The sound of glass shattering in reverse reverberated through James's ears and echoed directly in his skull, making him nearly choke on his cheap synth beer.
Clark didn't fare much better. He almost leapt up in shock, slamming his knees into the underside of the table and sending his thankfully empty cup tumbling to the ground. His face twisted into a look of pure terror.
"The hell?!"
Looking around the bar, James could see similar reactions on the faces of the other poor souls who frequented this place. Oddly enough, everyone had stopped what they were doing at the exact same time, as if moved by some invisible force. It was like they were all... in sync.
For a moment, silence fell over the bar's dim interior. Everyone stared at each other in confusion. Still stunned and trying to process what had just happened, James was jolted again by a sudden surge of noise from outside—shouts echoing from the street. The bar, half-exposed to the open air on one side, let in the rising clamor.
All heads turned toward the street, where they could see people gathered, staring up at the sky. Some looked confused, others pale, and most wore expressions of sheer terror.
James looked to Clark, who had already turned toward him, his eyes filled with urgent intent. With a quick nod, they both got up and pushed toward the crowd outside. The noise only intensified as the people began recovering from the shock.
Everyone seemed to have experienced the same strange sensation.
"What in the world is happening?!"
"Did you hear that weird sound just now?"
"Is that a supernova?"
"Why is it red?!"
"Mom, I'm scared…"
"…"
Stepping out into the open, James followed their collective gaze—and what he saw made him stop in his tracks.
The night sky... wasn't the night sky anymore.
The cheap beer still clung bitterly to his tongue, and he felt its fuzzy effects clouding his mind. But even through the alcohol haze, he was certain of one thing:
This was no hallucination.
High above, splitting the night sky apart like a supernatural wound, stretched a massive rift—a tear so long he couldn't see where it began or ended. It pulsed with an eerie red glow, casting the city below in a sickly light. The crack in the sky looked like it was carved into space itself.
And worst of all—it was growing.
Every second, it stretched wider, deeper, pulsing more intensely.
Now, he understood why the crowd was losing control.
"What the fuck is that?" Clark said, voicing the very thought trapped in James's stunned mind.
James had no answer. He could only watch. After some time, he asked, "Just to make sure… you see it getting bigger too, right?"
Clark squinted at the sky as though trying to focus would make any of this make more sense. He was much drunker than James, having had several more rounds.
"Damn it… you're right! It's actually moving!" he shouted, eyes wide in disbelief. "What the hell?!"
James tried to make sense of the situation as well. He took a deep breath, tried to ground his thoughts. But it was hopeless.
Because then—it happened again.
A small dark dot appeared near the glowing red rift. Just one.
Then another.
And another.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
James felt his body begin to tremble. Sweat broke out across his skin, his heart pounded like a drum, and his knees threatened to give out.
The longer he stared, the worse it got. His body felt sick, nauseous, like he'd eaten something rotten. He doubled over, his mind overwhelmed with something he couldn't describe—primal fear. It wasn't logical. It wasn't even emotional.
It was instinct.
Then, violently, he vomited. Yellow bile—probably just beer and stomach acid—splattered on the cracked asphalt of the street.
He dropped to one knee, barely able to hold himself up.
Clark, barely able to tear his eyes away from the sky, saw James collapse in his periphery.
"James?! What's wrong?!"
He rushed over and dropped beside his friend, grabbing his shoulder.
James didn't know what was happening to him—only that it felt like something inside him was being attacked and contaminated, but not in his physical body, something deeper within him.
Whatever had come from that rift… it didn't just inspire fear. It radiated it. Flooded him with revulsion, dread, a sense of wrongness that threatened to shatter his mind.
But then, through the haze of fear, he felt something else.
A warmth.
Not from Clark's hand on his shoulder—but from the pendant hanging around his neck. He'd worn it for as long as he could remember. Now, for the first time, it felt alive. Warm, like it was protecting him. Maybe even shielding him—if such things were real.
With great effort, he forced his breathing to slow. His hands still shook. His heart still raced. But he was no longer paralyzed.
Still on shaky legs, he looked back up.
And almost collapsed again.
The sky was now littered with the dark shapes—figures emerging from the rift in impossible numbers. Some small, others massive. Some the size of buildings. Their silhouettes moved slowly but purposefully, drifting toward Earth.
Clark had stopped gawking at the sky and instead watched James. When he saw his friend slowly come back to his senses, he relaxed just a little—only to freeze again as he followed James's horrified gaze back upward.
The crowd had noticed, too.
Panic spread like wildfire.
Some began to scream. Others simply ran. The orderly confusion broke into complete chaos.
Clark and James turned their eyes away from the sky and toward the growing frenzy of the people around them.
"Quick—back to the bar—" Clark began.
But he never finished his sentence.
Because the figures in the sky began to move.
Fast.
Too fast.
They streaked through the air in every direction—north, south, east, west… and toward district CE-10.
Clark threw James' arm over his shoulder and helped him stand.
"We have to get out of here!" he shouted over the rising chaos.
James didn't argue.
They stumbled through the crowd as the screaming intensified. All around them, people ran in blind terror, crashing into each other, tripping, falling.
James spared one last glance at the sky—and what he saw chilled him to the bone.
The creatures were close enough now to see in more detail.
