Simon Croft got home long after the city had settled into its quieter hours.
The streetlights along his block flickered with uneven persistence, casting pale halos that buzzed faintly as he passed beneath them. His shoes scraped against the pavement, not because he was injured or drunk, but because the day had taken more than it had given back. The café shift had been ordinary in the most exhausting way—too many customers, not enough tips, practiced smiles exchanged for small change. Routine like that didn't hurt. It hollowed.
He unlocked the front door carefully and stepped inside.
The house was quiet.
Not peacefully so. Just… inactive. The sort of silence that accumulated in places where people shared a roof but little else. His distant relative—family by technicality—had already turned in. Simon never knew the man's schedule, only that it rarely intersected with his own.
He left his shoes by the door, set his bag down, and walked the narrow hallway on habit alone. The house smelled faintly of cleaning solution and dust. Old furniture. Old patterns. Things that stayed because no one bothered to remove them.
In his room, Simon sat on the edge of the bed and stared at his phone.
He told himself he would sleep.
He usually did, eventually.
That night was no different.
He scrolled for a while, reading without much attention, then set the phone aside. The ceiling fan clicked softly overhead. Somewhere in the house, pipes shifted as they cooled. After a while, his thoughts slowed, loosened, and slipped out of sequence.
Sleep arrived without ceremony.
Morning came quietly.
Sunlight filtered through the curtains in a dull, colorless way. Simon woke to the sound of a car passing outside and the low hum of the refrigerator down the hall. He lay still for a few moments, letting himself surface fully.
Nothing felt wrong.
He checked the time, showered, dressed, and left his room. The house remained quiet. His relative's door was closed. That wasn't unusual. Simon poured himself a cup of coffee, drank it standing at the counter, then grabbed his bag.
He didn't say goodbye.
He never did.
The café was busy that morning. A delivery came late. Someone called in sick. Simon took orders, wiped counters, moved through the familiar rhythm without thinking much about it. The world behaved as it always had.
Sometime after noon, two uniformed officers entered the café.
They didn't look urgent. They didn't raise their voices. One of them spoke briefly with the manager, who glanced around the room before pointing toward Simon.
"Mr. Croft?" one of the officers asked.
"Yes."
"We need to ask you a few questions."
Customers watched with mild curiosity as Simon removed his apron and followed them outside. No handcuffs. No accusations. Just procedure.
They told him his relative hadn't shown up for a scheduled appointment. When calls went unanswered, someone had gone to check. The rest was handled quietly.
Simon listened. He nodded. He answered when asked.
At the house, he stayed near the doorway while others moved through rooms he rarely entered. He didn't need to see much. The tone alone told him enough.
Later, he would learn the precise wording for what had happened.
Later, he would hear possibilities laid out carefully and without commitment.
In the moment, there was only the sensation that something had gone wrong in his absence—something final and out of reach.
They brought him in for formal questioning.
They said it was standard.
They said it would clear things up.
They said his cooperation was appreciated.
Simon told the truth until it felt thin from repetition. There were no arguments. No outbursts. No sudden revelations. Just time passing in measured increments.
By afternoon, he sat in the back of a police vehicle, hands resting loosely in his lap, watching the city through reinforced glass.
The day was bright.
Excessively so.
Sunlight spilled across the streets without restraint. Birds perched on power lines, filling the air with casual noise. Simon focused on them, on the steadiness of it all, trying to anchor himself.
That was when the thought surfaced.
Not his.
A sentence from something he had read the night before.
A bright afternoon.
Birds in the air.
Then the trembling begins.
His breath stalled. He dismissed it immediately. Lack of sleep. Stress. His mind reaching for patterns that weren't there.
The world responded with a low, distant rumble.
At first, it sounded like a heavy vehicle. Then the ground shifted—not violently, but with intent. The sound deepened, spreading outward, continuous and wrong.
Someone shouted.
The vehicle swerved.
Simon looked up just as the street ahead split open, buildings shuddering like poorly stacked objects losing balance. For an instant, everything seemed suspended—noise, motion, thought—before gravity reasserted itself.
Then came the impact.
Then pain.
Then nothing.
Much later, waking amid dust and silence, Simon would understand something else the story had made clear.
It had never been interested in survival.
Only in who remained.
And somewhere in the back of his fractured thoughts, a single idea took shape, heavy and unavoidable:
If this had been written once—
and erased everywhere else—
then the end of the world was no longer a matter of if.