2025-07-29 00:05:38It started with a scream.
Not the kind of scream you hear in a movie—sharp and dramatic—but the raw kind. The kind that came from something primal. Fear. Pain. Confusion. Jared was just waking up when it pierced the air.
For a second, he forgot where he was.
Then his eyes adjusted to the room: bare walls, creaky fan, a cheap curtain dancing in the wind. The Bai family’s spare room—still the place he called home, even if everyone in it hated that fact.
The scream came again. Closer this time.
Jared got up quickly and grabbed the cloth-wrapped pistol from under the mattress. He didn’t know what he expected, but his gut had been twisting since the system pinged him again just before dawn.
[System Alert: Warning—first signs of breakdown detected.]
Breakdown.
He remembered the word. In his first life, it had started the same way. Cities crumbling from the inside. One crack at a time. People thought it was madness. Then hunger. Then war. But it wasn’t. It was something deeper, older, and planned.
Jared didn’t bother with shoes. He stepped out into the hallway in bare feet, the pistol tucked tight at his side.
Downstairs, chaos had already begun to take shape.
Two maids were shrieking near the window. Mr. Bai, Elena’s father, was on the phone, shouting into it like volume would make it connect faster. And outside—
Smoke.
Thick, dark columns rising up in the distance. Not from one fire. Three. Four. Maybe more. The city skyline, usually smooth and predictable, was blurred behind plumes of ash.
Jared stepped onto the porch. The air tasted burnt.
A crowd had gathered near the gates. People were filming with their phones, shouting about explosions at the petrol depot, at the old market, and on the bridge. One woman fainted. A man was trying to resuscitate her, but he looked like he was about to pass out himself.
“What’s happening?” a voice asked sharply behind him.
Jared turned.
Elena stood barefoot, wrapped in a thin satin robe. No makeup. No cold expression this time. Just confusion.
Jared didn’t answer immediately. He was watching the smoke. Listening to the panic. Measuring the timing. It was exactly the same.
“Tell me,” Elena said again, stepping closer. “Is it a terrorist attack?”
“No.”
“Then what—”
“It’s the beginning,” he said quietly. “Of something bigger.”
She blinked. “You’re being dramatic.”
“No,” Jared said. “I’m being accurate.”
Something in his tone made her pause. She studied his face—really looked at him—and for the first time in a long time, she didn’t seem sure what to say.
“You’re acting like you expected this.”
Jared turned to face her fully.
“I did.”
A pause. Just long enough for something unspoken to settle between them.
Before she could speak again, Mr. Bai’s voice thundered from the house.
“Jared! What the hell are you standing there for? Do something useful for once!”
He was red in the face, waving his dead phone in the air. “Call the police! Call the news! Do something!”
Jared met his eyes, calm. “No one’s coming.”
“What?”
“The police. The army. The government. They’re not coming. Not this time.”
“You think this is some end-of-the-world nonsense?” Mr. Bai scoffed. “You’ve always been unstable, but this—this is delusion.”
Jared took a step forward. “You don’t have to believe me. But if you want to live, start stocking water. Food. Close your gates. And keep your family close.”
Elena’s eyes widened slightly.
“You’re serious,” she said.
Jared nodded once. “Dead serious.”
Mr. Bai sneered, ready to spit another insult, but before he could, a distant explosion echoed in the sky—louder this time. The ground trembled slightly beneath their feet. A ripple of screams followed from the city below.
No one said anything for a moment.
Then Elena whispered, “That didn’t sound like a market fire.”
Jared looked up at the thickening smoke cloud and the flickers of red in the sky.
“It’s not,” he said.
Inside his mind, the system pinged again:
[System Update: Survival Stage unlocked.]
[New Mission: Secure a safe house within 72 hours.]
[Warning: Civil collapse predicted within seven days.]
Jared turned and walked back into the house, past the stunned maids, past Mr. Bai still frozen in denial.
He had work to do.
This time, he wouldn’t die unprepared.
