The smell of wet earth was the first thing that was wrong.
Special Agent Afonso Barros caught the scent before he even stepped out of the car. Freshly turned soil—damp, alive—a smell that had no place in the heart of a metropolis of concrete, asphalt, and smoke. In fifteen years investigating anomalies for the Department of Oneiric Activities, he had learned to recognize the strange. The so-called Echoes surfaced with a certain regularity: ghost buildings flickering into existence for seconds before vanishing, delayed reflections in shop windows, translucent figures of loved ones waving from across the street. Glitches in the matrix of reality. Disturbances. Harmless hauntings.
What lay before him was not harmless.
"There's nothing there, Barros," said the local police commander, his voice hoarse. "And at the same time, something is there."
Barros stepped under the police tape without replying. His eyes were already locked on the impossible.
Where July 9th Street should have been—with its four residential buildings, two snack bars, and seventy-eight meters of cracked asphalt—there was only a perfect rectangle of bare brown earth. No rubble. No exposed foundations. No trace of destruction. It was as if a divine gardener had carefully excised a piece of the city with surgical precision, leaving only the raw soil beneath. Where buildings once stood, there was now only the night sky, stars washed out by light pollution.
The emptiness was so absolute it hurt to look at. Barros's brain refused to accept that absence as real.
"How long has it been?" he asked at last.
The commander pointed to the stopwatch clipped to his clipboard.
"Eight hours and fourteen minutes."
It wasn't an estimate. It was a record.
The night air was cold, but the tension made it thick, almost suffocating. On one side of the tape, the city carried on: horns blaring, lights blazing, people coming and going, oblivious to the hole torn open in the logic of the world. On the other, the absolute negation of reality.
"Nothing?" Barros pressed, though he already knew the answer.
"Nothing," the commander confirmed. "No energy readings, no radiation, no magnetic fluctuation. Drones that try to fly over the area lose signal and crash. One of my men tried to move forward…" He swallowed. "His boot stopped in midair. Like it hit an invisible glass wall."
Barros lit a cigarette. His hands trembled slightly—something he hadn't felt in years. Where had the one hundred and twelve people who lived or worked there gone? The question weighed heavier than the smell of earth.
The ninth hour was approaching.
An improvised command tent had been set up a few meters from the perimeter, buzzing with radio static and the constant murmur of frustrated voices. Geologists, physicists, military engineers, and oneiric theorists had been rushed in. They all said the same thing, just with different vocabularies:
"This is impossible."
"It's like a cut," explained a young physicist, pointing at a thermal camera feed. "A perfect slice through spacetime. There are no unstable edges, no degradation. Reality simply… stops."
Barros listened, but his mind was elsewhere. He scrolled through files of the missing on a tablet. Entire families. Students. Retirees. No high-level Dreamers. No history of severe Echoes. Ordinary people.
People who, nearly nine hours ago, had been having dinner, watching television, arguing over bills, living their lives.
"Barros."
The commander was back. This time, he pointed at the stopwatch.
Exactly nine hours.
A heavy silence spread along the perimeter. Conversations died. Radios were lowered. Everyone held their breath, as if the world itself were waiting for an answer.
One minute passed.
Nothing.
Two minutes.
Hope began to unravel, replaced by a bitter acceptance. Maybe this was permanent. Maybe July 9th Street had been erased forever.
And then it happened.
There was no sound. No flash. In a single blink, the void ceased to exist.
July 9th Street was back.
The buildings reappeared intact. Apartment lights were on, frozen mid-routine. A car stopped in the middle of the street still had its headlights on, illuminating nothing for a second that no longer existed.
A collective sigh rippled through the police line.
For one glorious instant, it seemed everything had returned to normal.
Then came the first scream over the radio.
A shrill, tearing cry of pure horror.
Barros felt his stomach drop before he even heard the words. He already knew.
The impossible had not returned the street.
It had returned something with it.