Liam Perez stared at the blinking cursor on his laptop screen, the steady hum of the air conditioner the only sound in his cramped Osaka apartment. His head throbbed, a dull ache that had settled in his temples since morning. The cold medicine on the cluttered table hadn't helped much. He rubbed his eyes and sighed.
Today was supposed to be just another day at the engineering firm. Instead, he had called in sick. The usual emails and video calls blurred into a fog of exhaustion. He had barely told his supervisor he wouldn't come in—just a short message, vague but professional.
The apartment was quiet. Outside, the residential street hummed with distant chatter, the occasional bark of a dog. It was the kind of calm that made the ache in his head worse.
Suddenly, the lights flickered.
Liam frowned and stood up, walking to the window. The sky was darkening unnaturally, an odd rippling shimmer hanging low over the city. At first, he thought it was a trick of the weather, maybe a storm rolling in, but then the air itself seemed to tear—a jagged slash cutting the heavens open like a wound.
His breath caught.
There, suspended above the Osaka skyline, was the crack. A vast, three-kilometer-long fissure, glowing faintly with a strange, pulsating light that defied every law of physics Liam had ever studied.
The world outside seemed to hold its breath.
On the street below, distant sirens wailed, but the usual sounds of life were muted, as if everything had been paused and twisted into something unrecognizable.
Liam leaned against the window, his heart pounding.
This was no natural disaster.
This was something else.
Something that would change everything.
Liam stepped back from the window, his mind racing but strangely calm. Part of him wanted to deny what he was seeing, to chalk it up to some massive projection or hallucination brought on by his fever. But the sharp clarity in the crack's edges told a different story—something impossibly real.
He grabbed his phone from the table, fingers trembling as he unlocked it. His inbox was flooding with alerts—messages from friends, coworkers, news channels all buzzing with confusion and fear.
"Breaking: Mysterious spatial anomaly appears over major cities worldwide."
"Government urges calm as military mobilizes."
"Radiation detected near crack sites, but no immediate health threats."
Liam's eyes flicked from message to message. The term "ARC energy" popped up repeatedly—something about an unknown radioactive emission with unusual effects.
He swallowed hard, heart pounding faster now.
A part of him—the engineer, the problem-solver—wanted to understand. To analyze, to break down this impossible event into formulas and theories. But deeper inside, a cold whisper of dread settled.
What if this was no accident?
What if the cracks were the beginning of something far worse?
He sank down onto the worn couch, the room suddenly feeling too small, too fragile.
Outside, somewhere far below the crack, distant shouts began to rise.
The world had fractured. And Liam Perez was right at its breaking point.
Liam's fingers hovered over his phone screen, the urge to check on his family pulling at him like a magnet. The messages from friends and news channels were distant echoes now — what mattered most was whether his parents and younger sister were safe.
He opened his contacts and tapped "Mom." The call rang once... twice... then went to voicemail.
His heart sank.
"Ma, it's me," he said, voice tight but steady. "I don't know what's happening over there... but stay inside. Lock the doors. I'll keep trying to reach you."
He hung up and immediately dialed his sister's number. This time the call connected. Her voice, shaky and faint, came through.
"Liam? The crack— it's here. It appeared near Manila. Mom and Dad are scared... We're all scared."
Liam's chest tightened. "Listen, keep calm. Stay away from windows. Stay together. I'll find a way to get home."
"I'm scared, Kuya," she whispered.
He closed his eyes, the engineer's rational mind warring with the growing panic inside him. "I know. Me too. But I'm not giving up on you."
A sudden distant rumble shook the building, dust falling from the ceiling. Liam stood abruptly, eyes darting to the window again, where the crack's eerie glow pulsed, as if alive.
The world outside was breaking apart. But for Liam Perez, the real fight had just begun.
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