"Do not turn around."
The command was absolute, but the chaos of the world had other plans.
From the periphery of his vision, through the choking haze of dust, Ogdi saw it. Where the café had stood only moments ago, there was now a gaping maw of gravel and twisted rebar. But from beneath a shattered slab of concrete, a hand—unnaturally pale and twitching with a ghastly desperation—reached out.
Someone is alive.
Ogdi's legs felt like lead, his gaze locked on those trembling fingers. He tensed, calculating the distance.
Then, the air shattered.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
A fresh volley of gunfire erupted from the rooftops, bullets chewing into the pavement inches from them. The man holding Ogdi hostage flinched, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second as he ducked away from the strafing run.
Seizing the horrific opportunity, Ogdi didn't think. He didn't breathe. He lunged.
He broke into a sprint, his legs pumping like pistons, plunging toward the ruins of the café. He collapsed to his knees atop the debris pile, the jagged gravel tearing at his palms, but he clawed on, oblivious to the pain. Stone after stone, he heaved them aside, each breath a ragged gasp mixed with concrete dust. The hand still writhed.
"Hold on!" he screamed, coughing violently. "I'm getting you out!"
Gunshots, hollow and distant, echoed like a death knell around him. He paused only when a voice, agonizingly familiar, ripped through the chaos—clearer than the gunfire, sharper than the sirens.
"Ogdi!"
He froze. Ice flooded his veins.
He turned his head. Behind him, the crowd surged—a frantic, stampeding tide of humanity fleeing the plaza. And there, caught in the current, was his brother. His eyes were wide with a primal terror, a raw desperation, searching for Ogdi in the smoke.
"Alone!" Ogdi roared, rising to his feet.
He took a step toward him.
"MOVE!" a guttural shout ripped through the air as desperate bodies shoved past his brother.
And then, it happened. His brother stumbled—a sickening lurch as someone slammed into him from behind. A low, ragged groan escaped his lips, instantly swallowed by the din. He fell.
"NO!"
Ogdi watched in horror as the stampede swallowed him. The blue jacket vanished beneath a churning sea of panic-stricken feet. A broken puppet, lost to the tide.
Ogdi screamed, a silent, guttural cry of pure anguish that tore through his very soul. He lunged forward, intending to dive into the stampede, to die trying to shield him.
But the hand beneath the rubble grabbed his wrist. A weak, desperate squeeze.
Ogdi stopped. He looked at the stampede—an impenetrable wall of death. He looked at the hand—a life he could actually save.
The choice wasn't a choice. It was a sentence.
He's gone. I can't reach him. But I can save this one.
He bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, the metallic tang filling his mouth. With a sob that sounded like a dry heave, he turned his back on his brother.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to the smoke.
With an inhuman, desperate strength born of a horrific resolve, he returned to the debris. He heaved a massive slab of concrete aside, muscles screaming, and pulled the body free.
It was Nala. She was a limp, bloodied doll, unconscious and bleeding profusely from a head wound.
"First…" he gasped, his voice a raw, tortured rasp, hoisting her onto his back. "First, I have to take her. Urgent treatment."
His hands trembled, not with fear, but with a visceral, shaking desperation as he began to run. His heartbeat didn't simply thump; it pounded a brutal, relentless judgment against the backdrop of a world burning.
He ran through the kill zone.
THWACK. THWACK.
The impacts hit him like sledgehammers. Two bullets slammed into his side. Another grazed his thigh.
Ogdi stumbled, waiting for the darkness, waiting for the legs to fail, waiting for the end.
Why am I still moving?
The pain was there—a dull, distant shock—but the blood didn't spray. His muscles didn't fail. It was as if his body was rejecting the reality of the bullets, knitting itself together simply because his will demanded he keep running. He didn't have time to question the miracle; he only had time to run.
At the campus entrance, a grotesque tableau of ambulances waited, their sirens wailing a mournful dirge. One of the paramedics snatched the unconscious body of Nala from his trembling grasp.
"She's alive! We've got a pulse!"
Ogdi collapsed against the side of the ambulance, sliding down to the pavement. He looked back at the smoke rising from the plaza. He couldn't find his brother. The ground was a horrifying mosaic of corpses, their still forms a grim testament to the nightmare.
...
A Few Days Later
Ring, ring, ring.
The house phone rang in the living room—an archaic sound, sharp against the hush of late evening. Ogdi ran toward it, freezing inches from the receiver.
