Jaden pushed open the door to Room 4-B, already late, already over it.
A few heads turned. Mr. Aldrin didn’t even bother looking up.
“Late again. Just grab a seat, Hayes. Try not to waste more time than you already have.”

Jaden gave a slight nod—just enough to acknowledge, not enough to mean anything.
“Back corner,” Mr. Aldrin muttered. “As always.”
Jaden walked past the rows without a word. Most kids didn’t even look up.
He took his seat by the window. The glass was cold. The draft was worse.
Same spot. Same story.

From Jaden’s perspective, Room 4-B felt like a room full of people just waiting for the day to be over.
The desks were arranged in crooked rows, stained with graffiti and gum that had survived generations. The whiteboard was barely clean. One corner still had last week’s notes faintly visible—something about atomic structure and student debt.
A ceiling fan spun overhead with a noise like it hated its job more than the students did. Every time it wobbled, Owen called it a Final Destination prequel.
The air smelled like floor polish and boredom.

Front row: the overachievers.
Middle row: the loud ones, the class clowns, the ones who wanted to be noticed.
Back row: the sleepers, the doodlers, the kids who had already checked out.

Jaden hovered somewhere between them.
He didn’t talk much. Didn’t raise his hand.
Most people knew him as the guy in the black hoodie who always sat by the window.
Some thought he was mysterious.
Others thought he was broke.
They were both right.

“...when two unstable elements interact—can anyone remind me what happens?”
Mr. Aldrin stood at the front, sleeves pushed up, coffee in one hand, marker in the other.
He looked like he was counting the days to retirement.

Owen raised his hand. “They fight and explode. Like Marco and his ex.”
“Still more stable than your GPA,” Marco said, not even looking up from his sketchpad.

The class laughed.
Mr. Aldrin didn’t.
“Correct. Explosions.” He tapped the board once. “Just like what’s coming to your next exam.”

Jaden leaned into the window, resting his temple against the frame. The metal was cool, faintly vibrating from the wind outside.
The sky was starting to darken—not a storm yet, but enough to make him think it might rain.

Across the street, pigeons scattered in loose flocks, lifting off in waves like they’d heard something he hadn’t.
Down on the sidewalk, a delivery guy pushed a dolly toward a storefront, headphones in, head down. Oblivious.

Everything still looked normal.
For now.

Owen twisted halfway in his seat. “You alive back there, Hayes?”
“Barely.”
“You look like a raccoon that lost the trash fight.”

Jaden didn’t respond. Didn’t even blink.
Mr. Aldrin let out a tired breath. “Owen, if the next thing out of your mouth isn’t chemistry-related, I’m pre-failing you.”
Owen raised his hands. “I’ll bond my lips shut.”
“See me after class.”

The class drifted after that—half listening, half waiting for the bell.
No one really wanted to be there.
Not even the teacher.

Then the buzzer rang.
Chairs screeched against the floor. Bags were grabbed. Conversations picked up mid-sentence.
It felt less like the end of class and more like someone had shouted “Evacuate.”

Owen paused at the door. “You coming?”
Jaden shook his head. “Didn’t bring anything.”

Owen looked at him for a beat. Then reached into his hoodie pocket, pulled out a protein bar, and tossed it underhand onto Jaden’s desk.
“Don’t starve, edge lord.”
“Thanks.”

Owen gave a casual two-finger salute and slipped into the hallway.
Mr. Aldrin followed, still muttering to himself. Something about cold coffee and needing a different career.

Then the door shut.
And Jaden was alone.

Jaden reached into his bag and pulled out the sandwich. Half-wrapped in wax paper. One bite missing.
Peanut butter, slightly mashed.
Elise had handed it to him that morning without saying a word.
Just a glance, a nod, and then she was out the door.
He didn’t ask if there was anything else. He already knew the answer.

He took a bite. Chewed slowly. The bread was a little dry.
Didn’t matter.

The light outside had dimmed.
Jaden glanced at the window again.
The clouds were stacked low over the rooftops, heavy and slow-moving.
Not the kind that drifted in.
These looked like they’d settled in to stay.
They were darker—piled high, spreading out as if they were swallowing the sky whole.

His eyes narrowed.
It didn’t feel like rain.
It felt like something pressing down.

Something flickered across the sky—jagged and pale violet, gone before he could blink.
His stomach dropped.
That wasn’t normal lightning.
Unlike any kind he’d seen before.

The second bolt hit harder.
It split the sky wide—louder, brighter, more violent than before.
Still no thunder.
Just a blinding crack of pale violet that tore through the clouds in jagged lines.
Not a flash.
A rupture.

Jaden sat up.
His phone buzzed.
Once.
Then again.
Then it wouldn’t stop.

BREAKING: 8.9 Quake – Tokyo Bay. Tsunami Warning Issued.
Beijing – Multiple Aftershocks Confirmed. Metro Services Suspended.
Athens – Tornado Cluster Detected. Emergency Evacuation Ordered.
Cairo – Lava Emergence Reported Near the Pyramids.
Washington D.C. – National Emergency Declared.

He scrolled.
Videos auto-played.

A wave taller than buildings surged into Tokyo’s harbor, swallowing streets whole. Cars, buses, entire blocks vanished beneath it like they’d never existed. A live feed cut off mid-sentence—just screams, then static.

In Beijing, skyscrapers trembled before collapsing like dominoes. Dust plumed upward, swallowing the skyline. Bridges snapped clean through. People ran, but the ground buckled beneath them.

Over Athens, the sky twisted into spirals. Cyclones dipped and tore through neighborhoods, dragging marble statues and entire rooftops into the air like paper.

