Elior woke up already sitting upright.
His breath came fast at first, shallow and sharp, as if his body had sprinted ahead of his mind. For a few seconds, he did not move. He did not look around. He did not speak. He simply waited for the familiar surge of panic to crash into him like it always did.
It never came.
The room was dim, washed in early morning light filtering through the thin curtains. The hum of traffic outside sounded distant but steady. Normal. Familiar. His phone vibrated softly on the nightstand, a notification from some app he did not remember installing.
Seven days earlier.
He knew it without checking.
Elior exhaled slowly and lowered his feet to the floor. The wood was cool beneath his soles. Real. Solid. He pressed his toes down deliberately, grounding himself in the sensation.
"Okay," he murmured. "Okay."
He stood and crossed the room, pulling the curtain aside just enough to look at the sky. It was pale blue, untouched, innocent in a way that almost felt insulting. No green. No distortion. No pressure crawling under his skin.
This time, he did not tell anyone.
That decision came to him with a clarity that surprised him. He did not wake Aria. He did not reach for his phone to record frantic notes or half formed warnings. He did not rehearse explanations that would only earn him concerned looks and careful distance.
Talking had never helped.
Understanding might.
Elior sat at the small desk near the window and pulled a notebook from the drawer. It was mostly empty, save for a few abandoned lists and an unfinished attempt at journaling from months ago. He flipped to the first blank page and stared at it for a long moment.
Then he wrote a title at the top in firm, deliberate letters.
RULES
The word looked strange once it was on paper. Too simple for something this big. Too neat. Still, it was a place to start.
He rested the pen against the page and thought carefully before writing anything else. Not rushed. Not emotional. He treated it like a problem that could be solved if approached correctly.
The world ends every seven days.
He paused, then underlined it once.
The green aurora appears first.
Below that, he added:
I am always at the same place.
He leaned back slightly, eyes unfocused, replaying the moments before the end. Not the destruction itself. He avoided that. He focused instead on positioning. On geography. On the exact shape of the street beneath his feet.
"I need specifics," he said quietly to himself.
Elior stood and grabbed his jacket, sliding it on with practiced movements. He left the apartment without waking Aria, closing the door gently behind him.
Outside, the city stretched awake around him. Morning commuters moved with habitual urgency. A man argued with a coffee machine that refused to cooperate. A woman jogged past with headphones in, her expression fixed and determined.
Elior walked.
He took his time, retracing familiar paths with a new kind of attention. He did not let his thoughts drift. Every turn was deliberate. Every street sign was noted. When he reached the area where the world had ended so many times before, he stopped a full block away.
Not closer.
He pulled out his notebook and wrote again.
Location details.
Street name.
Intersecting roads.
Nearby buildings.
He sketched a rough map, labeling landmarks. The lamppost. The convenience store. The uneven patch of pavement that looked like a shadow even in direct sunlight.
When he finished, he added a final rule at the bottom of the page, pressing hard enough that the pen nearly tore through the paper.
Never go near that location.
He circled it twice.
"There," he said, nodding to himself. "That's the mistake. That's the only mistake."
The logic felt sound. Comforting, even. Awareness had always come too late before. Now he was early. Now he was prepared.
When he returned home, Aria was awake, sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee cradled between her hands. She looked up as he entered, her expression a mix of relief and concern.
"You left without saying anything," she said. "I woke up and you were just gone."
"Sorry," Elior replied, slipping off his jacket. "I needed to think."
She studied him for a moment. "You look different."
"Different how?"
"Calmer," she said. "Which is new."
He hesitated, then smiled faintly. "I slept better."
She did not look convinced, but she nodded anyway. "You want coffee?"
"Yeah. Thanks."
They moved around the kitchen in comfortable silence. The ordinary rhythm of it eased something in his chest. This was what he had been fighting for, he realized. Not survival alone, but continuity. Days that followed one another without rupture.
Aria slid a mug across the counter. "So," she said carefully, "are we going to talk about yesterday?"
Elior wrapped his hands around the warmth of the cup. "There's nothing to talk about."
"That's not true," she replied. "You've been distant for days. You barely slept. You flinch every time you look at the sky."
He met her gaze, steady. "I'm handling it."
She sighed softly. "That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have right now."
She searched his face, then looked away. "Okay," she said. "But I'm here if you decide to share."
"I know."
The days that followed passed with careful precision.
Elior planned each one the night before, writing schedules down to the hour. He avoided the city center. He took longer routes to familiar places. He kept his phone on silent and limited his conversations to what was necessary.
He did not argue. He did not cling. He did not push.
When Aria asked if he wanted to go out with friends, he declined politely. When coworkers invited him to lunch, he made excuses that sounded reasonable and true. He kept his emotional distance measured, not cold, not withdrawn, just controlled.
By the fourth day, something inside him began to relax.
Nothing happened.
No strange lights. No pressure. No creeping sense of inevitability. The sky remained stubbornly blue. The city behaved exactly as it always had.
"This is working," he told himself one evening, writing the words beneath his rules. "This is actually working."
He slept through the night.
On the sixth day, he woke later than planned.
The alarm on his phone had gone off, he was sure of it, but he did not remember turning it off. The sunlight in the room was brighter than it should have been at that hour. His schedule sat open on the desk, neatly written, familiar in his own handwriting.
He glanced at it without urgency.
Plenty of time, he thought.
Aria was already dressed when he entered the kitchen. "You're up late," she said.
"Yeah," Elior replied, shrugging. "Guess I needed it."
She smiled. "We all do sometimes."
They ate breakfast together, talking about nothing in particular. A neighbor's noisy dog. A show they might watch later. Elior felt almost normal. The tight vigilance he had maintained all week loosened its grip.
When his phone buzzed with a message from a coworker asking for a small favor, he barely hesitated before replying yes.
It was nearby. Quick. Easy.
"I'll be back in a bit," he said, grabbing his jacket.
"Don't forget we're meeting my sister later," Aria called after him.
"I won't," he replied.
He stepped outside, the door clicking shut behind him.
The air felt pleasant. Light. Manageable.
Elior walked, mind relaxed, thoughts drifting just enough to feel human again.
He did not look at the notebook sitting open on the desk.
He did not think about the rule he had written in bold.
And when his feet turned down a familiar street, it felt like nothing more than habit.