That night, the rain did not stop.
It stitched the world back together with silver threads but something vital was still missing.
The streets glistened like wet glass, and under each lamp, a ghost of memory lingered. People smiled too hard. Laughed a little too loud. Liamson was healing — or pretending to.
Scene: Rooftop Moments after
Mark stares at the girl. Her expression is calm, but her eyes are too old for someone their age.
Mark:You know what happened, don't you?
Girl:I remember what they erased.* I wasn't supposed to be here. Neither were you.
She steps closer. The rain doesn't touch her.
Time seems to hesitate.
Girl: Do you remember the night they called it *The Ruling*?
Mark:(quietly) I lived it.
A deep hum rises from Mark's broken watch — not ticking but *pulling.
Reality bends for a split second: the rooftop flickers — *flames, screams, silence.
Then it's gone.
Scene: Flashback — "The Ruling"
A chaotic blur:
A red sky. Sirens.
A child's voice calling out.
A figure—her—running into the black.
And a fracture—like a mirror cracking across the sky.
Scene: Rooftop — Present
Mark stumbles back, breathing hard.
Girl:You saw it. You *still* see it. That's why they can't reach you.
Mark: Who are they?
Girl:The ones who rewrote the world. Who wrote *us* out of it.
Mark walks to the edge of the rooftop with her.
Mark:If I was erased… why am I still here?
Girl: Because you held on.
Because someone whispered your name back into the wind.
She reaches into her jacket, pulling out a torn, water-stained photograph:
Four kids. A younger Mark. The girl. Two others — their faces scorched out by light.
Girl: Do you remember them?
Mark: (whispers) No. But... I miss them.
Scene: College Library — Later That Day
Mark and the girl — now introducing herself as Amari search through digital newspapers. They find fragments of deleted stories. Days that no longer exist. A headline with no article: Sky Fractures Seen Over Liamson
Amari: They covered it up. But the cracks are still there.
Somewhere beneath the surface, the truth remembers itself.
A loud *clang*. A book drops behind them.
No one is there.
But written in chalk on the floor, still wet from invisible rain:
"DO NOT SLEEP. MEMORY IS A TRAP."
Scene: Night — Mark's Room
He stares out the window. Across the city, he sees a building flicker — like static on an old TV.
Reality is unstable.
Mark touches the photograph Keira gave him.
His fingers burn.
A whisper, not his own, echoes in the room:
"You were not supposed to survive The Ruling."
TO BE CONTINUED…