The inciting incident did not arrive quietly.
It came as a psychic scream that tore through the city's steady hum.
Yohan was ripped from a restless sleep as the emergency summons bypassed his chrono and struck directly into his mind.
It was not his own fear rather it was raw panic broadcast from another Harmonizer.
A distress signal, overwhelming in its intensity, screaming of something vast and incomprehensible.
The location embedded itself instantly:
Sector Gamma-9.
A quiet residential block in the suburbs.
The designation followed:
Dissonance Cascade — Level 9.
Yohan froze.
He had never seen anything above Level 5. Level 9 existed only in theory and discussed in training as a doomsday scenario. A complete failure of the Consensus where reality breaking at its core.
He dressed up and went out the door in under a minute, Elara's worried voice trailing behind him unanswered.
The streets were unnaturally quiet.
Late-night traffic was gone.
The Harmonizer network had already seeded the city with subtle suggestions: stay inside, a gas leak and a structural inspection is going on.
A dozen believable excuses to keep civilians away from the it.
Yohan sped toward the sector in his assigned vehicle, a silent electric coupe.
With every block, the air grew heavier.
Wrong.
Pressure filled the atmosphere, thick enough to make his ears pop and his thoughts slow.
Other Harmonizer vehicles converged from every direction, their silent approach a grim procession.
He reached the perimeter, two blocks from the epicenter.
Senior Harmonizers were already there and Silas among them. Their faces were pale under the flashing lights.
No one spoke.
Their minds were linked, working in desperate silence.
Yohan felt it immediately.
A massive psychic barrier surrounded the block, it is a dome of pure will, built to contain the fallout and shield the city from the shockwave.
Silas broke concentration for a heartbeat.
His mental voice cut sharply into Yohan's mind.
"Yohan, reinforce the southern quadrant. Do not approach the epicenter. Clear!".
"Yes!", Yohan replied but his thoughts are shaking. He stepped out of the car and added put his hands on the wall. The pressure was immense. A chaotic tide of impossibility slammed against the barrier, straining it from all sides.
It felt like trying to hold back the ocean with his hands.
From where he stood, Yohan couldn't see the source and only streetlights flickering and dying beyond the cordon.
But through the psychic link… he felt it, and what he sensed shattered every framework he had ever known.
After an hour of effort, the pressure eased. The cascade stabilized and contained, but still not solved.
Silas finally lowered his hands with exhaustion carved deep lines into his face, aging him 10 years in minutes.
"It's contained," he said hoarsely. "But it's not resolved. It's… static."
He gestured for Yohan to follow.
"You need to see this. All of you do."
They passed through the inner cordon.
The air inside was dead.
No wind.
No insects.
No distant city hum.
Silence, absolute and crushing.
The streetlights were dark.
The houses stood lifeless.
Then they turned the corner.
Yohan stopped.
An entire residential block had been turned inside out.
Not destroyed.
Not exploded.
But inverted.
The houses still stood in neat rows but their interiors now faced the night sky. Living rooms opened outward, wallpaper exposed to the air.
Sofas and tables clung to floors that were now ceilings.
A child's bedroom yawned open, cartoon posters staring into the void. Stuffed animals sat neatly on a shelf against the distant city lights.
Kitchens faced outward. Counters and appliances exposed. A half-eaten bowl of cereal rested on a table now standing sideways.
The exteriors which are brick walls, windows and doors are all faced inward instead, forming a twisted, impossible maze.
Lawns, sidewalks and trees all of it existed inside the block, crushed into the space where homes should have been.
This is aganist rules of physics.
Gravity worked selectively.
A car hung pressed against a ceiling, while water from a broken sprinkler fell upward onto it.
Space itself had been violated.
And the people, there were no bodies. No blood, no signs of struggle. Just absence.
A hundred people had lived here.
Now they were simply… gone.
Not dead.
Not vaporized.
Simply removed.
Erased from the equation.
Yohan stared, his mouth dry, his thoughts unraveling. 'The liquid street, the flickering lamppost, the ghost's letters, they were nothing compared to this. Those were cracks while this was reality being rewritten.
This isn't a fray, This isn't a tear.
This is as a page being ripped out, crumpled, and shoved back in upside down'.
"How?" he whispered.
Silas stood beside him, eyes fixed on the impossible scene.
"We don't know," he said flatly. "It happened in an instant. One massive spike of dissonance and then this."
He turned to Yohan, the horror reflected in his gaze.
"This isn't sabotage. This isn't a rogue actor."
His voice dropped
"This is the foundation breaking. The world itself is coming apart."