The air in the precinct had a settled quality, a thick blend of stale coffee, lemon-scented disinfectant, and the warm paper smell of forgotten case files. It was the smell of a slow Tuesday. Then, the world outside the grimy windows simply changed its mind.
It started with the wind. Not a gust, but a sudden, constant exhalation that slid down the concrete canyons of Crestwood with no origin. It hissed around the building's corners, a sound that was less weather and more whispered intention. Inside, the hanging fluorescent lights swayed on their chains, not in a dance, but in a slow, uneasy nod. A stack of bulletins on Sergeant Miller's desk rustled, then the top sheet took flight, sailing in a lazy arc to the floor.
"Window shut?" someone muttered.
But the windows were shut. The blue beyond the glass was flawless, empty. A perfect, cloudless dome.
Detective Caleb Saye felt it first in his ears, a sudden, painful pop as the pressure dropped. It was like being in a descending elevator that never stopped. A collective, soft gasp went through the room as others felt it—a deep, hollow vacuum opening in the atmosphere itself. Coffee in mugs shivered. The framed precinct commendation on the west wall tilted with a groan.
Miller stood, his chair scraping back. "What in the…"
He moved to the window, and the others followed, drawn by a silent, communal pull. They lined up, a ragged row of blue uniforms and civilian wear, faces pressed close to the glass. The wind outside was now a visible river, carrying dust and litter down the street in a straight, purposeful line towards the financial district. But the sky… the sky was still that impossible, serene blue.
Then it wasn't.
Above the glass towers, the air began to knot. It wasn't a cloud forming. It was a convulsion. The wind river tightened, spiraled in on itself, and then punched upwards. A column of churning atmosphere, the width of a city block, tore into the sky. It grew with terrifying speed, piercing a thin layer of wispy clouds that had scrambled to form, leaving a ragged, circular wound of clear stratosphere in its wake. Its rotation was all wrong. It didn't flow; it stuttered. It would spin fast, then slow to a near halt, then lurch forward again, wobbling on an unstable axis.
Officer Jenkins, fresh out of the academy, pressed his palm flat against the cold glass. "What in the world is happening?"
Behind him, Ruiz fumbled for the remote, clicking on the small TV mounted in the corner. A cheerful weatherman pointed at a sun graphic. Ruiz's voice was thin. "Did… did the weather guys make a mistake? Forget to announce a… a phenomenon or something?"
No one answered. They were all transfixed by the column's behavior. It was alive with a terrible, illogical purpose. A dumpster in an alley two blocks over shuddered, was lifted ten feet into the air as if by an invisible hand, held there for three heartbeats, and then dropped with a crash that was swallowed by the wind. Before the echoes faded, it was wrenched upwards again. Inside the vortex, debris didn't follow a single path. Through the binoculars now pressed to Miller's face, they could see it: in the lower section, shredded paper and dirt spun in a frantic clockwise frenzy. Higher up, larger pieces of metal and glass rotated with a slow, deliberate counter-clockwise motion. The laws of physics had called in sick.
And at its core, the thing glowed. A faint, pulsing red-orange, like the last embers of a dying fire seen through thick smoke. Within that somber light, silent arcs of energy—not lightning, but rippling, aurora-like ribbons of green and purple—snapped and flickered. Actual lightning, vicious and blue, crackled inside the column's body, but it never reached for the ground. It was a caged beast, striking at its own bars.
The city began to scream in response. The trees along the boulevard didn't bend away from the wind; they strained inward, their branches curling like desperate fingers being pulled towards the vortex by a new, localized gravity. Power lines sagged, then one snapped with a sound like a gunshot, whipping down to spew a fountain of sparks onto the street below. Another transformer on a pole directly across from the precinct short-circuited, exploding in a puff of black smoke and a loud pop. And then the sirens started. Not just police sirens, but the city's emergency warning system—a slow, rising, mechanical wail that began in the distance and was soon answered from every district, a chorus of electronic panic seeping through the walls.
On the streets, order dissolved. People spilled from cars, abandoning them in the middle of intersections to sprint for the solid-looking doorways of bank lobbies and storefronts. A mother dragged a wailing child by the arm. A deliveryman dropped his handcart, packages spilling.
Caleb Saye watched it all, but his mind was a split screen. The bizarre, impossible weather. The screaming sirens. The glowing, stuttering column that felt less like a storm and more like a presence. His detective's brain, a machine built for connecting dots, spun uselessly. Coincidence? The word was ash in his mouth. That lunatic on VTube, Alistair Finch, his wild-eyed Livestream about "the sky's true face" cutting to static less than an hour ago. And now this. It couldn't be. The world was predictable. It was cruel, but it was predictable.
A memory detonated, bright and sudden, overlaying the chaos. Not of sirens or storms, but of weight and warmth. The solid, perfect weight of his son, Marcus, held against his chest. The boy was maybe four, his head tucked under Caleb's chin, his body soft in pajamas. He was giggling, a sound that was pure, bubbled joy, triggered by a silly face or a tickle. Caleb could feel the vibration of it against his own throat, could smell the clean scent of baby shampoo in his hair. It was a capsule of perfect peace.
The contrast was a physical blow. Caleb's face, reflected in the window over the apocalyptic scene, underwent a silent transformation. His jaw, usually set in a firm line, tightened until a muscle jumped in his cheek. His lips pressed into a bloodless seam. But his eyes, for one fleeting second, lost all focus on the cyclone. They went distant, soft, seeing only the ghost of that smiling boy. A wave of nostalgia, so profound it was an ache in his teeth, washed through him. Then, as the ghost of the giggle faded, it was incinerated by a hotter, more familiar tide. The ice of sadness cracked, revealing the molten fury beneath. His hands, hanging at his sides, curled into fists so tight his knuckles turned bone-white.
That person, the thought was a blade, cold and sure. That thing that took him. That wore a man's skin and had empty eyes. It did this. It's laughing at this. The image of Marcus's smile twisted into the cold, placid face of the entity known only as Azaqor. It murdered my boy. And whatever this is… wherever it is… it will pay. I will make it pay in blood and silence.