The sky broke at dawn.

  It did not shatter all at once. First, there was a sound, like glass breaking under pressure, a thin note of pain in the air. A fracture formed, slowly spreading, a seam opening across the horizon, revealing the dark night against the morning light, stars glimmering against the black. The edges of the tear started forming crystalline fragments, holding onto the sky. The earth started vibrating, almost unnoticeable at first, but soon it cracked open. Flowers, grown to perfection, started sprouting out of the sparse, cold floor. In the distance, mountains started aching under their own weight.

  Within nature's chaos, a woman woke.

  She lay on cold stone at the foot of a crystal spire, its surface veined with dimly glowing runes that pulsed in slow rhythms. The air hummed. Somewhere deep within the spire, ancient engines adjusted themselves.

  She did not know her name.

  When she tried to sit up, the world started to falter. The ground tilted, then corrected itself with a subtle, mechanical shudder. Far below the hill, a river flowed uphill for several heartbeats before reversing again, unsure of its own decision. Finally finding her footing, the woman pressed her palm to the spire to steady herself. Her gaze rested on a particular mark on the back of her hand. It looked like a burn, a repeated pattern burned deep into her skin. Suddenly, the cold surface of the spire started vibrating, and the runes around her hand flared.

  Light raced through the crystal veins, brighter than before, aligning into patterns she somehow understood.

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  Locks disengaged.

  Systems long dormant stirred awake. The spire accepted her touch not as a stranger, but as an answer to a question it had been asking for a very long time.

  She pulled her hand back, breath shallow.

  “Ah … that’s not good,” she whispered. To herself, or to the world, she wasn’t sure. Her voice was coarse, as if she hadn't used it for a long time. Memory was a blank wall. No childhood. No lessons. No face she could call her own. But beneath the emptiness, something deeper remained: a pressure behind her ribs, a certainty lodged in her bones.

  This is wrong. The sky should not tear open like fabric. Rivers should not forget their way. Reality should not feel … wrong.

  She pulled her hand away. As she did, the spire’s light dimmed, returning to its slumber. The runes along its surface were fading.

  She took a step away and turned around. Immediately, there was a feeling of sadness and longing. She was making a mistake. The woman shook her head. She needed to find help, find an answer to whatever had happened to her and the world. Her head was spinning, her bones aching. The woman pulled the ragged cloak she wore around her and stepped towards the ledge, observing reality below her: rivers turning red, trees sprouting and dying within minutes, more crystal spires breaking through the ground.

  “Someone has to know what is happening …,” she mumbled, taking a deep breath, and started walking.

  Far across the fractured landscape, something noticed. Old mechanisms shifted, their awareness crawling along forgotten pathways. Records trembled on shelves in ruined libraries, ink smearing where a name had almost been written. Somewhere, men and women felt a familiar chill settle into their bones.

  Not again.

  The woman did not hear them.

  She began walking toward the broken city below, toward the place where reality bled through the seams. She did not know where she was going. She only knew that the world was ending.

  And that, somehow, it was her doing.