Chapter 4 - The Man Who Shouldn't Exist

Outside Denver, Colorado, a man sat alone in a smoking crater.He looked around slowly, confusion etched across his face, a faint sadness behind his eyes. Beneath him, his shadow rippled—liquid, inky—spreading like spilled paint before pulling itself back together into the shape of a man. It settled only when he did.He tried to stand.He wobbled like a newborn fawn, legs shaking, arms flailing for balance. When he stumbled, the sun dimmed—just for a fraction of a second. Too fast for human eyes. Too fast for his own mind to process.He blinked up at the sky.Normal.Perfectly normal.He shook his head and tried again.Everything around him felt… new.Too new.He looked at the world like it was the first time he’d ever seen anything at all—awed, frightened, overwhelmed.He took a step forward.And instantly appeared two miles away, embedded halfway into a mountainside.He tilted his head, curious rather than alarmed, and tried again.This time he shot in the opposite direction, crashing through a forest. Massive trees splintered like matchsticks. Boulders cracked. The earth buckled.He walked out of the wreckage brushing dust off his torn clothes, as if this were all perfectly normal.Then he sat cross‑legged on the ground and stared at his hands.He looked… empty.Not hollow—empty.Like something essential was missing, but he didn’t know what or how to name it. The feeling gnawed at him, a quiet frustration he couldn’t articulate.As his thoughts churned, the world around him reacted.Birds in the sky began flying backward.A butterfly emerging from its cocoon rewound itself back into a pupae.Shadows stretched in the wrong direction.But the man didn’t notice.He just stared at his hands, lost.Eventually he stood again.He took a careful, deliberate step.He didn’t teleport this time—but the ground cracked beneath him, a fissure splitting open from the force of his overcompensation.Thirty minutes of trial and error later, he finally managed to walk toward the city. His short black hair was messy and dirt‑streaked, his clothes torn, his face smudged with dust.Denver overwhelmed him instantly.The sounds.The lights.The smells.The sheer density of life.A dog barked furiously at something behind him as he passed an alleyway full of homeless people. It didn’t stop until he was out of sight. He didn’t look back.He tried speaking to people, but no one seemed to notice him.Or maybe they were ignoring him.He couldn’t tell.Then he saw it.A streak of light in the sky—too close, too fast, too deliberate to be a shooting star. It was coming straight toward Earth.He smelled perfume. Sweet. Intoxicating. Impossible.And then a voice—everywhere and nowhere at once—giggled:“Oh, get my sweet shades and long edgy coat ready, basement‑god! I’m coming to ask the newbie if he wants the red or blue pill.”The Laughing Shadow’s voice faded like a glitch in the air, leaving Rowan blinking in confusion. The city noise swallowed the moment. He wrapped his arms around himself and kept walking, unaware of the cosmic storm he had just triggered.And far beyond his awareness, three impossibilities stirred.In Brazil, the warehouse was nothing but twisted metal and scorched concrete now. Smoke curled from the crater where she had stood moments earlier.Lustbane stepped over a melted support beam, her bare feet leaving faint, glowing impressions in the ash. She paused.Her breath hitched.A pulse — soft, warm, irresistible — brushed against her senses.Her lips parted in a slow, hungry smile.“Ah… there you are.”The air around her shimmered with heat as she turned her head toward the north, toward him.Deep in space, Supremia slumbered in a cryo‑pod. The ship had seen better centuries. Panels flickered. Hull plates groaned. Her eyes darted beneath her lids as the recurring nightmare played again — sterile labs, cold restraints, needles piercing her skin.Then her eyes snapped open.The dream evaporated. Frost cracked off her armor in glittering sheets as she rose from the crater she had created simply by landing. The cryo‑pod around her was crushed inward, as if a giant hand had squeezed it.Then she felt it.A ripple.A tremor.A gravitational whisper threading through the void.Faint — too faint for this pathetic vessel to ever reach — but unmistakable.Someone, or something, like her.Her eyes widened a fraction.The first hint of interest she’d shown in… she couldn’t remember how long.“Don’t break like the others,” she murmured.The derelict ship she was on shuddered — then shattered — as she launched herself into the void, streaking across space like a rogue comet aimed directly at Earth.On a lonely road miles from civilization, The Laughing Shadow strolled with a spring in her step. Her shadow walked beside her, holding her hand like a child — perfectly normal, perfectly two‑dimensional, perfectly wrong.Selene herself flickered in and out of existence with each step, glitching like a corrupted frame of film.She froze mid‑stride.Her shadow froze too.A grin split her face.“Ooooh, there he is.”She looked straight up at the sky, squinting at the unseen "god".“Basement‑god, you didn’t tell me the newbie was adorable.”She squeezed her shadow’s hand.“Get my coat ready! I want to look fabulous when I break him.”Her laughter warped the air, bending the road like soft rubber.Rowan shivered.He didn’t know why.He just felt… watched.He kept walking around Denver, unaware that hunger, power, and chaos had already begun moving toward him from three corners of existence.The convergence had begun.