Chapter 57:

Volume 3 – Chapter 8: Cracks in the Silence

When the Stars Fall

[August 9 – 52 Days Left]

It shifted from a sound nobody could place.

There was a low rumble that rolled across the city just before dawn, before even the birds stirred: it felt as if it had been something more in the bones than noise in the air. People sat upright in baffled confusion. Others slept through it but woke with a strange unease clung to their skin, a lingering feeling that they had dreamed something dark and could not remember what.

Kaito was already awake when it came, watching the sky from the kitchen window. When it seemed to him to vibrate with a movement as if that was an earthquake, he found nothing shaking. No furniture moved. No pictures fell from the wall. It was deeper than that. Quieter.

Rika walked in seconds later, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. "Did you feel that?"

"Yeah," he replied. "But I don't have any idea what it was."

She poured a glass of water, and the clink of ice against glass seemed too sharp in the silence that followed. "You think it was—?"

"I don't know," Kaito interrupted, gentle. "Not yet."

But something in his tone unsettled her-because his habit was to try to comfort her, and this time he hadn't.

By mid-morning, the city was buzzing-not with activity but whispers. People came out of their houses not to go to their work or do their shopping but to talk. To look at one another. To ask: "Did you hear it?" "Did you feel it?" "What was that?"

No official announcements. No explanations. What little news channels remained were silent. No authority seemed to take note of the occurrence. That only made it worse.

It was Kaito and Rika who found Haruto and Aya outside a local market. Something definitely charged the atmosphere, which had been so different a day earlier. Not the slow-burning despair to which they had gotten used-but something fresh. Something active.

Someone told me it was a meteor passing too close, Aya said. I hear it was a military experiment gone wrong, added Haruto. Underground shifts, said an old woman near them, not even looking up from her cart. The Earth is changing beneath us, like it knows. No one responded.

Back at the apartment, the group had assembled in the living room. The news was still nothing. Internet was being slow and hardly reliable. But one video started to circulate on its own-a blurry, zoomed-in clip from the outskirts of the city. The trees shifted unnatural. Not by wind but something else. Like a magnetic pull. Like gravity trying to rearrange itself.

Rika stared at the screen. "That's not natural." Haruto leaned in. "The edge of the city. East side. Near the river." Kaito stood. "We need to go there."

Rika looked up, her brows knitting together. "For what?" "Because something's happening, and no one's explaining it. And if this is the start of something bigger, I'd rather not wait for it to knock on our door."

The planners for that afternoon were generally filled; four of them simply packed for a half-day scrimmage. Maps, snacks, water, and a radio. This they did not speak of; however, it was something to do in anticipation of the event going amiss.

By now, most of the eastern sides of the city had grown mostly deserted since the first wave of evacuations made months ago; among the first regions ever classified "high risk," though no one seemed to ever accede as to why this seemed so. Now almost empty, with shops shuttered, and people having bidden sad farewell to homes, nature began reclaiming parts here and there-grass growing through cracks in the pavement, vines crawling up onto shopfronts.

And, still, it wasn't quiet.

A low frequency was in the air, pulsating slightly.

Kaito slowed as they moved close to the river, pointing. "There."

Up ahead, the thick forest gave way to a clearing. The land was sloping down toward water, and something about it had changed. The soil had turned dark. It had tipped over. Trees were oddly leaning toward each other, as if warped by some force willing them together. Above the soil, the air shimmered faintly, much like heat distortion, and strange and unnatural to an ear; while all else were cool.

"Definitely not something nature does," Haruto barely whispered.

Rika knelt beside the soil. "It's warm. It shouldn't be warm."

Kaito stepped forward with caution. The hum was now louder. A quiet resonance formed against his ears, stupefying his chest.

Then, they spotted a small, jagged cut across the floor. It barely seemed a split in the ground, almost unnoticeable, but beside the crack lay a pale blue light radiating outward. Just about glimmering-static electricity almost frozen.

Nobody spoke.

Suddenly blasting in the wind—sharp and wholly unexpected.

And a sound came through behind the trees.

Not the hum.

Not the earlier tremor.

But a whisper. A voice.

Just the one word.

Not in any language they recognized—but still, they understood it:

"Very soon!"

They ran.

Right back to the apartment, nothing had been said along the way. Not until they were in, locked in, and pulled down tight with blinds.

"What the hell was that?" she asked at last, out of breath.