The sky looked like it had been slashed open by a rusted knife. From the gash didn't fall sunlight, but milky clumps of spoiled light—thick as a corpse's tears, splattering onto the ground.
Ethan and his friend Karl stood at the edge of the fractured world. The air carried a strange stench, like burnt paper mixed with fresh blood. The ground was riddled with cracks, as if smashed to pieces with a hammer and then sloppily glued back into "wholeness."
Karl's complexion was off. Not the usual pale, but half-transparent, like he might dissolve with the next breeze.
"You… lost some weight?" Ethan quipped darkly, trying to bury unease beneath humor.
Karl raised his hand. Between his fingers, tiny motes of light peeled away with every breath.
"I didn't lose weight," Karl said with a trembling laugh. "I'm just… disappearing in installments."
Ethan stared at the glow. It wasn't mere light—it was memory. Karl as a kid scraping his knee. Karl puking drunk after a failed confession. The two of them cutting class and laughing on the rooftop. All of it crumbled into dust, unrecoverable.
"Cut it out." Ethan reached for Karl's shoulder, but his fingers sank halfway through like mist.
"I'm not joking." Karl's smile was bitter. "This fractured world picks its targets. Guess my luck's bad. Or maybe I was always just a test product. You know how this world works—it doesn't reason. It just decides, 'you break first.'"
His eyes glimmered with the same false comfort a manager gives during layoffs: It's not personal.
Ethan's throat dried. "What about me? Will I… shatter too?"
Karl shrugged, but the motion nearly cracked off part of his body. "Maybe. But you're the protagonist—odds are lower."
Ethan wanted to laugh but couldn't. A crack split open across Karl's chest, running from heart to stomach. Inside wasn't flesh, but darkness. The fracture yawned like a mouth, devouring the last of him.
Karl's voice faded, muffled, as if through thick glass. "You know… I'm kinda jealous. At least I won't have to work overtime anymore."
Ethan froze—then burst out laughing, tears stinging his eyes. "You bastard. Still trying to ditch the cubicle, even now? A true corporate soul!"
Karl laughed too, his voice crumbling along with his body. His shoulders dissolved into light, his legs vanished into void. Finally, half a face remained, still smiling stubbornly.
"Don't forget… our last drink."
"I won't," Ethan whispered. But only the sound of cracking spread, like a world made of glass breaking apart.
Karl was gone. Only faint glimmers spun in the air, like a misplaced firework in a graveyard.
Ethan stared at the empty ground. His throat burned, but he forced out a bitter joke:
"Well… at least you don't have to worry about performance reviews anymore."
The wind swept past, chilling his chest. The fractured world kept collapsing, the ground splitting wider, ready to swallow him too.
And yet he knew—even if he escaped, this fracture would remain carved in his heart.
Some fractures belong to the world.Others belong to the soul.
And the latter never heal.