New Brooklyn never slept. It tossed and turned, muttering in neon and steel, restless as the people who lived inside it. Elias Ward walked across the East bridge with his hood up, shoulders hunched against the cold wind sweeping off the river. His backpack thumped lightly against his spine with each step — tools, spare parts, and a half‑finished project he'd been tinkering with for weeks.
He worked late again. He always worked late.
Kronis Dynamics didn't care about work‑life balance. They cared about results. And Elias, for all his quiet self‑doubt, delivered results better than anyone else in his department. He fixed things. Machines, engines, circuits — anything broken, he could make whole again.
People were harder.
He checked the time: 11:52 PM. The bridge was busy for the hour — delivery vans, night‑shift workers, a couple arguing in a parked car, a cyclist weaving through traffic with reckless confidence.
Elias kept walking.
Then the bridge shuddered.
A low, metallic groan rippled through the steel under his feet. Elias stopped. Looked down. The vibration intensified, humming like a living thing.
A few pedestrians paused, confused. A dog barked. A truck driver leaned out his window, frowning.
The second tremor hit like a punch.
The entire bridge lurched sideways. Cars skidded. A delivery van slammed into the guardrail. Someone screamed. The sound echoed across the river like a warning shot.
Elias's heart kicked into overdrive.
The centre span of the East bridge — a structure he'd walked across a thousand times — buckled with a deafening crack. Steel cables snapped like gunfire. Concrete split open. The world tilted.
And then it fell.
The middle of the bridge collapsed into the river in a roaring avalanche of metal and debris. Cars plunged into the black water. People clung to twisted railings, shouting for help.
Elias didn't think. He didn't hesitate. He ran.
He sprinted toward the broken edge, lungs burning, legs shaking. A sedan teetered on the brink, its headlights flickering. Inside, a woman pounded on the window, her child screaming in the back seat.
Elias vaulted over the shattered railing and dove.
The cold hit him like a fist. The river swallowed him whole, dragging him down into darkness. He kicked upward, fighting the current, reaching the sinking car. His fingers scraped metal. He grabbed the door handle and pulled.
It didn't budge.
He slammed his elbow into the window. Pain shot up his arm. He hit it again. And again. The glass cracked. One more strike — it shattered. Water rushed in. Elias reached inside, grabbed the woman, then the child, and dragged them out.
His lungs screamed for air.
He pushed them upward, toward the faint glow of the surface. His vision blurred. His limbs felt heavy. He'd saved them — but he wasn't sure he could save himself.
Then he saw it.
A light beneath the water.
Golden. Pulsing. Ancient.
It drifted toward him like a living ember, swirling with patterns he didn't understand. Elias reached out, mesmerized. The moment his fingers brushed the light, it surged forward and slammed into his chest.
A shockwave tore through him.
Pain. Heat. Light. Darkness.
He didn't remember swimming to shore. He didn't remember collapsing on the riverbank. He didn't remember the paramedics pulling the survivors away.
He only remembered opening his eyes to a silent, empty shoreline… and the faint glow beneath his shirt, pulsing like a second heartbeat.
Elias staggered to his feet, trembling.
He should've died.
But something had decided he wouldn't.
Something had chosen him.
And far above the city, perched on a rooftop with a sniper's calm stillness, a woman watched him through a pair of high‑tech binoculars. Her dark hair whipped in the wind, her expression unreadable.
Seraphine Kade lowered the binoculars and exhaled a quiet, amused breath.
"Well," she murmured, "that's going to be a problem."
She didn't know why the anomaly felt familiar. She didn't know why her chest ached when the light hit him. She didn't know why she felt the same energy that had haunted her since childhood.
But she knew one thing:
Elias Ward wasn't ordinary anymore.
And the universe had just shifted around him.