Chapter 1: The Quiet Before

“People talk about monsters like they’re stories. They forget we were once the stories too.”

— Anonymous, survivor of the 1999 Cataclysm

The ceiling fan in Detention Room 2B rattled like it was trying to escape. Jordan wished it would take her with it. The heat pressed from every corner. Dust clung to the walls like it had given up trying to be noticed.

Jordan tapped her pen against the desk. Click. Click. Click. She’d already broken one earlier — snapped it clean in half without meaning to.

Across the room, Richard sat with his feet kicked up on the desk, hood shadowing most of his face. His eyes, when they flickered her way, didn’t belong to a teenager at all — sharp, calculating, bored.

She didn’t like him.

They hadn’t spoken since they’d been shoved in here — one hour of silence for different crimes. Hers: punching a boy who called her a “Hothead.” His: arguing with his English teacher about “what real darkness meant” while dissecting The Dark Knight.

“I can feel you judging me,” he muttered finally, eyes still on his desk. “It’s gross.”

“You make it easy.”

One corner of his mouth twitched.

 “Popular people always think they’re above everyone.”

“And sitting in the dark makes you deep?”

Their eyes met for half a breath.

 Something flickered between them — not attraction, not recognition, but something stranger. A ripple in the air.

It was gone before either could name it. Far above the flickering lights of Detention Room 2B, the sky shuddered — and did not stop.

Elsewhere, in a crowded English classroom, Luna sat cross-legged on her desk, knees brushing the edge. Laughter and gossip swirled around her — the easy noise of friends on break. The air smelled faintly of salt-and-vinegar chips, the floor sticky with forgotten juice spills.

Her friends were locked in another debate over old spirit battle clips.

“Did you see that AZO video from last month?” one shoved a phone in her face.

 “Some spirit user in Malaysia nearly tore a hole through reality. Think it was real?”

“AZO’s overdramatic,” someone scoffed. “Half of them look like they were ex-priests.”

“Shhh,” Luna said with a soft smile. “They keep us safe, remember?”

Spirit essence — once myth, now studied like chemistry. The AZO — Astronomical Zenith Organization — had formed after the 1999 Cataclysm, the day reality cracked open and monsters poured in. One hundred thousand dead. Humanity forever altered.

The girls laughed. But beneath it all, Luna’s world moved slower, like she was walking underwater.

The whispers came when the noise thinned. They slid into her ears like breath against the back of her neck, curling warm and cold all at once. The whispers promised something was coming… something older than time and comprehension itself, something only she would feel.

In her last dream, a voice had hissed from behind a mirror — close enough to fog the glass:

It’s not yours. It never was.

Her fingers found the moonstone charm at her neck. It pulsed against her skin — a slow, deliberate heartbeat that wasn’t hers.

“Luna, you good?” one of the girls asked. “Huh? Yeah. Just tired.” She smiled again, too quickly.

Late Afternoon 

Jordan stomped out of Detention Room 2B, the late afternoon sun barely cutting through the clouds. The sky shuddered overhead, like it was trying to cover something it didn’t want anyone to see.

Richard trailed behind, hands shoved in his hoodie pockets. “You know,” he said, voice flat, “you’re incredibly… annoying.”

Jordan whipped around. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Every word out of your mouth makes my brain ache.”

“That’s rich coming from you,” she shot back, flipping her hair. “You sit there all broody like some tragic novel character and expect the world to orbit your gloom. Newsflash: it doesn’t.”

Richard snorted. “Then tell me — how in the world does someone like you have friends?”

Jordan froze mid-step. “I… what?”

Richard arched a brow, smug grin spreading. “You parade around like a social butterfly… but do you even have friends?”

Jordan blinked, startled, then flushed crimson. “Of course I do!”

Richard laughed, low and sharp. “Uh-huh. Sure. And I’m the queen of England.”

She crossed her arms, glaring. “You’re way too serious and depressed to have any friends yourself.”

“Ha!” Richard’s grin twisted. “I don’t need friends.” His eyes flickered briefly, a shadow passing just for a heartbeat. “I’m … perfectly fine alone.”

Jordan smirked, teasing. “Right. That’s what they all say, until the loneliness eats them alive.”

Richard said nothing, only adjusted his hood and walked on.

Jordan noticed, almost unconsciously, the way his eyes lingered on something distant — or maybe on her. A flicker of awareness, a heartbeat out of sync with the world. It made her chest twitch with irritation she couldn’t name.

The sky above shuddered again, clouds twisting like smoke. For a fraction of a second, it seemed as if the world itself was holding its breath. Despite their differences — her fire, his frost — something invisible tugged between them, a thread neither could yet see, but both would eventually follow.

Jordan huffed and rolled her eyes. “You’re impossible.”

Richard’s smirk only widened. “Takes one to know one.”

They walked on, bickering and bristling, while the sky quivered overhead like a secret waiting to be revealed.

Later that afternoon, clouds sagged low over the city, heavy with rain they didn’t release yet.

Luna's father stood outside their gate, watering the last stubborn flowers of winter.

“Hey, little moon,” he said, smiling. They settled on the porch, steaming cups of rooibos in hand — his brewed dark and strong.

“You’ve been tired a lot lately,” he said after a moment.

“I’m fine.”

“You still having those weird dreams?”

“They’re getting… louder.”

He didn’t push. He never did. But his eyes told a different story.

“You remind me of her more and more,” he murmured, half to himself.

Later that night, the news droned in the background: scientists predicting a rare solar eclipse, its path eerily matched to the Nostradamus scrolls. The AZO’s warning followed, calm but cold: spiritual anomalies rising… the world is not what it was.

Luna’s father clicked off the TV. The house fell into stillness.

He stepped outside and looked up at the moon — silver, full, and silent.

“You’d know what to say, Greta,” he whispered. “She’s starting to feel it too.”

The moonlight didn’t move, but it seemed to listen.