Time shivered. Space trembled. Two realities, neither willing to yield, collided in silence.
The sky—no, the sky was wrong. One half shimmered like molten cobalt. Stars bled sideways, liquid against itself. The other bled bruised amber, sunlight filtered through tired veins. Where they touched, light stuttered. Shadows moved in patterns that made the edges of perception ache.
Buildings rose and fell like lungs inhaling. Then exhaled into impossible angles. Windows blinked open and shut like eyelids. Streets bent inward, then flattened, then stretched into impossibility.
Rain fell up, then down, then sideways, then paused mid-air. Droplets hovered as if the world were holding its breath.
A sound, or the lack of one, echoed. Two universes whispered over each other. A hum of machinery and memory. An undertone of existence itself straining against a seam it had never meant to hold.
Colors collided. Magenta liquid swirled against cobalt mist. Copper fire ran along silver walls. Every hue felt familiar and alien at once, like a painting remembered wrong.
Time fractured in pauses. One second stretched into three. Then collapsed into a blink. Objects folded into themselves. Then unfolded differently.
A tree's roots threaded through a building. A river ran uphill. Clouds hung as frozen smoke. Then fell in waterfall torrents. Somewhere in the distance, a mountain rose sideways. A sheer cliff floated above a city upside down. Water flowed against gravity.
And yet, somehow, the chaos aligned.
Moments synchronized in impossible harmony. Doors opened to hallways that should not exist. A bird glided through two skies at once. Two moons orbited each other in a delicate, chaotic waltz. Even the rain had rhythm, droplets dancing between worlds like a piano's tremor.
For a heartbeat, the universes paused. Two hearts. Two minds. Two realities staring at each other across a thin veil, trying to see what the other wanted.
A glance. A flicker. A hesitation.
Then the worlds sighed, as if conceding nothing, agreeing to merge anyway.
And in that sigh, something broke.
Light snapped like a camera shutter. Shadows ran and froze at the same time. Silence shattered into noise. Noise swallowed itself. A pulse, sharp, single, absolute, rocked the cosmos.
Then everything stopped.
The air was still. Colors no longer bled. Buildings obeyed gravity, mostly. Clouds hung lazy and obedient. Streets lay flat. Rain fell politely downward. The moons spun in their proper rhythm. Time flowed again, ordinary and unquestioned.
Except for one thing.
A heartbeat that shouldn't exist.
It thumped, sharp and insistent. Fast. Frantic. Scared.