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The air in Anya's apartment was still and quiet, thick with the focused silence of deep study.
Curled on her bed, knees drawn up to form a desk for her heavy textbook, she traced a line of text with her finger. The pathogenesis of malaria involves the cyclical invasion of red blood cells by the Plasmodium parasite…
The words were a familiar, almost comforting, puzzle. The soft hum of the city outside her window was a distant lullaby.
This was her sanctuary. Orderly. Clean. Predictable.
Crash.
The sound was apocalyptic. Not from the street below, but from the very center of her living room. A thunderclap of shearing reality that vibrated through the floorboards.
« TELEPORTATION: COMPLETE » « ARRIVAL COORDINATES: STABILIZED » « HOST INTEGRITY: CRITICAL »
Anya jolted upright, the textbook tumbling to the floor with a dull thud. Her heart tried to escape her chest.
Every bad movie she'd ever seen flashed through her mind in a nanosecond.
Earthquake? No. Too sharp. A bomb?
Her eyes shot to the ceiling, expecting plaster dust and cracks.
Oh god. What if the upstairs neighbor finally blew up his meth lab?
But there was no follow-up explosion. No screams.
Only a strange, ringing silence that felt heavier than the noise itself.
Then, a new sound. A faint, sizzling pop. A wisp of… smoke? Or was it dust? It coiled in the air where the sound had originated.
A truly absurd, panic-fueled thought seized her.
Oh my god. Is this it? Is this an alien abduction? Are they materializing in my living room? I'm in my sleep shorts!
She half-expected a beam of light to shoot down and whisk her away to be probed. She dove off the bed and scrambled underneath it, squeezing herself into the dusty space, making herself as small as possible.
Maybe they won't see me. Maybe they'll just take my textbooks and leave.
She held her breath, waiting for the whir of alien machinery, the eerie green light.
But nothing happened.
The strange sizzling sound faded. The wisp of smoke or whatever it was dissipated.
The only sound left was a slow, rhythmic drip.
Plink.
A pause.
Plink.
It was too thick to be water from a pipe. Too deliberate. It was the sound of something leaking that should not be leaking.
Her absurd fear of little green men evaporated, replaced by a much more primal, real dread.
Cautiously, she crawled out from her hiding place. She rose slowly, her back pressed against the wall, and peered around the corner of her bedframe.
And she saw him.
A man. A broken, bleeding heap in the middle of her floor. His arm was bent at a horrifying angle. A deep gash on his forehead welled with dark blood.
With every slow, struggling beat of his heart, a single drop gathered, swelled, and fell.
Plink.
It landed in the small, already spreading pool of crimson on her pale, clean tiles.
For three heartbeats, Anya stood still. Frozen in disbelief. Terrified by the horrendous sight.
Then she snapped back into reality.
Training overrode terror.
"Focus. Airway. Breathing. Circulation. Shut up and move, Anya."
She shoved the panic into a locked box in her mind and sprinted across the room, skidding to her knees. Her hands, moving on autopilot, pressed a wad of towels hard against the savage wound on his chest.
Crimson instantly bloomed against the white terrycloth.
"Hey. Can you hear me? Stay with me," her voice was a sharp, commanding bark, belying the storm of fear inside. "What's your name?"
His eyelids fluttered. His lips, cracked and bloody, moved.
A dry, rasping whisper, layered with an echo that shouldn't exist, escaped them.
"…Sekhet…"
The name was the sound of sand scouring rock.
Okay. Okay, that's a name. A weird, scary-sounding name, but a name.
"Okay, Sekhet," she said, her tone shifting into the calm, reassuring cadence she'd practiced for patients in shock. "I need you to focus on my voice. You're safe now. You're in my home. My name is Anya. I'm going to help you, but you have to stay with me."
You are not safe. Nothing about this is safe. My floor is covered in your blood and I think my reality is breaking.
She reached for an antiseptic wipe, her movements efficient. "You've lost a lot of blood, Sekhet. I need to get this bleeding under control."
She began to clean a gash on his arm, the strange, swirling grit in it refusing to wash away.
He moaned, his head thrashing.