"What if the news is final?"
But he answered. "Hello?"
"Hello, are you a family member of Alone?"
Ogdi's heart stalled. His voice cracked. "Yes… tell me."
"He's at Harthmere General. He was found under... he's badly injured. Fractures, severe blood loss… frankly, it's a miracle he wasn't crushed to death. It'll be a long recovery. But he's stable."
Ogdi crumbled like breath against glass. His knees buckled, and he sat on the floor, clutching the phone cord like a lifeline.
"Thank God," he whispered, sobbing softly. "Thank God..."
He closed his eyes, letting the relief wash over him—
...
The Bedroom
Ogdi gasped, his eyes snapping open.
He wasn't on the floor. He was standing.
The air, thick with the scent of old parchment and the faint metallic tang of magic, shimmered around him. He blinked, the faint glow of the flickering candle the only anchor in his disoriented mind.
"What... what was I doing?" he mumbled.
His voice was raspy, dry. A sense of unfamiliarity clung to him like cobwebs. His gaze, still hazy from a sleep that felt less like rest and more like an unremembered journey, fell upon his open notebook on the desk.
His breath hitched.
New lines, sharp and precise, etched in an impossible script that seemed to writhe with a life of its own, had appeared since he last saw it. They were alien yet disturbingly clear, an unsettling blend of the known and the utterly bizarre:
First Trial Complete.
Result: 73% Integrity.
Emotional Signature: Compassion—True.
Instinctive Prioritization: 58% (Subject chose the tangible save over the probable loss).
Hesitation: Present. Forgiven.
Wish granted at safe operational range.
Calibration continues...
He blinked again, hard, trying to dislodge the surreal nature of the words. His fingers, trembling slightly, traced the bizarre symbols.
"What does that even mean?" he whispered, the question barely audible above the frantic beat of his own heart. A strange, almost reverent awe crept into his voice, mingling with a burgeoning fear. "Did I… fall asleep standing up? And if so, what kind of dream leaves physical manifestations?"
His gaze darted around the small, cramped room as if expecting answers to materialize from the shadows.
"You're still there, aren't you?" he called out, the sound swallowed by the oppressive silence.
The candle flame, as if responding to a hidden command, bent toward him, its light elongating and flickering with an unnatural intensity. A familiar resonance, deep and ancient, filled the room—not as a sound, but as a vibration that hummed in his bones.
"How was it?"
The voice—Azad—resonated directly in his mind, carrying with it the cool detachment of something immensely powerful and infinitely old.
Ogdi narrowed his eyes, a flicker of irritation cutting through his confusion. "How was what?" he retorted, the immediate question burning on his tongue. The events of the night were a jumble—gunshots, Nala, the phone call—but they felt like memories of a movie he had watched years ago, fading fast.
A knowing smile, unseen but profoundly felt, rippled through the very fabric of the air around him. It was a smile that conveyed immense understanding, a silent amusement at his bewilderment.
Simultaneously, a thought, clear and distinct, echoed through the unspoken void.
"Apparently, that part is still the same," a voice—presumably Azad—mused internally.
The shared thought then dismissed itself. "Nothing. Forget about it."
A potent nudge of curiosity, a desperate need to unravel the mysteries of the night, sparked within Ogdi. Yet, he wrestled it down, choosing silence over a torrent of questions. He had learned, even in this short time, that direct confrontation with this entity was often met with riddles.
Instead, he chose a different path, focusing on the implications of the notebook's final, most astonishing line.
"Then… has my first wish been granted?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper, yet infused with an undeniable tremor of hope and trepidation.
The room itself seemed to shift, to expand and contract. A grin surfaced not on a tangible face, but within the space itself—a ripple of delight.
"Why don't you check for yourself?" Azad's voice resonated, its tone laced with a playful challenge. "But remember what I told you: everything has consequences."
As the words settled, hanging in the charged air like a forgotten scent, reality exhaled a long, slow breath. The subtle hum of magic receded, the unseen veil lifting. The world returned to its quiet, familiar hum, as if nothing strange had ever stirred.
Ogdi whispered, mostly to himself, the words a silent pact.
"I will… but not now. First I need to calm down—and from now on, choose my words carefully."
The weight of the inexplicable, the promise of the granted wish, and the chilling warning of consequences settled upon him. A new chapter had irrevocably begun.