The shift was like riding a rollercoaster with no safe restraints.
Earth had been moved by the System to a new place in System Space.
One heartbeat he sat in a swaying car under a wide fall sky. The next, the world yanked sideways.
The Ferris wheel lurched. The whole frame dropped in a sudden jolt, metal screaming through its joints. Elias's stomach flipped. The car swung hard, slamming his shoulder into the rail. Bolts groaned. A shout broke from somewhere below, thin under the grinding roar.
The county held around fifteen thousand people, small place, small fair. Maybe a few hundred scattered across the grounds this early. The tractor pull sat hours away, the sun still up, the real crush of the crowd yet to arrive.
Across the fair, screens went dark in the same breath. Game stalls blinked out, phones died in shaking hands, speakers cut mid-song. Lights along the paths guttered. The air itself felt heavier, as if something pressed in from all sides. Later, people would call it Ki, the new energy running through everything. In that first instant, it just felt like the world's wiring changed.
The Ferris wheel shuddered again.
The axle cried out. Supports strained on one side. The horizon slid across his vision as the entire structure tilted. Anchors at the base tore free from their footings with a grinding rip, one after another.
The wheel tipped.
The car pitched forward with it. Elias's chest crashed into the safety bar; pain flared bright across his ribs. The girl—Alice? Alison? He still couldn't pin it down, even now—had climbed in first, so her seat sat closer to the center. As gravity shifted, her body slid underneath his.
The car rolled.
He dropped with her, bodies tangled. Her back hit the far rail, head whipping toward steel. His weight came down on top of her a breath later, pinning her between his ribs and cold metal. The impact drove air from his lungs. A sharp crack rang through his chest as the bar hammered his side.
Then the wheel struck earth.
The first impact felt like taking a tackle from a truck. Vibration blasted up through the car, teeth clacking together. Metal shrieked against packed dirt and gravel. The whole structure rolled a fraction, dragging the cars in a rough arc before twisted supports dug in and held fast.
When everything finally settled, Elias lay half sprawled across her. Every breath sent a stabbing ache through his ribs, deep and hot. The safety bar pressed against his side, each tiny movement sending little shocks of pain through his chest.
The car creaked around them, rocking in tiny aftershocks. Dust floated in the air, glowing in slanting strips of light. Shouts rose from beyond the wreck, voices calling names, boots pounding over ground.
Under him, the girl stayed very still.
Her name… Alison? Alice? Annie? He rolled the options through his mind, both then and now, and never quite caught the right one. It blurred at the edges, like a word seen on a page just out of focus.
The thought drifted through the pain haze as he sucked in a shallow breath and his ribs lit up in protest. The safety bar dug into his side; something in there complained with a deep, steady throb.
He pushed up just enough to give her space.
Her head lolled to the side, brown hair tangled against the bent rail. The metal where it met her skull bowed inward, a wrong angle, a deep dent in the rail and in her. Blood tracked down through her hair in thin lines, soaking into the collar of her shirt. One arm lay trapped under him, the other slack across her stomach. Her eyes stayed closed, lashes resting against skin already swelling on one side.
He remembered saying a name—maybe "Alice," maybe "Alison"—voice rough and shaking, trying to get a response.
Nothing answered him.
He searched her chest for movement, any sign of breath. For a moment he thought he saw a shallow rise, or maybe that was just the car shifting under them. His own breathing roared too loud in his ears to tell.
Around them, the fair found its voice again—shouts, running steps, someone yelling for an ambulance that would never come the way they expected, not after what the world just did.
His mind went back to her eyes—the empty stare.
Brown, wide, glassy, fixed on nothing. She looked past him, past the twisted car, into a distance that held no focus. Her body lay slack beneath him, muscles loose, weight heavy in a way that felt final. In that vacant gaze he realized, clear and simple, she was dead.
His first close brush with death.
After a few minutes, his own body pushed back into his awareness.
Fire along his side with every breath. Each inhale sliced across his ribs, each exhale rattled. Later he pieced together the details—two ribs cracked where the bar smashed into him—but in that moment his ribs felt like one throbbing bruise.
Voices bled in around the pain. Yelling, sobbing, the world was in chaos.
Elias braced a hand on twisted frame and dragged himself free of the ruined seat. Every movement tugged at his ribs, a fresh spike of heat under his skin. He slipped over bent metal and dirt until his feet found ground.
The wreckage sprawled around him. One car hung crushed under another. A boy screamed beneath a twisted section of frame, both legs pinned from mid-thigh down. The sound cut through the ringing in Elias's ears.
He swallowed, head spinning. His mind tried to latch onto something—any direction, any first move. Help the kid. Run for his family. Check his own injuries. Every option shoved at him, and he stood there for a heartbeat, ribs blazing, thoughts tangled.
Later, the larger picture became clear.
Researchers determined the Shift was this: Earth itself had shifted. The planet now floated in a different niche of System Space. Overhead, the sky still carried familiar blue, the fairground lights still glowed as evening moved in, yet the air felt thicker, charged. Over time, maps would show stretched coastlines, extra land in uninhabited bands, strange bulges along the edges of continents, new shallows and deepened trenches. Space itself had flexed, shaped to match rules human science barely touched.
Ki seeped into every corner of existence.
The laws of Earth now operated by the laws of Ki.
Earth was now in the era of the apocalypse.
The Shift had swollen uninhabited places, adding more landmass. Somehow the System had done this. Later, researchers would find Earth's land area had increased by roughly twenty-five percent, and the planet itself by around ten percent.
That expansion Shift had shaken the oceans, causing tidal waves.
Far from this small county, walls of water rolled toward coasts. Tides rose like living things. Entire slabs of city went under. Harbors drowned, bridges submerged, highways vanished beneath churning sea.
All of that devastation was only the introduction of things to come.
A fresh window floated into view, hovering steady over the ache in his chest.
Congratulations for surviving the Shift!
You now have a STATUS.
More lines followed, crisp and even.
Humanity of Earth has a century to get strong or face extinction or even worse…
Current state: Hidden from other worlds in System Space.
World fauna and beasts will fundamentally change due to Ki.
Incursions and Dungeons will spawn due to unchecked Ki density.
A short pause, then another line appeared.
To encourage growth, Apocalypse Program initiated.
The window slid aside, replaced by a single-slot wheel. Symbols spun in a blur, slow enough to recognize shapes if you focused, fast enough to feel like a game rigged by something far above human pay grades. Every person on Earth with working eyes saw their own version spinning in front of them.
Even now, Elias could recall several of those images.
A rotting face with exposed teeth—zombie type, an undead invasion.
A many-legged silhouette with hooked limbs—an insect swarm.
A hollow figure drifting in tatters—spirit disaster.
A hulking bestial form—beast tide.
A crude, broad-shouldered shape with tusks and gear—some flavor of orc or goblin horde.
Most of those icons blurred around the edges in his memory. One remained sharp, carved into him as deeply as any scar.
A blazing rock streaking through a field of stylized clouds.
The wheel slowed, clicked, and came to rest on that symbol.
Meteor Apocalypse scenario selected.
The final prompt unfolded, simple and merciless.
Meteor Apocalypse scenario initiated…
Countdown: 60 minutes