They came in all shapes. Some were vaguely humanoid, others bestial, with wings and horns and claws. Their skin was a dark, reddish-black, like scorched earth. Their limbs were twisted and contorted, joints bending where they shouldn't. Each one had horns—some straight, some spiraled, all grotesque.
But worst of all were their eyes.
They burned with something unnatural—a void-like hunger that stared straight through him. Those eyes didn't belong to anything in this world.
And then the sky was gone. Replaced by the dark ceiling of the bar as Clark dragged him back inside.
Was this the end of the world?
They collapsed into a shadowy corner of the bar just as the ground began to shake. The entire district trembled from multiple impacts, making the floor beneath them quake and the walls groan.
Screams echoed from outside—high-pitched, agonized, human. Then there were roars, unsettling, mad, and inhuman.
"What… what is happening, James? Is this really real?"
James turned to Clark, his voice hoarse and slightly trembling. "I think this is real. We didn't drink that much… well, me, at least."
He narrowed his eyes slightly.
"And I have no idea what's happening. Some kind of world-ending scenario from a video game, but it turned into reality, maybe?"
They stared at each other in silence, wanting to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, knowing that what was happening outside was really no figment of their imagination.
In the end, they didn't laugh, though. Instead, Clark sighed and slumped to the ground beside James, backs to the wall, staring up at the ceiling.
A moment passed before Clark broke the silence again, his voice sounding strangely monotone.
"Do you think we're going to die?"
James scoffed at the question.
"Of course we are. Did you see the rift in the sky? Did you see those creatures? Did you hear the screams? I have no idea what's happening, but I'm pretty sure we're done for. It's only a matter of time."
After a few seconds of processing this information, Clark let out a dry laugh. "Guess that means we'll at least finally be free of this miserable life then. And at least I'm not dying sober."
James didn't answer, his face slightly contorted. Clark, on the other hand, continued, seemingly darkly content with the possible prospect of imminent death.
"I've seen the look in your eyes these past few months, James. You are tired as well, just like me. I know you're feeling the same way I do. This life … isn't a life. All we do is exist. All we do is work and drink. So what does it matter if we die now?"
James listened to his friend's words and pondered for a moment before he opened his mouth to answer.
"… yeah. You're right. I'm tired, too."
He let out a long breath.
"But ... I don't think I'm ready to die yet. There were things I wanted to accomplish. Not that it matters now."
Clark turned to him, suddenly curious. "What's that?"
"I always wanted to study medicine," James said, almost sheepishly. "It's dumb. A dream from way back when we grew up in the orphanage. I think I developed it somewhere along the way. Oh, and I also wanted to learn more about the 100-Year War … my parents seemed to be obsessed with history for some reason otherwise they wouldn't have left me behind this many old books, right?"
He reached under his shirt and pulled out the pendant - the one that still radiated that inexplicable warmth. It hadn't changed visually, though.
"And this. I don't know what this is. But I don't think it's from here. And I think… I think it's connected to all of this. To those creatures. It reacted when I saw them coming from the sky and almost collapsed."
He laughed, not sure if it was appropriate to do so.
"Or I'm just imagining it. Yeah, I must be losing it. ... either way, it doesn't matter. We're as good as dead."
Clark looked at him, eyes narrowed. He was about to respond when the building suddenly shook harder than before, dust raining from the ceiling, blinding them momentarily.
James coughed, waving away the cloud of debris, his eyes watering.
When he managed to see again, he spotted something in the flickering light of the bar that wasn't there before.
Revealed was a soot-covered Kowalski. His usual bluster was gone, replaced by raw terror, his desperate eyes finding James and Clark in the corner. His clothes were torn, one sleeve soaked in something dark.
Stunned, James stared at the unexpected sight. That bastard seemed to have been drinking like him and Clark had in this part of the district. In retrospect, it made sense - Kowalski was well known to get drunk even during work hours. But that knowledge didn't really matter at the moment.
"They're real!" he screamed, voice cracking. "The fucking monsters - they're tearing people apart out there! I saw—I saw—"
His panicked rambling cut off abruptly as something massive slammed into the building, shaking it once more. The walls groaned in protest. Kowalski stumbled, eyes wild, before regaining his footing.
Another deafening crash. The front wall exploded inward.
Through the dust and debris, a nightmare emerged—tall and gaunt, its dark ashen skin stretched taut over unnatural bones. Two twisted horns curved from its skull and scraped against the ceiling of the bar towering above the three people like an ill omen. Two eyes locked onto them, then onto the drunk and terrified foreman standing before it; void-like, hungry, and filled with terrifying malice.
Kowalski turned slowly, his face draining of color. "Oh god—"
The creature moved faster than James could follow. One moment, Kowalski stood there; the next, he was pinned against the far wall, the demon's clawed hand buried in his chest.
Kowalski gasped, blood bubbling at his lips. His terrified eyes met James' for one final, pleading moment before -
A sickening crunch. The foreman's body went limp.
The creature tossed him aside like garbage, its attention shifting to James. A grotesque smile split its face, revealing too many teeth.
Then it spoke.
"I knew I sensed it," it rasped in a voice dripping with malice, sounding like two irregular metal sheets grinding against each other.
"That revolting, ancient aura you give off. So it was you, human."