11:57 p.m.
The rented apartment smelled of cheap vanilla and loneliness.
On the low table sat the half-kilogram cake, its white frosting already softening in the warm air. Beside it stood the old photograph: a little boy squeezed between two smiling parents who would never grow older. The frame was cracked at one corner, the way his chest felt every time he looked at it.
Three minutes until twenty-five.
Three minutes until the new year.
Three minutes until the world was supposed to keep its promise.
He pressed his palm against his sternum, trying to push the ache down.
"Mom… Dad… I'm still here," he whispered, voice cracking like thin ice. "I'm living well. Just like you asked."
Outside, fireworks cracked and popped like distant gunfire. Laughter and car horns drifted up from the street, the city already drunk on hope. Inside, the only sound was the soft hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the cheap wall clock.
One minute left.
He flipped open the cake box. The knife lay cold and silver beside it. He picked it up, testing its weight, then set it down again. His pulse thrummed in his ears.
To kill the silence he grabbed the remote. YouTube was still open from earlier. An autoplay thumbnail caught his eye: a wild-eyed man in a dim basement, title in jagged red letters—
"THEY ONLY TAKE YOU AT 25."
He clicked. He shouldn't have.
The man's voice was hoarse, half-laughing, half-screaming.
"Since two-thousand, every single year—exactly ten people vanish on their twenty-fifth birthday. Five men. Five women. No bodies. No ransom. No trace. Two hundred and fifty gone already. Tonight… another ten. And you know what's funny? The world still calls me crazy."
The camera shook as the man leaned in, eyes bulging.
"Maybe it's the government. Maybe it's aliens. Maybe some scientist needs fresh twenty-five-year-old meat for his experiments. Doesn't matter. They're coming. They always come at midnight."
A chill crawled up his spine. He laughed—too loud, too forced—and switched tabs.
"Christmas carol of the bells," he muttered, hitting play. The familiar chimes filled the room, bright and metallic, trying to drown out the madman's words still echoing in his head.
Ten seconds.
He grabbed the knife again. His hand was sweating.
Nine.
The fireworks outside swelled into a roar.
Eight.
His heart slammed against his ribs like it wanted out.
Seven… six… five…
"Happy birthday to me," he whispered, voice trembling.
Four… three… two…
One.
Midnight.
The knife sliced cleanly through the soft cake. Frosting clung to the blade like snow. He lifted the piece toward his mouth—
A perfect circle of searing white light exploded beneath his feet.
The floor vanished.
No sound. No warning. Just the sudden, impossible glow swallowing his legs up to the knees.
His eyes widened. "What the—?"
He tried to jump sideways. The circle moved with him, clinging like liquid fire. The knife and the slice of cake were still in his hands; he could feel the frosting melting against his fingers.
Terror punched through him—pure, animal, electric.
"NO—!"
The light surged upward, blinding, burning cold. His scream was cut off mid-breath as the circle snapped shut around him like a trap.
The apartment went silent except for the Christmas bells still ringing from the TV.
The photograph of his parents stared at the empty space where he had stood.
Far across the city, a disheveled man in a stained hoodie sprinted through the exploding fireworks, clutching a crumpled USB drive. Tears streamed down his face.
"I TOLD YOU!" he screamed at the indifferent sky. "I TOLD EVERYONE!"
He was no longer the madman on YouTube.
He was the only one left who still believed.
And somewhere, in a place that had no name, the twenty-sixth year of disappearances had just claimed its first victim—still holding a piece of vanilla cake and a silver knife, heart still hammering with three seconds of pure, perfect terror.
**Dawn of the Empty World**
He woke to sunlight on bare skin.
Not city haze. Not the weak glow through rented curtains. Real sunlight—bright, merciless, pouring straight from a flawless sky onto every inch of him.
His eyes snapped open. He was lying on his back in grass so thick and soft it swallowed him up to mid-thigh, blades cool and velvet against his naked body. The air smelled impossibly clean, like the first morning of creation. No exhaust. No smog. No city stink. Just grass and sunlight… and nothing else.
He sat up too fast. The world tilted. His head throbbed from whatever violent tear through space and time had spat him out here. Naked. Completely, humiliatingly naked. Not even the cheap socks he'd been wearing. The breeze that should have felt gentle scraped across his skin like frozen knives. He curled into himself, arms clamped over his chest, teeth chattering so hard they clicked.
Two or three kilometers away, a wall of forest rose like something from a nightmare—trees so enormous their trunks could have been cathedral pillars, branches clawing at the clouds themselves. Between him and that dark line stretched nothing but the endless sea of grass. No roads. No houses. No people. No sound.
He staggered upright, legs shaking like a newborn foal.
"Hey!" The scream tore out of him, raw and desperate. "What the fuck is this?! Who the hell did this?! At least give me some goddamn clothes!"
The words flew out and died. No echo. No answer. Only the wind sighing through the grass like it was laughing at him.
Silence slammed down—thick, unnatural, suffocating.
He dropped back to his knees. The tears came without permission, hot and violent, ripping sobs out of his chest like he was five years old again. "Mom… Dad… I'm scared," he choked between gasps. "I'm so fucking scared… where am I?" He clawed at his face, trying to stop the flood, but the tears only fell harder, mixing with snot and spit until he was a shivering, snotty mess in the middle of nowhere.
Minutes crawled by. Or maybe hours. Without a watch, without a phone, time itself felt stolen.
Then the hunger hit—sharp, animal, gnawing at his insides until his stomach cramped so hard he doubled over. His legs burned. Every muscle felt wrung out from the impossible journey his fragile body had never been meant to survive. But lying here meant dying here.
He forced himself up again, still naked, still shaking, and started the long, unwilling march toward the forest.
Each step was agony. The grass wasn't just soft—it was treacherous. Deep, almost liquid, it closed around his ankles, his calves, sucking at his strength with every footfall. His breathing turned ragged within minutes, chest heaving, lungs burning like he was drowning on dry land. Sweat poured down his bare skin, stinging his eyes, making him feel even more exposed, even more vulnerable.
But the silence… that was what truly clawed into his soul.
No mosquitoes whining past his ears.
No crickets.
No birds.
No distant rumble of hooves—zebras, elephants, bison, anything. The entire plain was dead quiet, as if every living thing had been erased.
Only him.
Only his panting.
Only the soft, wet sound of his feet sinking into the grass.
Fear coiled tighter with every exhausted step. The forest no longer looked like safety. It looked like a mouth—vast, ancient, patient—waiting to close around the last warm thing in this empty world.
Yet the hunger and the cold and the crushing loneliness gave him no choice.
He kept walking, naked and alone, heart slamming against his ribs like a prisoner trying to break free, while the towering trees grew closer… and the silence grew louder.