Soren's POVThe power died completely.Not a flicker. Not a rolling brownout that left some blocks untouched. Every light, every signal, every powered system across the visible city went black in a single coordinated failure. Cell towers dropped in the same instant. Phone screens that still held battery showed no bars, no emergency service, no data connection of any kind. The internet vanished as if someone had severed the world’s cables at once. Gas station canopies went dark. Pumps froze mid-transaction, nozzles still in tanks that would never finish filling. Traffic lights that had already failed earlier now stood completely inert while drivers abandoned vehicles in the middle of intersections, doors open, engines still ticking.People poured into the streets.Confused. Frightened. Already loud. Arguments flared over blocked lanes and dead phones. Someone shouted that it was a terror attack. Someone else screamed about an EMP. A third voice claimed the government had finally decide

Soren POV“Identify yourself.”The radio remained silent for three long seconds. Static whispered at the edges of the channel. Then the voice that sounded like mine and was not returned, calm and precise, as if distance and collapsed infrastructure meant nothing.“You already know enough to be dangerous, Soren. Asking for a name changes nothing.”“I asked anyway.”A soft exhale came through the speaker, almost like dry amusement. “Very well. Proof, then. You died in the empty lot near the old rail yards on the east side of Port Mason. Late light. Ash in the air. There was a scarred woman leading the other group. She inspected you the way someone inspects livestock before agreeing to the weight. Bennett confirmed the trade while you still had the sack over your head. He told Carter the exchange was clean and that the supplies would be distributed according to priority once they returned to the compound. He used the word ‘disposable’ earlier, when he was still explaining the mathematics

Soren's POVI moved first.No warning. No question. The moment the figure resolved inside the spatial space I pulled a collapsible baton from storage and put myself between the stranger and the only reliable exit back to the real world. The darkness of the space pressed close around us. Supplies sat in their ordered clusters. At the far end the cracked door and its warning still held the ruined facility in partial view.The stranger did not attack.He raised both hands, empty, and held them well away from his body in a clear, practiced show of non-threat. He was lean, mid-thirties, dark hair cut short, clothes that looked worn by time rather than scavenged in panic. His edges still flickered faintly, as if the space had not yet fully agreed he belonged inside it, but his voice when he spoke was solid and steady.“Easy. I’m not here to take anything from you.”“Identify yourself.”“Caleb Rourke. And before you decide to find out whether that baton works the same way in here, understand

Soren's POVThe city descended into chaos the moment the first creature crossed the threshold.It did not scream. It did not roar. It simply moved. One second the space was normal darkness and supplies. The next the doorway widened and something large and wrong spilled through, distorting the air around its edges as if the Fold itself were trying to fold it back into the ruined facility. That soundless advance was what broke the last thread of the old world.Survivors poured into the streets in every direction. Cars abandoned mid-turn. People running on foot. Arguments that turned into fights. A woman on the roof of a burning building screamed for help before the thing that had been wearing her face reached her. Another group tried to barricade a grocery store only for the windows to explode outward from the inside. No one understood yet. No one knew how fast it would spread.I realized we had crossed the point of no return.The collapse I remembered had been a slow unraveling. This w

Soren's POVThe photograph stared back at me from the desk.The man’s eyes looked straight through the camera. Seven years before the end. The same face that had stood behind me in the ruined city image. The same one who had spoken in my voice and told me I had three days.He had sent me back.I closed the cabinet slowly. The silence in the basement felt heavier than any creature I had seen above ground.Caleb was the first to speak. “That’s him. The first returner.”I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. The photograph was real. The words beneath it were real. The first returner had already been here, had already left this facility seven years earlier, and had somehow returned me to the moment I needed to find him before day seven.I looked at the group. No one else had moved. The nurse was staring at the photograph with wide eyes. Tobin was gripping his rifle like it might bite. Maribel had gone very still. Bennett’s face was unreadable.“Search the rest of the floors,” I said. “Slowly. No on