Real earth
Year 2350
The sky over Suncity pulsed with a strange glow—subtle, almost imperceptible, yet unnerving. From the observation deck of the Solar Tower, Mike stood with arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the horizon. His golden halo hovered silently behind him, casting rings of soft light across the steel floor. The city below was a maze of ordered streets, solar panels, and gleaming towers, but today… something felt off.
He had felt it hours earlier: a ripple, faint but undeniable—like a knock against the wall of reality itself.
"Unregistered spatial anomaly detected," came Zara's voice through the comms.
Mike turned away from the glass and pressed his earpiece. "Where?"
"South perimeter. Old ruins just beyond the plasma field."
"Send Luna. I'll meet her there."
"I'm already en route," came Luna's reply. Her voice was calm, but there was a slight edge to it. "And Mike… you'll want to see this for yourself."
The air around the breach crackled with residual energy. Zara stood in the center of a blackened crater, fingers glowing as he scanned the area. Burnt soil, fractured stone, and jagged marks tore through the earth like claws dragged from beneath. The portal had closed, but its signature lingered—cold, alien, and humming with dormant hunger.
Mike approached slowly, his halo spinning tighter. Luna crouched beside a broken structure nearby, her golden eyes focused on the corpse before them.
It was the size of a bear but twisted, unnatural. Its limbs were elongated, flesh glistening like liquid shadow, and where its face should have been, there was only a mouth of serrated teeth that stretched too wide.
Zara looked up, face unreadable. "It came through moments before the rift collapsed. Took three units to put it down. Fast. Smart. Not like anything we've seen."
Mike knelt beside it. "No sign of infection? Mutation?"
"None. Biological scans show zero matches in our databases. This thing... isn't from any ecosystem we know."
"Not from this Earth," Luna muttered. "But from an Earth."
Mike studied the creature. The aura it radiated—dark, heavy—was almost the inverse of the light he carried. He could feel his halo reacting, tightening with unseen tension. There was something ancient in this thing. Something wrong.
He rose, silent.
Zara looked up from his tablet. "The rupture lasted twenty-three seconds. No known trigger. No gravitational shift. Just... opened."
"A breach," Mike said softly, eyes still locked on the corpse.
Zara nodded. "Exactly. Like something on the other side reached out."
Luna stepped forward. "If there's an 'other side,' what else is waiting?"
That night, as Suncity settled into uneasy silence, Mike retreated to the Chamber of Light. The central cathedral hummed with faint energy. High stained-glass windows filtered the fading sun into kaleidoscopic hues, and the marble statue of the god stood at the far end—arms open, face hidden beneath a crown of seven points.
Mike approached, the golden halo at his back growing brighter. He knelt.
"I saw something today," he whispered. "Something that doesn't belong here."
His voice echoed off the ancient walls.
"Was it a warning? A mistake? Or something worse?"
The air changed. The candles along the altar flared, their light shifting from yellow to white.
And then, a voice—gentle and vast—filled the chamber.
"The world you walk is not alone. A mirror breathes."
Mike's brow furrowed. "A mirror?"
"There are truths too deep for light. Shadows echo where memory was severed."
"I don't understand."
"The creature was a ripple… not the stone."
Mike looked up. "Is there more coming?"
There was a long silence.
Then, "Seven shards. One bearer. Two Earths. One fate."
The light dimmed.
Mike sat in the dark, still kneeling.
He didn't know what he had seen. He didn't know where that creature had come from. But if there was a place capable of birthing such things—a place fractured from his own—then whatever was coming wasn't just unknown.
It was forgotten.
And now, it had found them.