It began as a flicker in the sky.
One. Then another. Then hundreds, arcing across the atmosphere like divine sparks. The meteor shower painted streaks of fire across the heavens, too beautiful to be real… until the first explosion thundered through the earth.
Julyah didn't stay to watch.
She had already packed the last of her essentials, neatly stored within the glowing flower tattoo on her wrist, a relic of blood and memory and magic. The bracelet, once an heirloom passed down through generations, had fused into her skin days ago and bloomed into a space-defying inventory. With a thought, she could summon or conceal everything she needed: maps, rations, medicine, tools, weapons, notebooks.
It responded only to her. As if it had been waiting.
The city was already unraveling: traffic lights out, sirens blaring, panicked voices rising like a tide she refused to drown in.
By the time the first meteor struck the outer borough, she was weaving her motorcycle through a jammed highway shoulder, boots scraping the asphalt as she banked a sharp turn and veered toward the old service road that no one ever used.
Behind her, the skyline cracked.
The towers, her city, folded inward like paper.
She didn't look back.
By the time she reached the villa, the world had already changed.
The air was heavier. The light was wrong, grey and dim like the sun had second thoughts about shining. Fires dotted the distant valleys. Cell signals were gone. The road signs were half-melted or missing. Somewhere far behind her, people were screaming. Running. Dying.
But the villa?
It stood perfectly still.
Tucked high into the mountains, shrouded by towering pines and mist, the house looked less like a building and more like a myth, a secret whispered through generations and waiting for the right soul to return.
The long drive was quiet, save for the crunch of gravel under tires and the occasional pop of falling ash. When she reached the gates, they opened on their own, solar-powered, motion-sensitive, and completely intact.
Not a single window broken.
Not a single shingle displaced.
Julyah parked the motorcycle beside the RV and truck already hidden under tarps near the garage, her breath fogging in the unnaturally cold air.
It was summer.
But the wind bit like winter.
Inside the villa, the silence was velvet.
The greenhouse lights blinked gently, casting a soft, green glow through the fogged glass dome that stretched over the east wing. Below that, buried discreetly into the mountain slope, lay the bunker: shelves stacked with military-grade rations, vacuum-sealed heirloom seeds, portable water purifiers, radiation blockers, and enough medical kits to run a clinic.
But she didn't need to touch them yet.
Most of what she needed, her best equipment, her carefully rationed food, her personal journals and hidden tools, remained stored within her skin, suspended in that glowing, living space that felt both ancient and otherworldly.
She walked the perimeter slowly, methodically, checking everything twice. The solar array embedded beneath the soil hummed to life beneath her boots. The heat sensors triggered. The air filters kicked in with a subtle whir.
Every shelf was full.
Every bolt locked tight.
Every measure, every precaution, had been predicted.
It wasn't just a home.
It was a sanctuary.
A message left in silence.
A question wrapped in luxury and paranoia: Who knew this was coming?
She sat by the fire that evening, cross-legged on the wooden floor, the storm flashing against the panoramic windows behind her like a warning. In her lap sat a notebook, hand-bound, leather-wrapped, weatherproofed. The kind built to survive floods and fire.
She opened it.
On the first page, she wrote:
DISASTERS TO EXPECT:
Meteor impacts (Phase I: confirmed)
Extreme Heat Snowstorms in high summer
Earthquakes
Tsunamis
Volcanic eruptions
Sudden desertification
Storms with unnatural wind speeds
She paused.
Then added, beneath it:
"Not random. This is a sequence. Someone—or something—is setting the world on fire piece by piece."
She underlined it twice.
Outside, the sky cracked again, this time not with flame, but lightning.
And Julyah, alone but unshaken, watched it from the safety of the one place on Earth that still felt untouched.
For now.