Rain always made the city quieter at night, softening the neon and muting the chaos. Kayden Voss Arclight walked with his hands in his pockets, hood half up, the white of his hair catching whatever streetlight tried to touch it. He liked nights like this—empty streets, cold air, the kind of silence where thoughts had enough room to breathe.
He had just finished locking up the museum's west wing, a tedious job but predictable, and predictability was something he could rely on. At least, until tonight.
A dog barked somewhere behind him. Tires hissed on wet roads. A late bus gasped to a stop at the next intersection. Everything normal. Everything ordinary. Kayden's sharp eyes drifted upward to the sky out of habit more than curiosity.
And then the world… paused.
Not stopped.Paused.Like someone had pressed a fingertip lightly against time.
Kayden felt it first—not in the air, not on his skin, but in his blood.
The distant hum of the city flattened. The wind held its breath. The drizzle froze mid-fall, suspended like silver dust. A hover of raindrops hung in front of him, perfect spheres untouched by gravity.
Kayden blinked once.The raindrops didn't move.
His heartbeat quickened, but he didn't panic. His mind, trained by habit and instinct, became frighteningly calm—almost too calm for a 19-year-old standing inside an impossible moment. He reached out and touched one of the frozen droplets.
It didn't fall.It didn't break.It simply… hummed under his fingertip.
"What the hell…" he whispered.
A soundless ripple passed above him.
Kayden lifted his eyes.
The night sky—clear moments ago—now had a hairline crack across it, thin as a scratch on glass. No lightning. No clouds. A straight, unnatural tear stretching silently across the horizon.
It glowed faintly. A color he couldn't name.
Kayden wasn't sure if he was breathing anymore.
The crack widened—just an inch—and something inside it moved, like a shadow shifting behind a curtain.
His pulse hammered. Fear should have drowned him. But instead, something else surfaced… a strange heaviness in his chest, as if a forgotten door inside him had begun to open.
A soft chime whispered through his skull.
Not a voice.Not sound.Something mechanical… familiar… ancient.
APEX — System DetectedBooting…Error. Lineage Key Missing.Minimal Access Granted.
Kayden staggered a half step back.
"System?" he muttered. "What—?"
A translucent square blinked faintly in the corner of his vision, like a reflection on glass. Not fully formed—glitching at the edges, flickering weakly.
He tried to focus on it.It sharpened slightly.
STATUS: IncompleteIDENTITY: KAYDEN VOSS ARCLIGHTACCESS LEVEL: 0 (Dormant)WARNING: Activation Without Key—Unstable—
A cold wave rolled through his spine.Arclight.
He hadn't heard that word used seriously since his grandmother's stories—stories that sounded more like myths than lineage. Commanders of light. Guardians of something cosmic. Nonsense, he had always thought.
But tonight, with the world frozen around him and a glitching screen whispering his surname, nonsense felt too close to truth.
The crack in the sky flickered—once, as if reacting to the system in his vision.
Then the paused world… exhaled.
Rain resumed its fall.
Distant engines roared back to life.
The hum of electricity returned like someone unmuting reality.
Kayden stumbled, catching himself against a lamppost. A bus honked at a car drifting into its lane. The dog barked again. People continued walking as if nothing had happened.
No one reacted.Not a single head turned to the sky.
They didn't see the tear.They didn't feel the pause.They didn't hear the system.
Kayden swallowed hard. "Why just me?"
The flickering panel dimmed.
Stability: LowNext Sync: Unknown……Observation Mode Enabled
Then it vanished.
Kayden stood in the rain, breath fogging, trying to piece together the impossibility he had witnessed. His fingers trembled—not with fear, but with an instinct he didn't understand. Something inside him recognized the event even if his mind didn't.
He walked the last few blocks home in silence, the images replaying on loop:The frozen rain.The crack in the sky.The half-formed system that knew his full name.
By the time he reached his apartment building, his pulse had steadied but the unease hadn't left.
He paused at the door, hand on the metal handle.
A faint whisper brushed against his mind—like static forming a word.
Commander…
Kayden froze.
His breath caught.
The voice didn't repeat. The air felt normal, the hallway smelled like paint and dust and someone's burned dinner. But his heart thudded with a warning he didn't fully understand.
He entered his room, dropped his jacket, sat on the edge of his bed, and pressed both hands to his face.
"This isn't happening," he whispered. "I'm tired. Hungry. Hallucinating."
But then the system flickered back on, weaker this time.
A single line appeared.
Log Entry 0001 Created.Event Type: SKY BREACH (Minor)Visibility: SuppressedWitnesses: 1Status: Monitoring You.
"You?" Kayden whispered. "Monitoring—me?"
The system flickered, glitched, and vanished again.
Kayden stared at the spot where it had been, a cold dread tightening inside his chest.
He wasn't hallucinating.He wasn't imagining it.
And someone—something—had made sure the rest of the city didn't experience what he did.
He stood up and walked to the window.
The sky outside was normal.No cracks.No light.No impossible colors.
But he didn't believe it for a second.
He pressed his palm to the cold glass.
Somewhere far above, beyond human eyes, beyond clouds and satellites and the safe limits of his world…
Something shifted.
Watching.Waiting.Recognizing him.
Kayden exhaled shakily.
"Why me?"
And in the silence of his room, with the distant hum of the city below, the system whispered softly—almost like a heartbeat:
APEX Awaiting Reconnection…Do not ignore the next signal.
Kayden stepped back from the window, throat tight.
Whatever he witnessed tonight wasn't a mistake.
It was the beginning.