The afternoon sun washed the LRT-2 in gold as it rattled above Aurora Boulevard, humming beneath my feet with its usual uneven rhythm. The air smelled faintly of metal and warm plastic, and the crowd inside the train swayed with every turn. I tried—honestly tried—to study the notebook balanced across my thighs, but the words had dissolved into meaningless shapes somewhere between Recto and Cubao.
"Are you actually studying that," the voice beside me said, "or are you just pretending to look smart again?"
I didn't need to look to know it was Mark. He leaned closer, peering over my shoulder with exaggerated suspicion.
I kept my eyes on the same exact paragraph I had been stuck on. "Which one do you think?"
"Pretending," he said without hesitation. "You've been staring at that paragraph for three stations. Maybe four."
"It's a long sentence."
"It has seven words."
I exhaled and closed the notebook carefully. "Fine. You win."
Mark grinned triumphantly. "I always do."
His grin faded as he shifted his attention to the window. His brows tightened—subtle, but enough for me to notice. "I swear something's off today," he murmured. "I felt it the moment I stepped out of the house."
"Off how?"
He shrugged, but his shoulders were tense. "Like the air's holding its breath. You know that feeling before a storm hits? Or before an earthquake? That weird, heavy silence?"
"You're probably just tired."
"I'm serious. You don't feel it?"
I did. A quiet hum under my skin. A faint ringing at the edge of hearing. But admitting that would only validate him.
So instead I said, "You're imagining things."
"Uh-huh." He gave me a look that said he absolutely didn't believe me. "And you pretending to read doesn't count as proof."
The train slowed as it approached Katipunan station. Students pressed forward. The doors chimed open.
Mark nudged me. "Message me later. If something weird happens, I want it on record that I called it."
"Sure."
"And drink water," he added.
I stepped out of the train and glanced back. He smirked and tapped the window dramatically as the doors closed.
Down the station stairs, the heat greeted me immediately—heavy and humid, thick with the smell of traffic and grilled street food. Jeepneys honked. Students crossed the intersection in clusters. A tricycle driver called out to passing passengers.
Everything was annoyingly normal.
But the pressure in the air… wasn't.
Halfway across the crosswalk, my phone vibrated.
Mark had sent a message: Look north. Tell me I'm not hallucinating.
I frowned and turned toward the northern sky.
For a moment, I saw nothing but blue.
Then, barely visible—
A flicker.
A thin, shimmering line tracing across the sky like a scratch of light.
My breath caught. I blinked hard, expecting it to vanish.
It didn't.
The line pulsed faintly, as if stretching.
I lifted my phone and took a picture. On the screen, the sky looked perfectly normal. No glowing mark. No ripple. Nothing.
My phone buzzed again.
Mark had sent another message: You see it, right?
I typed back, Yes.
My fingers felt cold.
"Kil?"
I turned. Mia waved from the campus entrance, her expression puzzled. "Are you okay? You look… startled."
"Just the sunlight," I said. "It's bright."
She squinted at me as if trying to read deeper into my face. "Be careful. A lot of people have been fainting today. Heat exhaustion or something."
"Yeah. Thanks."
She jogged off.
I looked back up.
The glowing line thickened—slowly, steadily—widening like a wound tearing open.
A soft, distant hum brushed my ears.
A faint crackle.
My heart beat faster.
I kept walking, crossing the quad, my eyes flicking upward every few seconds even though the sunlight stabbed at them. Students were scattered around, laughing, chatting, scrolling through their phones.
I was still ten steps from the admin building when the world stopped.
Literally stopped.
The wind froze in the middle of its gust, as if someone had pressed pause. Leaves hung motionless in the air. Voices halted mid-sentence. Even the ambient noise of cars from the street outside the campus went silent.
A single metallic chime rang through the stillness.
My ears rang.
My lungs tightened.
Then—
The sky tore open.
A sound like shattering glass—magnified a thousand times—ripped across the horizon. The glowing line split downward, white-blue light erupting in every direction. A shockwave slammed into the ground, knocking several students off their feet. My knees nearly buckled as the force hit my chest like a hammer.
I gasped, stumbling backward.
The rift—because that was what it was, a massive gash across the sky—pulsed with blinding light. Shapes moved within it, huge and shifting.
Not human.
A second shockwave surged out—silent, but heavier. It rolled through my ribs, sank into my lungs, pressed against my skull.
Then a voice—not spoken aloud, but embedded directly in my mind—echoed through me.
Awaken.
My heart seized.
A burning sensation tore through my chest like claws raking from the inside. My vision blurred with streaks of color. My legs trembled violently.
Students collapsed around me—some screaming, some fainting, some glowing faintly as strange marks traced across their skin.