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Chapter 85- What the World Is Becoming
POV: JaredI go farther than I ever meant to.It starts small. A longer walk. One more hill. A place I used to avoid because there was nothing there and nothing is dangerous when you are used to things breaking.But the nothing is gone now.There are paths.Not carved. Not forced. They curve the way feet prefer to move, the way water would choose if it had legs. I follow one and realize I am not deciding where to step. The ground already knows.I pass a frame of something that might become a shelter. Three walls leaning into each other, patient. No tool marks. No signs of hands. Just intention, paused mid-thought.I touch the surface. It is warm. Alive in that quiet way stone sometimes is when it remembers heat.There are people.Not echoes. Not visitors who vanish when you look too closely.People with packs and stories and tired eyes that have learned how to hope without making noise about it. They move carefully, like the world might change its mind if they rush.When they see me,
Chapter 84- Proof of Life
POV: JaredThe visitor returns on a morning that feels undecided.Not stormy. Not kind. The sort of morning that could become anything if pushed hard enough.They do not come alone this time.There are two of them now, standing where the ground still remembers Emma’s footsteps. One waits farther back, respectful or wary, I cannot tell. The other holds a narrow case against their chest. Not sealed. Not dramatic. Just carried like something that has already been opened too many times.I do not ask why they are here.I think part of me has been expecting this since the footprint by the river.They kneel. Open the case. Push it toward me.“There’s no point bringing images,” the visitor says. Their voice is softer than before, like they learned something since last we spoke. “Those can lie without knowing they’re lying.”Inside the case are three things.They are arranged without ceremony. No labels. No explanation. Just objects, trusting me to recognize the truth on my own.The first is a
Chapter 83- The Day the Journal Changes
POV: JaredI notice the journal first.Not because I am looking for it. It has learned how to find me on its own. It sits where it always does, near the window, catching the part of the morning light that feels undecided. I pick it up the way I always do, careful, familiar, like my hands remember rules my head did not make.I read the same page as yesterday. I am sure of that. I even remember where I stopped, the way her handwriting slanted when she got tired, the tiny pause before the sentence broke off.That is why my eyes trip.There is a line that does not belong.Not a new page. Not an ending. Something threaded in, quiet and precise, as if it had always been waiting for space.The ink is darker. The letters are steadier. Cleaner than the rest, like her hand did not hesitate even once.I read it again. Slower.I remember more when I’m farther away.The room feels smaller for a second. Or maybe I do.I flip back a page. Then forward. I check the margins, the binding, the spine, li
Chapter 82- Staying Still Means Trusting
POV: JaredTime does not pass the way I expected it to.It does not rush at me. It does not circle back to hurt me on purpose. It moves like the river does when no one is watching. Forward, uneven, sometimes quiet enough that I forget it is working at all.The first days are the hardest. Not because of pain. Because of habit.I keep turning to speak to her. I keep saving thoughts like spare coins, planning to hand them to her later. When I realize there is no later yet, my chest tightens, then loosens. Over and over. Like a muscle learning a new job.I do not break.That surprises me.Instead, I learn the shape of loneliness without panic. I learn that missing someone does not mean I am losing them. It just means there is space now, and space can be lived in.I talk. Out loud.At first it feels foolish, then it feels necessary.I tell the tree by the river about my dreams. The ones where the world glitches and she laughs like it is nothing. The river gets updates too. I explain my day
Chapter 81- The Goodbye That Isn’t One
POV: JaredEmma did not disappear.That was the lie I had been preparing myself for. Light. Noise. Some dramatic tearing of space that would give my grief something sharp to hook onto.Instead, she packed slowly.Not with bags. With pauses.She touched things like she was checking they were still real. The edge of the table. The wall where the shelter leaned a little to the left. The river stone she liked because it fit perfectly in her palm. She left it where it was.I stood a few steps away and did not help. Not because I did not want to. Because helping would have meant participating in the leaving, and I was not ready to be that honest.When she was done, she walked.No announcement. No speech. Just forward, toward the place where the air thinned and the world felt less certain. The visitor waited farther ahead, out of respect or strategy. I did not care which.The grass bent under her feet. Then sprang back up.Every instinct in me screamed to follow.I had chased her across coll
Chapter 80- Emma Chooses Something New
POV: JaredShe did not say it like a sacrifice.That was the first thing that scared me.Emma said it while folding her sleeves, like she was preparing to wash her hands. Calm. Thought through. Already lived with the idea long enough that it had softened around the edges.“There’s a third option,” she said.I waited for the catch. There was always one.She would go with the visitor. Not forever. Not to save everything. Just one breach. One place that was still tearing itself apart. She would help them stabilize it, show them how to listen instead of forcing fixes, teach them how to let broken systems breathe.Then she would come back.No vows attached. No guarantees smuggled into the sentence.Just intention.I opened my mouth and nothing came out.I wanted to argue. I had the words ready. I had them memorized. I could list risks and probabilities and timelines like scripture. I could tell her how fragile this world still was, how fragile she was, how every separation felt like tempti
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What’s going on in his head
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