The light didn't fade.
It collapsed.
Jake felt like he was being folded inside himself — bones compressing, skin stretching, thoughts lagging half a second behind reality. The warmth of the rooftop vanished, replaced by something wet and cold against his cheek.
He gasped.
And sucked in dirt.
He rolled over, coughing, throat on fire. The air smelled wrong. Not smoke. Not petrol. No buzzing traffic. Just… soil, hay, animals.
Animals?
He pushed himself up.
His hands were smaller.
Not thin-small. Child small. Brown dust caked beneath fingernails that hadn't known nail-cutters. The sleeves hanging from his arms weren't a hoodie — they were coarse cloth, tied with fraying string.
"No… no, no, no…"
His voice cracked.
It wasn't his voice.
It came out lighter, rougher, carrying an accent his tongue didn't recognize.
The world around him was painted in impossible colors — wide green fields, crooked wooden fences, a stone well in the distance, and beyond that, hills untouched by roads. A farmhouse leaned nearby, its roof stitched with straw like some ancient joke.
A goat bleated.
Jake froze.
"Okay," he whispered, then louder, "Okay, okay— I'm dreaming. This is sleep paralysis or oxygen loss or—"
A shadow fell over him.
"Boy, why are you talking to the dirt again?"
He snapped his head up.
A man stood over him, thick-armed, sunburned, beard braided with bits of straw. He held a pitchfork like it was an extension of his spine, not a weapon.
"I— I don't belong here," Jake said. "Where is this? What city is this? I was just on a roof and—"
The man frowned slowly.
"You hit your head in the barn again, didn't you?" he said, then turned and yelled over his shoulder,"Marla! The boy's broken again!"
A woman's voice came back from the house."He was broken before he fell out of you, Hendrik!"
They argued like this was normal.
Jake stared at his hands again.
Fourteen. Maybe fifteen. Scar on the left thumb. Dirt permanently embedded in skin that had never known sanitizer.
His chest felt too tight, like his heart was trying to punch its way out of a cage it didn't recognize.
This wasn't a dream.
Dreams didn't smell like manure.
Dreams didn't ache like this.
He looked at the sky.
No satellites. No planes. Just blue — raw and unclaimed.
His wish echoed back at him, louder than the goat, louder than the farmer.
Let me not be this again.
The world had listened.
And answered in a language he didn't understand.