Prologue

The night sky was mesmerizing—almost unreal, like a dream woven from fantasy.

A sharp burst of electric blue light tears through the midnight sky, streaks of violet and green flickering in its wake. Haneul lay sprawled on the ground, his ankle twisted, knees and elbows raw with scrapes. He looked up with his eyes almost blurry from tears, catching his breath, he quickly scrambled to his feet, in-between the forest’s paths and the open end of the pathway was the side of a road.

Haneul stretched out his hands once more, his voice cracking as he called into the forest. His plea reached the lone figure standing by the guardrail. The figure, seemingly Haneul's age, stood with his back turned. Ragged blonde hair caught the shimmering colours of the surreal night sky. The man got close to the guardrail and presses his palms onto the cold metal railings, his posture unreadable. Then, slowly, he turned back to Haneul, he looked at Haneul, mouthing words that never reached his ears—words he would never decipher.

The sea illuminates beneath the shifting hues of the rainbow sky, like an iridescent gem unearthed from the depths of darkness. For a moment, it felt like time stood still. Haneul locked eyes with him for the last time. The man's lips moved, but no sound reached Haneul's ears. A hollow smile flickered across the man's face—then he was gone. 

Haneul couldn't save him. 

He hadn't even understood his final words.

A flash seared through the night.

Haneul barely had time to yelp before the impact hit—his body tensed, nerves ablaze as if every fiber of his being had been struck by lightning.  He fell, face-first, onto the forest floor. An electric surge ripped through Haneul's body, twisting through his spine and nerves like a thousand jagged wires. His muscles tensed, his body pressed into the earth as if the gravity had turned against him.

The pain was relentless. He clenched his teeth, wrinkles deepening on his furrowed brow. No scream escaped his lips—his body refused to allow it. In his mind, only one thought remained:

"Make it stop."

Maybe this was what his friend had wanted. Or maybe, in this moment, Haneul wanted the same.

"Please, just end it."

The agony intensified, it felt like his bones were rattling violently, messing up his guts and brain, twisting into sharp pain. His past flickered before his eyes—memories blurred by regret, by longing, by moments lost to time. The joy, the failures, the dreams still unfulfilled. It was too much, too fast. But with all these flashing before him, maybe it was also his turn to leave from this cruel world.

Then, a single thought shattered through the chaos.

His mother.

He hadn’t said goodbye.

The world was collapsing—not just around him, but inside him. The electric storm within his body reached its peak, then abruptly ceased. His eyelids flickered for several seconds—then darkness overtook him.

His body lay limp at the forest’s edge.

Above him, the night sky continued to glow.

New Year's Eve.

The last night Haneul could comprehend the world around him.

On December 31st, streaks of celestial light rained down upon Earth—not meteors, but something far worse. Many would assume that that it’d be called shooting stars.

However, they never struck the ground.

Instead, they targeted millions, unstoppable and chaotic, paralysing their victims mere moments before the turn of the new year.

Haneul was one of them.

A casualty of what would come to be known as the Nebulae Effect.