When the world falls

It started on a Tuesday. There was nothing unusual about the morning. The city woke up like it always did. Trains moved beneath the streets. Cars filled the highways. Thousands of windows reflected the morning sunlight. Cafés opened their doors, buses stopped at crowded intersections, and people complained about being late for work. Nobody noticed the sky. Not at first. By 9:17 a.m., the first reports came in. People were calling emergency services about a strange red glow appearing above the city. At first, it was blamed on pollution. Then the sunlight disappeared. The entire sky turned a deep, unnatural crimson. Phones began losing signal. Traffic lights stopped working. The trains suddenly came to a halt between stations. Then, at 10:03 a.m., every screen in the city went black. Phones. Televisions. Billboards. Computers. Everything. For thirty seconds, there was nothing. Then every screen displayed the same message: DO NOT GO OUTSIDE. The message disappeared. Nobody knew who had sent it. People went outside anyway. Within minutes, the streets became chaos. Cars crashed into intersections. People crowded around buildings trying to get answers. Emergency sirens echoed through the city. Then the power went out. The city became strangely quiet. No traffic lights. No trains. No advertisements. No music from shops. Only thousands of people standing in the streets beneath the red sky. Then someone screamed. Nobody knew why. Another scream followed. Then another. People started running. Something had happened several blocks away. Nobody could explain what. The government announced an emergency evacuation. The announcement lasted eleven seconds. Then the broadcast cut off. After that, the city began to die. The first night lasted eighteen hours. The second day brought fires. By the third, most of the major roads were blocked. By the end of the first week, entire neighborhoods had been abandoned. Food disappeared from stores. Clean water became difficult to find. Hospitals filled beyond capacity. The internet vanished. Radio stations slowly disappeared one by one. And then the first strange reports began spreading. People claimed they had seen figures standing in empty streets. Tall figures. Completely black. Always watching. Nobody believed them. Until the figures began appearing on security cameras. They never seemed to move while anyone was looking directly at them. But whenever the cameras changed angles— they were closer. Weeks passed. Then months. The city emptied. Buildings that had once been filled with thousands of people became dark shells. Rain poured through broken windows. Plants began growing through cracks in the roads. Vines climbed apartment towers. Trees pushed through parking lots. Cars disappeared beneath layers of moss and leaves. The red sky never returned to normal. Years passed. The city became something else entirely. A jungle of concrete and steel. A place where abandoned buildings disappeared beneath enormous vines and streets became forests. And somewhere inside that enormous dead city, one small shelter remained hidden. For a while, it was safe. But outside, something was watching. And tonight, it was closer than it had ever been.