Project: Descent
Chapter I: The Fracture No One Saw
The day unfolded like any other.
Coffee brewing. Empty conversations echoing across cracked sidewalks. People staring into screens as if the truth might blink back.
Aedan walked beside Callen through the rhythm of it all, the low hum of a city pretending everything still worked.
Callen was rambling — some story about a coworker, or a meeting gone wrong. Aedan only half listened.
His eyes were on the sky.
It wasn’t cloudy. Wasn’t blue either. Not exactly.
It was thin.
As if someone had stretched it too far and forgotten to stop.
Then it cracked.
Not with thunder. Not with light. But with something quieter — like tension snapping inside a bone.
A thin, sharp line appeared overhead. Pale. Pulsing. Alive.
“Did you see that?” Aedan asked.
Callen kept walking. “See what?”
“The sky.”
“You’re not making sense, man.”
Aedan stopped walking. His chest tightened. His breath caught.
On the other side of the street, a woman dropped her phone. Looked up. Eyes wide.
She screamed.
Loud. Raw. Terrified.
Then she collapsed.
People turned. None of them looked up.
Aedan looked again.
The fracture was still there.
Only now… it was moving.
A dark thread spilled downward — slow, deliberate — like ink dissolving in still water. No sound. No impact. Just presence.
He scanned the street. Normal traffic. Phones buzzing. Someone arguing over a receipt. The collapsed woman, surrounded now by three strangers, one filming, one calling for help.
None of them looked up.
Callen was still talking.
The world was pretending nothing had happened.
But something had.
Something impossible.
Aedan couldn’t name it. Couldn’t explain it.
Only feel it — like a thin crack, spreading silently beneath the surface of everything he thought was real.
The Glitch
He stepped away.
“Hey,” Callen called after him, “what’s up?”
Aedan didn’t answer. He crossed the street toward the woman, who now lay motionless. The crowd hovered — detached, recording, speculating.
Then it happened.
The world twitched.
Just once.
Like a skipped heartbeat.
A man adjusting his glasses repeated the gesture — exactly.
A pigeon took flight. Then took flight again.
A laugh echoed. Then echoed again — from the same mouth.
No one noticed.
Except Aedan.
The woman’s eyes were open now. Barely. But open. And locked on his.
The Signal
No panic. No plea. Just… presence.
Her lips moved. No sound. But he felt it — a pull. Not toward her. Not even the fracture. Toward something beyond it — or inside it.
The sky hadn’t changed. But it felt closer. Intimate. As if it had leaned down to listen. Or to choose.
Pressure behind his eyes. A hum in his skull.
And just for a moment — something looked back through the crack.
It had no face. But it knew his name.
The Wrong Reflection
He backed away from the woman. Her eyes still followed him. Then they closed.
The crowd pressed in. He turned — and saw himself in the glass of a café window.
Only it wasn’t right.
His mouth hadn’t moved, but the reflection whispered.
His arm hadn’t lifted, but the reflection’s hand twitched.
He blinked. Gone. The reflection corrected itself.
But the distortion remained — like a tremor beneath thought.
He crossed a line no one else could see — and somehow, something on the other side recognized him.
A World Out of Sync
The city hadn’t changed. Outwardly.
But the rhythm behind things had slipped.
Laughter, delayed. Wings, unsynced. Even his own footsteps betrayed themselves.
An ad screen blinked. Flickered. And showed his name — Aedan Rellin. Then toothpaste. Then nothing.
Maybe they hadn’t seen it. Maybe they just couldn’t.
He pressed his fingers to his temple. His pulse throbbed under the skin — not pain, not pressure.
A signal without a source.
He Walked Into the Same Corner Twice
He needed distance. Turned down a side street. Familiar. Too familiar.
A small shop. A metal shutter. A cat blinking slowly on a windowsill.
He passed it. Turned the corner.
The same shop. The same cat. Again.
He hadn’t turned around. But the world had.
Again. Faster. Different path. Same result.
The cat was staring at him now.
The Corridor That Wasn’t There
He turned once more. No shop. No shutter.
Just a corridor. Long. Narrow. Too smooth. Too dark. It shouldn’t exist.
Behind him, the cat hissed.
Then the lights died. All at once.
He didn’t think. He ran.
The Corridor Waits
Longer than it should’ve been. Steps became weightless. Walls pulsed with memory — a song, a name not his.
The floor bent. The world tilted. A shape ahead — human? Not quite. A hand, open.
He reached for it—
Thud.
Light. Sound. Street.
Callen stood in front of him. “You just walked straight into me. You good?”
The alley was gone. The shop behind them again. The cat… missing.
The Breath That Wasn’t His
Aedan’s chest rose and fell — like surfacing from a deep dive.
Callen’s hand still on his shoulder. “You’re pale as hell. Did you eat?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Shook his head.
“I think I need to sit.”
He stepped away. The city looked the same.
But something had stayed with him.
Not in his skin.
In his sense of what the world was.
And it wasn’t what he thought.
He walked through something no one else saw.
He came back changed — even if the world stayed the same.
If that silence resonated with you,
if the wrong reflection felt too familiar —
then you’ve already stepped beyond the veil.
What comes next is not for all eyes.
Read Chapter 2 – The Ones Who Forget
Members of the Still Mind Society walk deeper.
Written by Echoes
Keeper of fractured echoes and silent storms.
