Chapter 3: A Shattered World
1011 Words
Lighting a candle and praying on the eve of impending upheaval might seem like a desperate grasp at straws.
But Elian Thorne reasoned that the supernatural phenomenon etched onto his arm belonged firmly in the realm of the inexplicable.
For Elian, a prayer cost nothing.
He believed in preparation—in leaving no room for regret when the clock ran out.
The time was 9:30 PM.
Elian sat hunched on his hard cot, the weak glow of his phone the only light piercing the bedroom’s gloom. His screen showed sparse messages: a few fragmented lines from his deskmate Nathan Grey. Silence from everyone else.
His mother Vivian Chambers’ contact icon sat untouched. A needle of disappointment pricked him.
Just a needle.
What had he expected, truly?
He bore no grudge.
His father had gambled away their homes, traded fists for affection, sought warmth in other beds. Elian never blamed Vivian for fleeing that wreckage. He’d watched his father’s fist connect with her cheek—felt grim satisfaction when she chose divorce.
Because it was right.
Before the split, grandmother had hissed warnings: "A woman shackled to a teenage son? Who'd want that burden?"
Hearing those words, Elian chose his father when the gavel fell.
He remembered their stunned faces—his mother’s trembling lips, his father’s baffled scowl. But this choice, too, was right.
Now Vivian had a new life, a new family radiating happiness from photos Elian never liked. He carried the ache carefully, like glass—never letting it clatter loud enough to disturb her peace.
Return Countdown: 2:31:12
The thought struck like a spark in dry tinder: If these were his last hours, what would he do?
The question hung heavy, yet edged with terrible romance.
It demanded truth: What burned in your chest, undone? What words choked your throat, unsaid?
Unspoken love. Faces unseen. Paths untraveled.
This was a blade laid against the pulse of his soul.
Elian surged upright, jacket snapping over his shoulders. Time bled away—but he threw his bicycle out the door and vaulted onto its creaking frame. He sped into the crisp autumn night.
Cold air stung his cheeks. Streets grew skeletal, stripped of pedestrians. The wind howling across Seven Arch Bridge clawed at his jacket like desperate hands.
Regrets haunted him—a legion of ghosts. But tonight demanded courage, not cowardice.
If death came knocking, he thought, he’d meet it with one final act done right.
He flew first to the Marriott, its glass facade glittering coldly. Empty.
Next, the Crown Plaza, its lobby echoing with hollow grandeur. Nothing.
Then Riverside Apartments, river mist clinging to its balconies. Still nothing.
He wove through narrow alleys slick with damp, tires hissing over cracked pavement, across the arching spine of Seven Arch Bridge, and finally into Maplewood Terrace.
There it was: the familiar, battered silhouette of a secondhand motorcycle parked crookedly below Building 17.
And then—the sound.
CRACK-CLACK-CLACK!
The unmistakable, percussive rhythm of gambling tiles rattled down from Unit 17B, Apartment 201.
Elian pulled out his phone. His thumb stabbed the digits: 9-1-1.
“Officer?” His voice was ice-calm. “I need to report illegal gambling. Maplewood Terrace, East District. Building 17, Unit 2, Apartment 201.”
A beat of stunned silence crackled over the line. “…Understood. Units are en route.”
Only then did the tension bleed from Elian’s shoulders. He wheeled his bike around.
Peace settled over him, cool and complete.
Home. Elian’s gaze dropped to the luminous script on his forearm:
Return Countdown: 00:31:49
In the final half-hour, he flicked on the desk lamp. Its yellow pool swallowed the room’s shadows. He pulled paper from the desk drawer, pen scratching furiously. A letter took shape—final words etched onto the page.
If death claimed him tonight, perhaps these words would whisper his truth someday.
If not… well, the path ahead might just fork into something utterly alien.
Return Countdown: 00:00:12
The letter lay finished. Elian sat bolt upright on the cot’s edge, spine rigid. His right hand clenched the boning knife’s worn handle. His eyes, clear and hard, focused. Pupils contracted to pinpricks.
As the end neared, a glacial calm settled upon him.
This was the eye of the hurricane—the breath sucked from the world before the tidal wave crashes down.
No churning dread. Only cold resolve and a furnace blast of courage igniting his veins!
10…
9…
8…
7…
6…
5…
4…
3…
2…
1.
No monsters. No zombies. No cataclysm.
Elian watched the world freeze. His phone screen froze at midnight. The wall clock’s second hand froze mid-tick. Streetlight glare through the window froze, solid as amber.
He shifted—a twitch of muscle.
*CRACK!*
The sound wasn’t audible, but felt—a shattering deep in the bones of reality. The world before him fractured like a dropped mirror.
Elian, knife still gripped, whipped his head around. The desk was gone. The walls dissolved. Only hungry darkness remained.
…
Time lost its fangs. An eternity? A blink? Meaningless.
Then, in the darkness—fragments. Shards of light, color, substance spun from the void. They slammed together in a dizzying, terrifying flash—
CRUNCH! WHOOSH!
—and resolved into solidity.
Elian lay sprawled on a narrow, unforgiving hard cot in a place utterly alien.
He snapped his gaze to his empty hand. The knife had vanished.
Then—his arm. The luminous script had rewritten itself:
Return Countdown: 47:59:59
A heartbeat later, it ticked relentlessly onward:
Return Countdown: 47:59:58
- Writer
