The bus jostled slightly as it rolled over a bump, and Ender felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen—a notification from one of the few apps he still had installed. Some food delivery service reminding him about a promotion he couldn't afford. He swiped it away with a sigh.
"Would be nice if they sent out coupons for free food once in a while," he muttered, shaking his head. "Y'know, for the broke, recently unemployed, and too available among us."
He shoved the phone back into his pocket and leaned his head against the window as the bus made its way toward the train station. He used to like this part of the ride—the low hum of the engine, the subtle vibrations through the floor. It used to feel like progress, like he was headed somewhere.
Tonight, though, it just felt like he was being dragged along, no destination in sight.
The bus slowed as the station came into view, its neon sign glowing faintly in the distance. Ender stood up, gathering the only thing he had—his phone—and stepped off as the doors hissed open. The station was quieter than the streets, filled only with the occasional screech of a train and the distant hum of the city behind him.
He descended the stairs, breathing in the familiar mix of stale air and faint grease. Train stations late at night had their own kind of atmosphere—disconnected from the rest of the world, almost suspended in time. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, throwing harsh shadows on the worn tile floor.
He reached the platform just as a train pulled in, its metallic sides catching the station lights. A few passengers stepped off, some lugging bags, others hunched into their coats and heading home. Ender boarded and took a seat near the back, where the car was mostly empty.
The doors shut with a soft whoosh, and the train eased forward, the rhythmic clatter of the tracks filling the silence. He looked out the window, watching the city blur past as they slipped through the underground. Reflections of the car interior danced on the glass, including a faint, ghostlike version of himself seated across the aisle.
"If I had a dollar for every ride like this," he mumbled to no one in particular. "Shit... I'd probably still be broke. But I'd have something to show for it."
A small laugh slipped out. Ender had always been good at finding humor in the mess—maybe out of habit, maybe for survival. If you couldn't laugh at life, what else could you do?
The car rocked gently through the tunnels, the overhead lights flickering now and then. He leaned back and let his mind drift.
Unwelcome memories surfaced. Foster homes, faces that came and went like phantoms. Some kind, some indifferent—none that stuck around. He thought about the first time he learned to ride the train alone, navigating the city with a crumpled map and a pocketful of change.
He thought about Lisa. She'd hired him at the restaurant three years ago when he was just fifteen. Barely legal to work, but desperate enough to try. She gave him a shot, and for a while, it felt like maybe things could settle. Maybe that place could be something close to home.
But like everything else, that had slipped away too.
The train rattled as it plunged into another tunnel, shadows flaring across the walls. Ender let his eyes close, not fully asleep, not fully awake. Just drifting somewhere in between, where thoughts blended with dreams.
And that's when he felt it.
A presence.
It wasn't the usual feeling Ender got when people stared—he was used to that. No, this was something else. Colder. More intentional. Like the air itself had shifted without warning.
He opened his eyes and looked around the train car, finding out it was empty. Same as before, but he felt this presence... like something lingering around the air, or a burning yet soothing feeling all over his body. It felt... strange; euphoric even, it was a sensation he couldn't quite describe.
It wasn't long before he got to his train stop and got off the bus. The strange feeling continued from the moment he got home, to him taking off his clothes, taking a shower, eating dinner, even as he was about to fall asleep.
The feeling was orgasmic, it was unbelievably pleasant, but it had gotten excessive as the feeling had persisted for over two hours, and it was almost 2 AM in the morning. The moment the the hour hand struck two on the dot, for a moment, and only a moment... the feeling ceased.
In the next though, it was the complete opposite of the feeling he had felt over the past two hours, the pain he felt was equally opposite to the feeling of euphoria he had been relishing over the past two hours.
The pain was so much so that he couldn't even shout... not to mention crying. It was all but a silent wail, a slight whimper that was let out in that moment, and that whimper was all that left his mouth for the next couple days hours as he lay on that bed.
His body was going through something even words from him couldn't completely describe. It broke down, thrusting him into an excruciating agony. And then the pain had blurred into something else.
It wasn't gone, not truly—but it had stretched, evolved, transformed into something more than pain. Something ancient. Like every nerve in Ender's body was rewiring for a purpose his mind couldn't grasp. He drifted, floating in a space that felt too vast to be real. Time lost its grip. Hours melted into seconds, seconds into eternities. He was nowhere, and yet...
Everywhere.
The vision struck like an explosion.
A city skyline cracked open like an egg, buildings splintering as monstrous roots erupted from the earth, black and glistening with an oily sheen. Skyscrapers twisted, groaned, then crumbled into heaps of glass and rebar.
Screams echoed—not of fear, but of disbelief. The sky fractured with crimson lightning, clouds boiling with ash and flame. People didn't run; they knelt, slack-jawed, staring at the impossible unraveling around them.
In the distance, oceans bled onto land. Saltwater surged like a beast freed from a cage, swallowing coastlines, devouring highways, dragging entire cities into the sea. The moon cracked in half. Not metaphorically—he saw it, saw the jagged split like a shattered tooth, saw one half drift while the other burned like coal. Gravity wept. Tides rioted.
Then the whispers began.
Voices—thousands, maybe millions—overlapping in a chorus so layered it became noise. But Ender could understand it. Not word for word, but message by message. They were welcoming him. Preparing him.
The vision bent again, showing a burned horizon where twisted shadows loomed. Creatures that looked half-human, half-nightmare prowled the bones of cities, eyes glowing with a sentience not born of this world.
One of them turned, and Ender saw his own face reflected in its gaze—older, sharper, terrifying in its calm. Not a monster, not quite human. Something new. Something meant to survive.
'Ender.'
The fire faded. The visions dissolved. He woke with a jolt, drenched in sweat, lungs clawing for air. Every breath felt like fire and frost.
The ceiling above him looked the same, but nothing else did. He sat up. The bed groaned beneath him. His knees were pulled halfway to his chest because his legs were far too long. His fingers—huge, inhuman—trembled as he raised his hands to his face.
His arms had thickened, muscles like coiled cables beneath the skin. He stood, swaying, heart hammering, and stumbled to the mirror.
The figure that stared back was a stranger. Eight feet tall. Broad as a doorway. His eyes shimmered with a low, golden hue, veins beneath his skin glowing faintly like circuitry pulsing with power.
His mouth opened, and for a moment, he couldn't speak. Then, one sentence fell out, something he saw right before he got pulled out of his vision. "Four months."
His reflection stared back, grave and certain.
"Four months until it begins."
The weight of it sank into his bones like concrete. The apocalypse wasn't coming. It had already started. And he was the only one who saw it coming.
"Fuck..."
Morning came quick, as he sat at home trying to figure out what to do, piecing together what he could remember of that vision, but not much came back into his memory strangely, despite remembering the time frame he had and a vague idea of what would happen.
He couldn't step out of the house yet, not looking like he currently did, he was currently a living billboard afterall. He swung his hand in frustration, clenching his fists, but something that he wasn't expecting, happened then and there.
"Well, that makes things a whole lot easier."
That was four months ago... and right now, he was currently counting down the minutes until it begun.