Kade Moren was still awake when it happened.
Not properly awake—just stretched out on his bed, phone dark against his chest, staring at the ceiling fan as it turned lazily overhead. He'd been watching the news earlier with his parents. He always did. Wars half a world away. Cities flattened by storms that would be forgotten in a week. Leaders stood behind podiums, promising investigations and accountability, offering help that never came.
Nothing ever changed.
Kade wasn't naïve enough to think the world could be fixed with a speech or a single decision. Problems like that didn't work that way. Still, it always bothered him how easily people settled for inaction—how often complex became an excuse for doing nothing at all. There wasn't much he could do about it—no more than anyone else—so he'd learned to complain, shrug, and move on.
But the feeling never really left.
Somewhere beneath the resignation, a quiet certainty remained.
Things weren't right.
And left alone, they never would be.
His reflection caught faintly in the wardrobe mirror across the room: dark skin, a mess of short afro hair that refused to lie flat, sharp features softened by exhaustion. His eyes—green, an odd inheritance he'd long stopped questioning—looked dull with fatigue. People had always commented on them. He'd learned to ignore it.
The street outside hummed the way it always did.
Then it didn't.
The sound didn't vanish so much as… sink. Like the world had been wrapped in thick fabric. Kade frowned and pushed himself upright.
"What the hell…?"
The air shifted.
His ears popped painfully, and a heavy vibration rolled through the floor. Not an explosion. Not thunder. Something denser than either. Something that felt too close to be real.
Something struck the street below.
Kade's heart jumped. He waited—half-expecting shouting, car alarms, anything.
Nothing came.
The night remained stubbornly normal, and that somehow made it worse.
Uneasy, he crossed the room and tugged the curtain aside just enough to look out.
"I swear, who the hell is causing this kind of commotion at this time of ni—"
The words died in his throat.
The streetlights were flickering.
The road itself seemed bent, warped around a point near the centre of the street. Shadows stretched too far, snapping back when the lights steadied, as if reality was struggling to remember its shape.
No one else was outside.
"…What in the world."
Then he saw them.
Two figures stood where the distortion was worst.
They were tall—too tall—and neither of them was fully solid. Light clung to them like mist, flowing and shifting in ways that made Kade's eyes ache when he tried to focus.
He blinked.
Rubbed his eyes hard with the heel of his palms.
Lowered his hands.
They were still there.
"What the hell is this," he muttered. "Some kind of cosplay and special effects group?"
One of the figures burned.
Not with fire, but with a blinding, dazzling brilliance that spilled outward in rippling waves. The light wasn't warm. It was sharp, almost painful, like staring into the sun's reflection on broken glass. The air around it shimmered violently, bending the streetlights into fractured halos.
The other stood opposite it, wrapped in shadow so dense it swallowed detail. Darkness poured off the figure in slow, crawling tendrils, dragging the light down wherever the two forces collided.
They moved.
Not like people.
The bright one surged forward, the street cracking beneath its step. The shadowed figure met it head-on, the collision sending a ripple through the air that rattled Kade's bones.
"Holy shit—"
The sound that followed wasn't loud. It was wrong.
Thin. Distorted. It slid straight into his skull, bypassing his ears entirely. Kade grabbed the edge of his desk, teeth clenched as his vision blurred.
Then—
The shining one turned.
Not fully. Not its body.
Its attention.
The light narrowed, focusing with terrifying precision.
"…Fuck," Kade breathed. "Is it looking at me?"
A boundless pressure crashed down on him. Not weight. Not heat. The sensation of being seen—completely, utterly—made his skin crawl. It felt like being held under an invisible scanner, every layer of him peeled back and examined at once.
He couldn't look away.
The pressure intensified, crushing in from all directions, and for a split second he was sure his skull would crack under it.
Then the pain hit.
Not in his chest.
Not in his limbs.
A violent throbbing ignited at the base of his skull, right where the neck met the head.
"Fuck me—"
The ache deepened instantly, pulsing outward in heavy waves. Pressure built there—compressed, unbearable—like something sealed tight was being forced open from the inside.
Kade gasped, fingers digging into the desk as the pressure peaked.
Then it gave way.
A sudden cold rushed through his body, spilling downward from the back of his head and flooding his spine. The sensation spread fast, numbing and invasive, leaving his limbs weak and his vision swimming. His thoughts scattered as the broken thing inside him tore open completely.
Outside, the shadowed figure moved, taking advantage of the other's distracted state.
It slammed into the radiant one with brutal force, driving it into the street below. The impact warped the air, sending a distortion rippling outward like heat over asphalt.
Then the shadow turned.
Toward him.
The darkness covering it receded just enough for Kade to make out what he thought were eyes—two pools of liquid black, deeper than shadow, burning with such unrestrained malice that his vision swam instantly.
His breath hitched.
"This again…?"
Another compression struck at the base of his skull. Sharper. Heavier. The pressure built fast—then broke—sending a second wave of cold flooding through his body, colder than before, dragging him downward as the world tilted violently out of focus.
The last thing he saw was a shimmering fog descending from above, spilling across the street and swallowing the figures whole. The distortion smoothed. The air stilled.
And suddenly—
Everything was normal.
Streetlights steady.
Cars speeding past.
Someone down the block walking their dog, phone pressed to their ear.
Kade slumped back against the wall, heart hammering, breath shallow.
As darkness closed in, one confused, absurd thought drifted through his mind.
What the hell was in the milk I drank before bed?