It all snapped at once.
One second I was sitting in the cafeteria, bored out of my mind, pretending to care about some dumb story Jack was telling.
The next, the air itself tore apart like paper soaked in oil.
The Fracture had woken up.
I felt it move through the world like a ripple.
Soft at first.
Then louder.
The windows cracked without a sound.
The walls bent inward like melting wax.
And one by one, the screens around us began to burn with impossible colors.
The first scream came from Theo.
He clawed at his chest, his body glitching and warping, and then—snap—he was gone.
Sucked into the swirling maw of a glowing phone screen.
One by one, the others followed.
Mia.
Ivy.
Rose.
Jack.
It wasn't chaos.
Not really.
It was... orchestrated.
Neat.
Tidy.
I just watched.
No fear.
No sadness.
If anything, I felt... relieved.
---
The Fracture didn't bother hiding anymore.
It danced along the walls, cracking reality into jagged slices.
Through the shattered fragments, I glimpsed the rest of them:
Sofia crying out before her phone devoured her.
Lucas throwing his backpack, trying to fight it — and losing.
Ayaka running until the floor broke apart under her feet.
One by one, their struggles didn't matter.
The world had already decided.
And me?
I was the only one it didn't touch.
Not yet.
---
The cafeteria — the whole school — began collapsing into nothingness.
Falling upward into a dark spiral in the sky.
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
Not a call.
Not a text.
A summons.
I pulled it out, and the cracked screen glowed with swirling color — a portal, not a device anymore.
The Fracture inside me hummed, hungry, excited.
I smiled to myself.
"Guess it's time," I muttered, stepping forward.
The phone swallowed me whole.
---
The sensation was like being ripped apart atom by atom, then stitched back together wrong.
Colors I couldn't name, sounds I couldn't hear with human ears, thoughts that weren't mine.
For a moment, I wasn't Jerry anymore.
I wasn't anything.
And then—
I landed.
---
Grass.
Wide, endless grass, stretching out under a pale violet sky.
A horizon that went on forever, painted in blues and oranges and colors that should've been impossible.
The air buzzed with energy — raw, electric, wild.
Mountains floated in the distance, islands suspended in the sky like drifting whales.
Strange trees bent in the wind, their leaves shimmering like glass.
And sprawled across the plains around me, blinking and gasping, were the others.
All the classmates.
The Asians.
The Westerners.
Everyone.
Dropped like broken dolls across the field.
Confused.
Scared.
Some already starting to cry.
Some ready to fight.
They didn't understand yet.
This wasn't Earth anymore.
This was New Horizons.
Their new home.
Their new prison.
Their new stage.
---
I brushed dust off my jacket and stared out across the alien landscape.
The Fracture pulsed in my chest, whispering secrets it had never told me before.
I wasn't lost.
I wasn't scared.
I was exactly where I was meant to be.
And for the first time in a long time, I smiled — a real smile.
"Let's see who breaks first," I whispered.
The wind swallowed my words.
And New Horizons spread wide before me, waiting.