But something inside me was being pulled harder than the rest.
As if the rift itself had hooked onto my existence.
Awaken.
"No—stop—" My voice cracked as I clutched my chest.
The pain intensified—shaping, twisting, rewriting something deep within me.
And then—
Everything went white.
I don't know how long I was unconscious.
When I opened my eyes, I was lying flat on the grass, the world ringing faintly in my ears. My body buzzed with a faint, electric numbness. The quad around me was chaos—students screaming, faculty shouting orders, police sirens wailing outside the campus.
Above me, the rift still tore across the sky like a massive wound, widening inch by inch. Military helicopters swarmed the area, their rotors chopping the air.
And right in front of me floated a small fragment of shimmering light.
It hovered above my chest… pulsing softly.
"What… is that…?"
The fragment lowered.
Instinctively, I tried to push myself back, but my arms felt heavy.
The fragment touched my chest.
And sank into me.
My breath hitched. A jolt of images flashed in my mind—sharp fangs, dark forests, cold wind, the sensation of running through shadows with inhuman speed.
I gasped, clutching at my shirt.
The fragment fused with me, vanishing inside without a trace.
My heart pounded unnaturally fast.
A roar erupted across the quad.
My head jerked toward the sound just in time to see something crash onto the lawn. Dust flew. Students scattered.
The creature was shaped like a dog, but far too slender and stretched. Its limbs were long, unnaturally jointed. Its skin clung tightly over its frame, almost translucent. Its yellow eyes glowed with feral hunger.
A monster.
Two campus guards approached cautiously, gripping their batons with unsteady hands.
The creature snarled.
"Run!" someone screamed behind me.
The guards swung their batons, but the creature lunged faster than anything I'd ever seen. One guard fell instantly, pinned beneath its claws.
I moved before thinking.
A fallen metal signpost lay nearby. I grabbed it, ripped it from the ground, and sprinted toward the creature.
"Hey!" I shouted.
It whipped its head toward me.
I swung the signpost like a bat.
The metal connected with a sickening crack. The creature reeled, staggering.
The pinned guard scrambled free.
The creature lunged at me.
I rolled to the side. My shoulder burned where its claws grazed me. I grit my teeth and swung upward, smashing the signpost into its jaw.
Pain shot down my arms but I kept going.
The creature snarled, rearing back for another strike.
My pulse thundered.
And then—light flickered faintly across my palm.
"What—?" I whispered.
The creature lunged.
I thrust out my hand.
A burst of invisible force exploded outward.
The creature was flung across the grass and slammed into a lamppost, bending the metal with a sharp clang.
Everyone around me froze.
So did I.
I stared at my hand, at the faint glow fading from it. "What… did I just do?"
The creature staggered back to its feet, dazed but alive.
I tightened my grip on the signpost and stepped forward.
I didn't want to kill.
I didn't want to fight.
But there was no time to hesitate.
The creature leapt.
I swung.
The signpost crashed onto its neck.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
The creature collapsed, limp.
I stood there breathing hard, blood dripping down my injured shoulder. Students stared at me—some in fear, some in shock, some too confused to speak.
Then something rose from the creature's corpse.
Another orb of light—darker this time, swirling with smoky threads.
It drifted toward me at a slow, deliberate pace.
My breath hitched. "No. Stay back—stay back!"
The orb ignored me.
It touched my chest.
And sank into me like the first one.
A wave of instinctual images hit me—running on all fours, tracking prey, hunger, cold, the thrill of pursuit.
I staggered but didn't fall this time.
The orb vanished inside me.
"What is happening to me…?"
Sirens grew louder. Campus security rushed between buildings. Police officers began ushering students away. A military helicopter hovered overhead in preparation for landing.
My phone vibrated violently in my pocket.
I pulled it out with trembling hands.
Mark had called me.
I answered immediately. "Mark—where are you?!"
I heard static—and then his shaky voice:
"Kil—Kil, something—something came out of the sky in Cubao—there are things chasing people—"
His words dissolved into static mixed with distant screams.
"Mark?! Mark, answer me!"
Suddenly, another roar erupted across the quad. A second creature burst from behind the admin building.
Panic tore through the students.
I tightened my grip on the bent metal signpost.
My body shook with both exhaustion and a strange, pulsing energy deep inside me.
I didn't understand the power forced into my body.
I didn't understand why the rift called to me.
I didn't understand these fragments sinking into my chest.
But one thing cut through the fear:
Mark was out there.
The city was falling apart.
And I couldn't stand here doing nothing.
I took one steadying breath.
Then I ran—toward the noise, toward the danger, toward the world that was breaking open in front of my eyes.
And with each step, I felt the strange power inside me pulse again.
Awakening.