In Egypt, the sand cracked open. Lava spilled across the desert like blood from a wound. The Pyramids stood silhouetted behind smoke and flame as molten rock cut a path toward the city.

The Midwest of the United States was next. Tornadoes—too many to count—touched down across the plains. Entire towns were lifted off their foundations. A school gymnasium collapsed mid-evacuation. Someone’s livestream captured a funnel tearing through a highway before the phone went dark.

Indonesia disappeared beneath water. A megatsunami hit from both coasts, slamming into cities like Jakarta and Surabaya within minutes of each other. The ocean had turned into a predator.

Rio de Janeiro. A sinkhole the size of a stadium opened beneath a packed plaza. People screamed as the ground dropped out from under them.

Paris. The Eiffel Tower stood against a sky cracked open by violet lightning—then burst into flame.

He couldn’t keep up. Every swipe brought something worse.

Then the floor trembled.

Soft at first.
Then stronger.

The window cracked.
A bulb popped overhead.

And then—
Screams.

The world didn’t just shake.
It shifted.
Like a skin that no longer fit.

Mountains twisted. Oceans pulled back. The very shape of continents began to realign.

In some places, gravity bent.
In others, time stuttered—seconds skipping like a scratched recording.

Cities vanished without impact. Entire landscapes folded in on themselves, not crushed—rewritten.

Above it all, the sky bled violet. Not from light, but from pressure, like something was pushing through from the other side.

Across the globe, reality began to rupture.

Some called them quakes.
Others called them storms.

But it was neither.

It was the fabric of the world unraveling, thread by thread, too massive to comprehend.

And it wasn’t over.
This wasn’t an ending.
It was Just Beginning.

Back in the hallway—chaos.
The loudspeaker crackled to life.

“Attention students and staff—this is an emergency evacua—”
The announcement cut out in a burst of static.

Then the floor lurched sideways.

Students screamed. Some ran. Some froze. A few fell as the ground buckled beneath their feet.
A desk crashed through the glass wall of the science lab.
Someone was yelling for help. Another voice shouted to move.

A boy tripped over a locker door and vanished into a fissure that split the tiles wide open.
Gone. Just like that.

The fire alarms blared overhead, shrill and useless.
Lockers buckled and burst open, spewing books and bags across the hallway like shrapnel.

Jaden moved.
But nothing felt real.

Not the screaming. Not the smoke. Not the hallway splitting open like paper.

His mind kept repeating—this isn’t happening.

But his body didn’t care.
It moved without asking.

And before he could think, he was already sprinting through the door.

He pushed through the crush of bodies.
Shoulder to shoulder. Screams on all sides. A teacher tried to herd kids toward the stairwell but got knocked down in the stampede.

The floor cracked again. Dust fell from the ceiling.
Then chunks of it.

Jaden ducked, slipped, kept moving.
Down the stairs—two steps at a time—past broken handrails and falling debris.

Blood smeared the walls.
Smoke rolled through the second floor like fog.

At the bottom of the stairs, the main entrance had caved in. A security guard was pinned under part of the ceiling. Another student knelt beside him, sobbing.

Jaden didn’t stop.
Couldn’t.

He turned and sprinted for the side exit.
The one near the gym. The one Elise used to pick him up from.

He threw open the door and burst into the open—
—into a world he didn’t recognize.

The sky was gone.
No sun. No blue. Just black and violet, shifting like torn fabric pushed from the other side.

Lightning arced overhead—silent, unnatural.
It didn’t burst or fade.
It just stayed there, stretched across the clouds like a scar that hadn’t finished healing.

Buildings across the street leaned at strange angles.
One had already collapsed, the top floor buried beneath its own foundation.

A bus lay on its side, half-crushed against a streetlamp.
Smoke leaked from the windows, thick and slow.
The air tasted metallic.

The world hadn’t fallen apart.
It was still falling.

People were screaming names.
Others were just screaming.
Some ran.
Some didn’t get far.

A man lay crushed beneath a fallen traffic light—legs twisted, eyes wide open.
A woman knelt beside a car, clawing at the frame, trying to pull someone out from underneath.
They weren’t moving.

Jaden kept going.
Not toward help.
Not toward safety.
Just one direction.
Home.

It wasn’t a plan.
It was all he had.

Elise. Kenneth. Elise. Kenneth.

Their names kept looping in his head—praying that they were okay.

His foot hit something soft.
He glanced down—
A hand, half-buried in the rubble. Skin pale. Fingers limp.

His stomach twisted.
He looked away fast.
Not because he didn’t care.
Because he couldn’t handle the horror.

Jaden didn’t need street signs to know where he was.
This was his block.
Or what was left of it.

His lungs burned. His legs were shaking, torn up from the run, from the panic, from everything.

He turned the corner.

And everything inside him just—
Stopped.

His breath hitched. His stomach dropped.
It felt like his body had been yanked out from under him.

There was no building.

Where his apartment building used to stand, there was nothing but ruin.
Steel beams jutted out of the rubble like broken ribs.
Bricks were crushed into the sidewalk.
Half a stairwell hung from the air, leading nowhere.

Window frames were bent backward, shattered, like the walls had been peeled away from the inside.
Smoke curled from what used to be the front entrance.
Flames flickered inside like they hadn’t realized the building was already dead.

He stepped forward.
The ground crunched beneath him.
Shattered tile. Glass.
Something sharp cut into his shoe.
He didn't feel it.

Ash floated through the air, slow and steady.
It landed on his head, his shoulders, and his arms.
It wasn’t peaceful.
It was what was left when everything else had already collapsed.