed by time.
Each step felt heavier.
It wasn't just exhaustion—there was something lingering in the air. A pressure. A presence.
Kai clenched his fists. We're being watched.
By dawn, they reached the outskirts of an abandoned metropolis. The skeletal remains of skyscrapers loomed overhead, their glass windows shattered long ago. What had once been streets were now rivers of debris, long-consumed by nature.
But something was off.
There were no signs of life.
No animals. No scavengers. Not even the distant sound of the wind.
It was silent.
Too silent.
Juno frowned. "Okay, I don't like this."
Kai agreed. Even in the worst ruins, there was always something—the rustling of wind, the distant caw of a bird, the scurrying of rats.
But here?
Nothing.
Reyes' grip tightened around her weapon. "This place isn't abandoned."
Kai glanced at her. "What do you mean?"
She pointed to the ground.
The dust on the streets was undisturbed.
No footprints. No tracks. No signs that anything had moved through here in years.
Yet, the buildings showed signs of recent collapse. Ruins that should have aged over decades looked freshly destroyed.
It was as if the city was frozen in time.
And that's when Kai realized—
It wasn't just silent. Time here wasn't moving at all.
Reyes took out a fragment scanner, her fingers moving swiftly over the controls. The device hummed as it analyzed the air.
Then, suddenly—
The screen glitched.
Kai stepped closer. "What's wrong?"
Reyes' face darkened. "This can't be right."
Juno peeked over her shoulder. "Elaborate, please."
Reyes turned the scanner toward one of the buildings. The readings flickered, shifting between wildly different results.
"According to this, these buildings collapsed three minutes ago."
Kai's stomach dropped.
Juno took a slow step back. "But… we saw them like this from miles away."
Reyes' voice was tight. "Exactly."
Kai turned, scanning the cityscape. Everything looked normal at first glance—if one could call a ruin normal. But now that he focused, he noticed subtle inconsistencies. Cracks in the pavement that changed when he wasn't looking. Windows that appeared shattered one moment and whole the next.
They weren't just in a dead city.
They were in a loop.
A place where time had fractured—trapped between past and present, replaying itself endlessly.
Kai's pulse quickened. "We need to move. Now."
Reyes nodded. "Agreed. The longer we stay here, the more—"
A whisper.
It came from the alleyway ahead.
Kai's muscles tensed as he turned toward the sound.
At first, there was nothing.
Then—
A figure stepped out from the shadows.
A man.
He looked normal—but only at a glance. His clothes were pristine, untouched by the apocalypse. His hair was neatly combed, his face clean.
Too clean.
Kai's grip tightened on his sword. "Who are you?"
The man smiled.
His lips moved, but the words that came out were delayed, like an old recording catching up to itself.
"You… shouldn't… be here."
Juno's finger twitched on the trigger. "Oh, hell no—"
Then the man glitched.
His body flickered, splitting into multiple versions of himself before snapping back into place. His eyes darkened, shifting from human to something else entirely.
The whispering grew louder.
And suddenly—
More figures emerged.
Dozens of them.
Men, women, children—faces that belonged to a time before the catastrophe. But they were wrong. Their movements were fragmented, their eyes hollow.
They were ghosts of the past. Echoes of a world that no longer existed.
And they were all staring at Kai and his team.
The whispers turned into distorted voices, overlapping each other in an eerie symphony.
"You shouldn't be here."
"You shouldn't be here."
Kai's heartbeat pounded in his ears. The figures weren't attacking. Not yet.
But the longer they stood here, the more real the ghosts became.
Juno's voice was tight. "Kai. Please tell me you have a plan."
Kai's mind raced. This wasn't a normal enemy. They couldn't fight time itself.
But maybe…
They could break the cycle.
He closed his eyes, reaching deep into his fragment's power.
If this place was trapped in time, then he could disrupt it.
Focusing all his energy, Kai activated his ability—not to slow or rewind, but to force time to move forward.
A pulse erupted from him, spreading outward like a shockwave.
The city trembled.
The echoes of the past twitched, their forms distorting. The whispers turned to screams—
And then, one by one, they began to vanish.
The frozen air shifted.
The sky above stabilized.
And the world around them moved forward again.
Silence fell.
The city was just a ruin once more. No whispers. No ghosts.
Juno let out a shaky breath. "That was the worst thing I've ever seen."
Reyes holstered her weapon. "Seconded."
Kai wiped sweat from his brow. He could still feel the remnants of that unnatural presence lingering, but for now, they were safe.
But then—
A final whisper.
Soft. Faint.
Yet chilling.
Kai turned, his heart pounding.
One last figure stood in the distance.
A man, watching them.
But unlike the others…
This one didn't vanish.
Instead, he simply raised a hand—
And pointed to the sky.
Kai followed his gaze.
Above them, the fractured stars pulsed.
And far beyond the horizon—
A second Moon was forming.
A massive, glowing sphere, slowly reconstructing itself from scattered fragments.
And it was alive.
Kai's breath caught in his throat.
The destruction of the Moon had been just the beginning.
Something far worse was coming.
And it had already begun.