"…the balance… the thirst…" he whispered, his voice shifting, becoming dry and ancient. "The dust that gnaws…"
A sensation of profound, aching dryness flooded her mind. The scent of her apartment of antiseptic and blood was suddenly undercut by the phantom smell of hot, sterile sand.
She shook her head, fighting the vision. Concussion. Severe delirium. Focus.
"I know, I know it's thirsty," she soothed, mistaking his meaning entirely. "I'll get you water, I promise. But first, I need you to lie still for me, Sekhet. You're going to be okay."
His body tensed. His voice changed again, becoming deeper, resonant, vibrating through the floor.
"Kavral! The foundation must hold! The rules…"
This time, the sensation was one of immense, immovable pressure. Of deep, dark silence and patient, tectonic strength.
Is Kavral a friend?
"Is Kavral a friend?" Anya asked, still working, trying to ground him in reality. "We can call Kavral later. Right now, it's just you and me. Just Sekhet and Anya. You're doing great."
Just as suddenly, the tension left him. He collapsed back, unconscious, his breathing still shallow but somehow more stable.
Anya sat back on her heels, utterly spent. She had done all she could.
He was stabilized. For now.
"Okay, Sekhet," she breathed out, wiping her bloody hands on a clean part of a towel. "The worst is over. Now we just…"
Her voice trailed off.
The silence that descended was thick and heavy.
And then, a new sound.
A faint, dry scratching.
It was coming from the wall behind her desk. Anya turned, her blood running cold.
There, on the clean, rented drywall, a patch of paint was blistering and peeling.
"No," she whispered. "No, no, no."
As she watched, a tendril of black mold spread through the plaster with visible, unsettling speed.
The air in the room grew stiflingly dry, parching her throat.
From the kitchen faucet came a gurgle, then a hiss. Brown, gritty water spat into the sink for a moment before falling silent.
Anya's eyes darted from the rotting wall to the broken man on her floor.
The locked box in her mind burst open.
Her gaze shot to her phone on the desk. It sat there, innocuous, a lifeline to the normal world. The rational world. The world where you called for help.
I have to call, she thought, the logic inescapable. He needs a hospital. A real surgeon. Blood transfusions. Things I can't give him.
She pushed herself up, her legs stiff and unsteady, and walked to the desk. She picked up the phone.
Its familiar weight felt alien in her hand.
Her thumb hovered over the screen.
She tried rehearsing what to say
"What do I say?" The thought was a cold splash of water." Hello, 911? A man just… fell into my living room. Yeah, fell. From the ceiling. No, there's no hole. He's just here. And his bruises are kind of… glowing? And I think sand is trying to kill him?"
"They wouldn't send an ambulance. They'd send police".
And then questions would turn to suspicions. They'd see the impossible nature of his injuries, the blood on her hands and clothes.
They might even think she did this to him. The story was too insane to be true. She'd be dismissed, or worse, committed.
But he would die without real help.
Torn apart by duty and fear, she took a shuddering breath. She had to try. She had to hope they'd just send the paramedics and ignore the insanity of it all.
Her thumb found the digits: 9-1-1.
She pressed the call button and raised the phone to her ear. The dial tone buzzed, a sound of mundane connection that felt utterly surreal.
It rang once.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. What are the first words? My name? My address? "I need an ambulance?"
It rang a second time.
Her eyes were locked on the broken man on her floor. Please just be a man. Please just be a normal, injured man.
A voice, crisp and professional, answered in her ear. "911, what is your emergency?"
Anya opened her mouth. "I—" her voice was a dry croak. She cleared her throat, forcing the words out. "I need an ambu—"
Her words died.
On the floor, Deo's body shuddered.
« SYSTEM INITIALIZATION: 0.4% COMPLETE » « HOST VITAL SIGNS: CRITICAL » « ACTIVATING EMERGENCY HEALING PROTOCOL »
A soft, golden light the color of a low sunrise began to emanate from the deep gash on his forehead. As Anya watched, speechless, the edges of the wound began to knit themselves together.
