Another portal cracked open only a few steps away,
a thin vertical slit of pale light that widened with a soft, tearing sigh. Dust and loose debris lifted off the ground, floating toward it as though gravity itself had shifted direction.
The first creature—already halfway out of the original portal—twisted its head toward the new one. If it had a face, it wasn't shaped for human interpretation. Its form flickered, solid one moment, hazy the next, like a beast rendered in unstable light. Long limbs bent in angles that suggested it was built for a world with different physical rules.
The creature let out a sound—
not a roar,
not a hiss,
but a vibrating ripple, as though a chorus of metal wires had been plucked all at once.
The air trembled.
From the fresh tear, a second creature slithered through.
This one moved low to the ground, its body flowing like a spill of shadow liquid. It had no legs—only rippling tissue that adhered to the pavement, crawling forward by stretching itself like living tar. As it crossed a beam of flickering light, its surface briefly hardened, revealing glimpses of bone-like ridges before melting back into fluid darkness.
People ran.
Some tripped over the broken tiles. Some simply collapsed, paralyzed by the impossibility of what they were seeing. A man stumbled backward into a bench, knocking it over. The metal bench slid several inches uphill, against gravity, pulled by an invisible current drifting from the nearest portal.
Gravity was losing its mind.
A third creature emerged—
this one winged.
Its wings didn't flap.
They vibrated at high frequency, creating a faint high-pitched whine that buzzed in the ears like an electrical fault. The wings themselves were translucent, like insect membranes stretched thin enough to glow. With each vibration, the creature blurred, then reappeared a few feet farther along, teleporting in jerky increments toward the nearest building façade.
It climbed the vertical surface effortlessly, attaching itself with spined legs that punctured steel like softened clay. It pivoted its head, surveying the street with bright, reflective lenses that scanned left and right in rapid, mechanical ticks.
Farther down the plaza, yet another portal flared—this one unstable, its edges sparking. A jagged, quadrupedal thing hurled itself through immediately, as if fleeing something behind it. Its skin steamed. Smoke rose off its back in tendrils, carrying with it an acrid scent, like burning chemicals. Its movements were frantic, uncoordinated, its eyes wide and reflective—prey reflexes, not predator.
It wasn't attacking.
It was escaping.
But the moment its foot struck Pangia's pavement, the ground shimmered. Energy radiated outward from where it landed, spreading cracks shaped like branching frost.
The unfamiliar energy thickened in the air, creating layers of shimmering distortion. Colors wavered. Sounds stretched and pitched strangely. Even time felt irregular; motions lagged a half-second behind, then snapped forward abruptly, like reality buffering.
A streetlamp unbolted itself from the ground, screws rising upward as if pulled out by magnets. The lamp bent sideways with a metallic groan, collapsing in slow-motion, then accelerating suddenly as one of the creatures brushed past it.
The winged creature clung to the building's glass surface, its lenses reflecting the chaos below. It emitted a series of sharp, stuttered clicks—
a pattern, almost like communication.
The tall, jointed creature from the first portal responded with a low, resonant hum that vibrated the pavement.
And inside the still-open portals, more silhouettes pressed forward—
some massive, some insectlike, some floating like jellyfish made of light.
One silhouette stretched an arm outward.
Another extended multiple limbs.
Another dragged something—
something large.
The humming grew louder.
The air grew heavier.
The portals pulsed with widening hunger as the fabric of Pangia continued to unravel, inch by inch—
—while a faint new sound began to echo across the broken streets.
A soft, distant thrum.
Steady.
Growing.
As if something far larger—far heavier—was approaching from within the deepest part of the largest tear.