Rejection

Elior's scream tore through the smoke. His throat burned, but he didn't stop. His body shook. The ground beneath him was hot, broken. His knees were scraped.

The scream faded into rough sobs. His chest heaved. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, but it didn't help. Everything around him was ash, flame, and red light still fading into darkness. The roof was gone. The rain outside had started to come in, hissing where it hit the burning debris.

He turned his head and saw what was left of the others. He wished he hadn't.

They were gone. His only family. The people who made this place feel like home. All gone because of him.

He covered his face with both hands, leaned forward, and cried into the floor.

The sound didn't carry far. The flames were dying out, but the heat still lingered. The rain picked up. A gust of wind blew through the broken room, and something shifted in the air.

Elior felt it first in his skin. A pressure. Like the world was tightening.

The air in front of him rippled. A single, thin line appeared - sharp and vertical - right in the middle of the room, floating in the air like someone had sliced reality with a knife.

At first, it was no wider than a thread. Then it started to stretch. Slowly, the line pulled apart, forming a narrow gap. The inside was pitch black. There were no shapes, no depth, no sound. Just darkness. Like the world ended there.

Elior tried to step back, but his body didn't move. Not even a finger. He couldn't turn his head. Couldn't speak. Could only breathe, and even that felt strange - too quiet, too light.

The gap opened wider, the edges pulling apart like torn fabric. The darkness inside stayed the same. Still, empty, cold-looking.

It didn't pull in the chairs. It didn't drag in the broken glass or the smoke or the ash still swirling from the explosion. Nothing around it moved.

Only Elior.

His feet lifted from the ground. First just a few centimeters. Then more. His arms stayed at his sides. He couldn't struggle. His body floated straight toward the opening, slow and steady like being carried by something he couldn't see.

There was no noise. No wind. Just the quiet hum of nothing.

He passed through the edge of the rip.

No one was left to see what happened. No one in the town knew what caused the surge that had knocked out every streetlight, fried every power line, and silenced every screen.

No one, except the boy who disappeared.