The sky was on fire again.
Caleb Mark stood on the rusted roof of an abandoned watchtower, staring at the streaks of red and gold clawing across the dusk. From here, the city looked like a skeleton of itself—shattered buildings, cracked glass, and collapsed transit lines that ran like broken veins through the ruins.
He took a deep breath. The air was thick with ash and something worse—Decay. You didn't need to see a monster to know one had passed through. The Decay it left behind ate through steel like it was paper. And flesh? Flesh just melted.
"Staring won't make you any braver," a voice muttered behind him.
Caleb turned to see Mira crouched by the stairwell, her rifle resting on her lap. She wore the standard grey scavenger cloak—frayed at the bottom, torn near the shoulder, always damp with someone else's blood. Her eyes were hard, even though she was only a year older than him.
"I wasn't trying to be brave," Caleb muttered. "I was listening."
"To what? The sky scream?"
Caleb tilted his head, eyes narrowing.
"Exactly."
Silence stretched. Then, faintly—too faintly for Mira to hear—a sound rippled through the air. Not the wind. Not the hum of rift storms. This was… a voice. Soft. Like someone whispering behind a wall.
"Caleb," it said.
His spine stiffened. His name. Again. He'd heard it last night too—while he was alone in the metro tunnels, scavenging spare circuit boards from old drones.
But Mira was right. The sky was screaming. Another Singularity was opening—this time over what used to be Brooklyn. A bright, bleeding wound in the air, flickering violet and black. Shapes were falling out of it—fast and heavy. Some the size of trucks, others like shadowy serpents. Monsters.
The Wardens wouldn't come. Not tonight.
They'd learned their lesson last week. Too many had died trying to defend the city during the M9 Breach. Entire divisions wiped out. And the Heroes? The S-Class ones were gone. Dead, missing, or worse—turned.
Now, only the desperate stayed behind.
And Caleb Mark—eighteen, no power, no rank—was among them.
He reached into his coat and pulled out the cracked communicator. It hadn't worked in two years. But tonight, it was glowing—just faintly. He thumbed the side, and static burst from it like a cough.
"…Ca—b… M—rk… no—time…"
His heart skipped. The voice again. From the device. A chill swept his spine.
"Who is that?" Mira asked.
Caleb didn't answer. He didn't know. But deep in his gut, something shifted. Something old. Something not entirely… human.
He had dreamed of a world burning. Of standing in the center of it, cloaked in living shadow, the monsters bowing before him like loyal beasts. A nightmare, he thought. But maybe it was more.
"Come on," Mira said, standing. "If we don't get back to the Bunker before the breach reaches the Sector Line, we're toast."
Caleb nodded slowly. But his eyes stayed on the sky.
Because tonight, for the first time in his life, the monsters weren't coming to destroy him.
They were coming to find him.
And somewhere, buried in the firelight, the truth waited like a blade in the dark.