« CELLULAR REGENERATION: INITIATED » « BIOLOGICAL STRUCTURES: RECALIBRATING »
The blood still on his skin seemed to vaporize into faint, coppery mist. The bruising across his ribcage, the deep volcanic purple, softened and faded, the shimmering quartz-like veins within them pulsing once before dissolving back into unmarked skin.
« VITAL SIGNS: STABILIZING » « SYSTEM INITIALIZATION: 0.5% COMPLETE »
The ruler-and-tape splint on his arm was now utterly superfluous; the bone was straightening, the swelling gone.
It was silent. It was effortless. It was the most impossible thing she had ever witnessed.
The phone slipped from her numb fingers and clattered onto the tiles.
"Hello? Ma'am? Are you there?" the operator's voice crackled from the floor, tinny and impatient. "What is your emergency?"
She scrambled for it, her fingers fumbling. "False alarm! I'm…. I'm sorry! My television! It was too loud! An action movie!"
The lie tasted like ash on her tongue. She ended the call before the operator could respond.
Silence rushed back in.
He was still unconscious, but he was no longer dying. He was… repairing.
The clinical part of her mind, the part that had just been screaming for a hospital, now whispered a new, terrifying truth:
There is no ambulance for this. There is no protocol. There is no one you can call.
Slowly, numbly, Anya lowered the phone. Her thumb found the END button and pressed it.
The line went dead.
The silence in the apartment was now charged with a new, profound electricity.
The only evidence of the violence was the pool of blood on the floor and the bloody towels scattered around her.
She took a single, stumbling step backward, her back hitting the wall. She slid down it until she was sitting on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring at the now-whole man sleeping on her floor.
The phone slipped from her numb fingers and clattered onto the tiles.
"What are you?" she whispered into the silent, charged air.
The question wasn't for the operator anymore. It was for him. It was for the universe that had broken into her home.
And for the first time, she truly understood that no one was coming to help.
She was on her own.
With a surreal sense of duty, she found a bowl of warm water and a cloth. She began to clean the remaining blood from his chest and face.
His clothes a torn t-shirt and jeanswere soaked and filthy.
"Okay, Sekhet," she murmured to herself, the name feeling absurd. "I'm sorry about this, but I can't let you get an infection after all… that."
She worked, carefully peeling off the ruined t-shirt.
I am so sorry. I promise I'm not a weirdo. I hope you forgive me for this.
She draped a blanket over him and finally sat back, exhaustion hitting her like a physical blow.
She leaned against the side of her bed, drawing her knees to her chest.
It's over. For now.
Then her eyes drifted to the wall.
The patch of dry rot had grown, its tendrils now stretching toward the ceiling like black, skeletal fingers.
The air still tasted of dust.
It's not over.
A whisper, so faint it was almost a trick of the air, escaped Deo's lips.
"…hello?…"
Anya froze, her weariness forgotten. She leaned forward.
Is he waking up?
"…anyone…?"
The words were slurred, dreamy, full of a confusion that was entirely, heartbreakingly human.
It was the voice of a lost boy, not a warring god.
On the floor, Deo's body remained still, a vessel empty of its pilot.
But in the silence of her apartment, his voice was a ghost.
"…helooo?…"
The word hung in the dusty air, a question without an answer.
Anya wrapped her arms around herself, a chill that had nothing to do with temperature creeping down her spine.
In another realm, a place not of sight or sound but of pure essence, Deo's consciousness floated.
His body was a distant memory, a phantom ache.
Here, there was only a formless, drifting awareness. A feeling of being utterly, completely alone in an infinite, silent expanse.
"Hello?" The thought formed, a tiny ripple in the void. "Is anyone here?"
There was no answer. No echo.
The silence was absolute, a pressure that threatened to dissolve his very sense of self.
"Helooo?" he cast the thought out again, a desperate plea into the emptiness. "God?… System?…"
The names vanished into the nothingness, consumed.
He had poured every ounce of his power into that blind, desperate leap, and it had stranded him here wherever here was.
The mantle of the Old One was a guttered candle within him.
He was adrift.
And the silence was beginning to whisper.
I fixed his body, Anya thought, staring at the lost, sleeping form of the man she called Sekhet.
But wherever he truly is, he's still gone.
And I have no idea how to bring him back.