Aiden’s world erupted in light.


    Not the kind he had imagined as a kid, when he used to wonder what colors looked like. Not the flickering glow of torches or the artificial brightness of city lamps. This was something else.


    It wasn’t just light.


    It was sight.


    His mind fractured under the sheer weight of it.


    The Rift wasn''t black—it was alive. A twisting mass of impossible shapes, shifting layers of reality stacked on top of each other. The buildings weren’t just abandoned structures; they breathed, their surfaces pulsing like stretched skin over bone. The air itself was moving, rippling like liquid, charged with unseen energy.


    And the creatures—


    Aiden''s stomach twisted.


    They weren’t beasts.


    They weren’t even monsters.


    They were wrong.


    Shadows peeled themselves from the walls, limbs twisting in unnatural angles. Their bodies flickered between solid and formless, stretching, shrinking, distorting like broken reflections on rippling water.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    There were so many of them.


    Some hung from the buildings, eyeless heads turning toward him, jaws splitting open too wide. Others slithered between cracks in the pavement, their elongated fingers dragging behind them, bodies writhing like puppets with severed strings.


    And they were watching him.


    Not with eyes. Not with hunger.


    With recognition.


    A voice, layered with thousands of whispers, rippled through the air.


    "He sees."


    Aiden''s breath hitched.


    He tried to move. His body refused.


    His mind was drowning in information.


    Every creature had patterns in their movement. Every surface was lined with fractures where the Rift was weakest. His eyes followed the shifting layers of reality, watching possibilities before they happened—a Hunter’s body being dragged into the dark, another being torn apart before the creature even moved.


    Futures.


    Aiden was seeing them before they happened.


    "No."


    The Rift pulsed.


    Something shifted.


    Aiden gasped as a figure stepped forward from the shadows.


    Tall. Wrong.


    Its face was smooth, featureless, but its presence was suffocating. It stood apart from the other creatures, as if the laws of reality refused to touch it. The moment Aiden''s gaze locked onto it, his vision fractured.


    A warning burned in his skull.


    [UNKNOWN ENTITY DETECTED.]


    [SYSTEM ERROR—DATA CANNOT BE PROCESSED.]


    The thing tilted its head.


    The Rift shuddered.


    Aiden’s body locked up as the weight of its gaze crashed down on him.


    The whispers grew frantic. The other creatures backed away.


    "Not him."


    "Not yet."


    The figure did not speak. It did not move.


    But Aiden felt it reach for him.


    His vision split apart.


    His mind cracked open.


    A voice, deeper than anything human, thundered inside his skull.


    "Wake up, Seer."


    Aiden screamed.


    And then—


    Everything collapsed.