Elias spent the rest of his shift in a fog of hyper-awareness. He stared hard at the cinnamon shaker, the espresso machine, and the neon sign, waiting for the reality to tear again. It didn't. The world remained stubbornly, reassuringly normal.
"You should really go home, Elias," Maya advised after the lunch rush. "You've spilled three gallons of water and nearly gave Mr. Henderson a decaf."
Elias took her advice. He peeled off his apron, told his manager he felt a migraine coming on, and stepped out onto the sidewalk of Veridia City.
The sheer volume of the city hit him: the squeal of tires, the aggressive honking, the blare of sirens, and the roar of a thousand hurried conversations. It was a perfect, deafening anesthetic for strange visions. He focused on the rhythm of his worn sneakers hitting the pavement. Just a bad night's sleep. Just stress.
He turned a corner onto Aether Avenue, a major, six-lane artery usually choked with bumper-to-bumper traffic. He had to cross here to catch his bus.
Just as the pedestrian signal flashed 'Walk,' a voice, dry as parchment and utterly out of place, cut through the noise.
"The clock ticks, Elias Vance. And you are late for your own reckoning."
Elias froze. He knew the voice. It belonged to the eccentric woman he'd seen days ago, the one who spoke in riddles.
He turned. She was standing beneath a flickering streetlamp, though the sun was high. She was old—not simply elderly, but ancient, draped in layers of heavy, dark wool despite the warmth. Her face was a map of deep creases, and her eyes, though cloudy, held an alarming intensity.
"Look, lady, I don't know what you want," Elias said, starting to edge past her. "I just want to get home."
"Home is gone," the woman declared, her voice carrying a strange, resonant power that made the hair on Elias's arms stand up. "Home is the fiction of a mind that prefers the lie. The Veil is threadbare, and you are the unfortunate thread."
"The Veil? Look, are you selling something? I don't have any cash."
She sighed, a sound like sand shifting. "You still hide in the mundane. Very well. The mundane must be silenced."
The woman—The Sybil, Elias would later learn—raised one bony hand. It wasn't a dramatic gesture, just a slow, deliberate lifting of her arm. There were no flashing lights, no booming sound effects, but the moment her hand was level with her chest, Elias felt the air pressure drop, the same metallic scent from the coffee shop returning ten times stronger.
Then, the noise stopped.
Completely.
Elias looked around. On Aether Avenue, a raging river of vehicles—cars, cabs, delivery trucks—was all frozen. They weren't moving slowly; they were absolutely, instantly still. A city bus was suspended mid-turn. A taxi driver, mid-shout at the car ahead of him, was a statue, his mouth open in an O.
It wasn't just the cars. The sound of a pneumatic drill from three blocks over had vanished. The chatter of the birds, the rush of the air—all gone. A world of silent, paused kinetics.
Elias walked slowly to a stopped car. He tapped the hood. It was cold and solid. The driver inside, a woman in a business suit, was frozen, her hand halfway to adjusting the radio volume. Her face was calm, untouched by the impossible paralysis.
"What... what did you do?" Elias whispered, his voice sounding deafening in the vacuum of sound.
The Sybil lowered her hand, and the metallic tang in the air lessened. "I paused the mundane currents for a moment," she said simply. "A parlor trick to capture the attention of a boy who only believes what he can see or touch."
She walked past the halted traffic with unsettling grace, stopping at the white crosswalk lines. "The world is ending, Elias. In 1090 days, the Veil will tear, and the Aetheric Echoes will consume this city and every mind in it."
Elias could only stare at the frozen chaos. His mind, trained for latte art and avoiding rent, couldn't process this. "You stopped everything. That's... that's not possible."
"It is only impossible if you are blind to the gears beneath the face of the clock," The Sybil countered. She pointed toward the intersection. "Look closely at the traffic lights, boy. Look at the wires that feed them."
Elias looked. The wires and conduits feeding the suspended traffic signal were normal gray and black—except for a brief, shimmering stretch near the pole. For a few feet, the wires glowed with a faint, internal, emerald light, pulsing with a rhythm he could barely perceive. It was an ethereal circulatory system hidden beneath the mundane.
"That is Veridia's Leash," The Sybil said. "The ancient magical infrastructure built to hold the Veil steady. It is failing. It needs the Aether-Key to be resealed."
She stepped forward, her cloudy eyes suddenly clear and sharp. "The Veil chose you, Elias. Not for power, but for your lack of power. You are the Anchor. You are the only vessel that can contain the Key."
As The Sybil spoke the last word, she snapped her fingers.
The world slammed back into motion.
Horns blared. Tires squealed. The taxi driver finished his shout. The woman in the business suit finally touched the radio dial. The pneumatic drill started up again with a grating thrrrrrr.
Elias stumbled back, the sudden sensory overload nearly knocking him down. Nobody noticed the pause. Nobody looked at The Sybil. The mundane current of Veridia City had simply resumed, completely unaware it had lost a crucial, impossible second.
"You have seen the lie dissolve," The Sybil concluded, already walking away. "The first fragment of the Key is hidden where the first Veil broke. Find it, Anchor, or all your predictable Tuesdays will be consumed by chaos."
She turned the corner, dissolving into the crowd. Elias was left standing on the curb, shaking, clutching his bag, the noise of the city now sounding like a threat.
He knew, with a terrible, absolute certainty, that he could never go back to making lattes. The three-year countdown had begun.