Jerald Dezr crossed the intersection, his shoulders slumped as he began the walk back to his apartment. In one hand, a plastic bag crinkled rhythmically, weighted down by the ginger, papaya, and chicken he'd managed to scrap together for a tinola. To Jerald, it felt like just another gray, unremarkable day—he had no inkling that the fabric of his reality was about to come apart at the seams.
While navigating the cracked pavement, Jerald stopped for a moment. He lifted his free hand, staring intensely at the calloused lines on his palm, as if looking for a map that wasn't there.
"Why is this my fate?" he muttered to himself. He let out a heavy, shuddering sigh that seemed to drain what little energy he had left. He rubbed his face with his hand, his fingers lingering over his tired eyes. "Damn it... why am I such an unlucky person? And I still have to drag myself to work later."
He adjusted his grip on the groceries and began the climb. His apartment was on the fourth floor of a decaying tenement building where the air smelled of damp concrete and old cooking oil. Each step on the stairs creaked, a familiar, mocking protest under his weight.
He reached his unit—a cramped, dimly lit space where the late afternoon sun struggled to pierce through a single, grime-streaked window. The room was a collection of relics: a scarred wooden table, a battery-operated radio that only picked up static, a rusted mini gas stove, and a thin, lumpy mattress tucked into the corner.
Jerald stood in the center of the room, his gaze wandering over the peeling wallpaper. A wave of bitterness washed over him. "If I only had a better life... maybe I could have finally helped my parents by now," he whispered, the thought echoing in the silence of the empty room.
With a slow, deliberate motion, he set the ingredients on the table. He reached for the rice cooker, his movements mechanical and weary, and clicked the switch to reheat the leftover rice from the day before. He stood there for a second, resting his hand on the warm lid of the cooker, staring at nothing.
Outside, the world was bleeding into deep shades of crimson. Twilight was settling in, casting a long, heavy glow through Jerald's old window, while the tattered curtains swayed rhythmically in the cooling breeze. As he stirred the pot, the steam from the tinola rose to meet the fading light. Jerald paused, leaning his weight against the counter to glance out the small pane of glass.
The sky looked bruised, a violent red that signaled the end of another grueling cycle.
"Damn it... sun's going down again," he muttered, his voice raspy with fatigue. "Back to that hellish call center. I'm so sick of this." He rubbed the bridge of his nose, his tired eyes reflecting a deep-seated exhaustion—the kind that made him wish he could just close them and sleep for a lifetime.
He turned back to his task, his movements mechanical. He began peeling the chayote, the knife slick against the vegetable's skin. Once the broth reached a rolling boil, he dropped the slices in, watching them sink into the ginger-infused water. When the meal was finished, he carefully ladled out a small portion, ensuring there was enough left to stretch into tomorrow. Survival was a game of portions.
Sitting down, Jerald reached for his phone—a device with a spiderweb crack running across the screen—and opened his social media to kill the silence. He scrolled aimlessly through his feed, his thumb moving with a bored flick until a specific post made him freeze, a spoonful of rice halfway to his mouth.
BREAKING NEWS: ASTRONOMICAL
EVENT A rare meteor shower is expected tonight, November 12, 2026. The phenomenon will be visible over the Manila skyline starting at 7:20 PM.
Jerald's eyes widened. He quickly checked the timestamp on the post, then glanced at the flickering digital clock on his wall. It was today. Right now.
"Holy shit! That's tonight!" he blurted out, nearly choking on his food. He checked the time again: 6:30 PM.
He looked at his phone, then back at the window, a bitter scowl crossing his face. "Tsk. I'd love to record this, but this piece of junk phone wouldn't see a thing. Just my luck." He tapped the cracked screen in frustration, the dim light of the device barely illuminating his disappointed expression.
Jerald leaned his forehead against the cool, grime-streaked glass. He stayed like that for a long time, his breath fogging the pane. Outside, the crimson sky was deepening into an unnatural violet. Then, his eyes caught it—a tiny, singular prick of light in the distance.
It didn't flicker like a star. It pulsed.
Jerald squinted, his fingers gripping the window ledge until his knuckles turned white. "Is that... it?" he whispered. The light grew brighter, turning from a pale yellow to a sharp, electric blue. He didn't pull away. He stood frozen, his eyes reflecting the distant glow, unaware that this tiny speck of light was the herald of his transformation.
NASA HEADQUARTERS: Operational Command Center
The atmosphere inside the command center was thick with the hum of high-powered servers and the smell of ozone. At exactly 6:00 PM, the silence was shattered by a sharp, rhythmic ping from the Long-Range Infrared Deep Space Survey.
"Wait, what is that?" a junior technician muttered, leaning forward and adjusting his glasses. He tapped a command into his console, his fingers trembling slightly.
Suddenly, the main screen flashed a violent red.
"Sir! Velocity readings are spiking! We have incoming trajectory—impact point: Earth!" The alarm system triggered—a deafening, bone-chilling siren that wailed through the halls. Scientists scrambled, papers were knocked off desks, and voices rose into a cacophony of panic. Amidst the chaos, Dr. Jude sat perfectly still. His eyes were glued to his terminal, his jaw tight. He reached up, slowly wiping a bead of sweat from his temple, never breaking his gaze from the data.
"Everyone, shut up!" Jude's voice wasn't loud, but it carried a cold authority that cut through the noise.
Sam Solde, the Head Researcher, rushed over, his shoes clicking sharply on the polished floor. He gripped the back of Jude's chair, his knuckles straining. "Jude, report! Tell me our satellites are just glitching."
Jude didn't answer immediately. He used his mouse to zoom in on the high-resolution feed, his hand steady despite the chaos around him. "Look at the thermal trail, Sam," Jude pointed at the screen with a trembling finger.
Sam leaned in, his eyes widening. "Blue? That's impossible. That's not friction burn... that's not meteor dust."
"It's energy," Jude whispered, leaning back as if the image itself could burn him. He crossed his arms over his chest, his posture rigid. "There are twelve of them. Look at the formation, Sam. They aren't tumbling. They are navigating. They're moving with precision... as if they were sent."
Sam let out a shaky breath, rubbing his face to his head with both hands in a gesture of pure exhaustion and fear. "Sent? By what? Jude, if these hit, we're looking at an extinction-level event."
Jude stared at the twelve blue streaks piercing the atmosphere. "They aren't hitting the ocean, Sam. They are targeting the major ley lines. They're hitting the cities." He looked down at his watch, the rhythmic ticking the only sound in his ears. "Ten minutes. May God have mercy on us, because whatever is in those rocks certainly won't."
Sam looked at the screen one last time, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "Inform the President. Tell them... tell them the sky is falling."
It was 7:12 PM, and the sky was beginning to swell with an unnatural radiance. From his vantage point, Jerald watched as a specific meteor seemed to hover, locked in place, while a swarm of others began to grow larger, all of them hurtling toward Earth in a coordinated descent. Driven by a surge of anxiety, Jerald grabbed his phone to check his Facebook feed for any updates. He was met with a chaotic flood of posts; the internet was exploding with sightings from across the globe. As he scrolled through the endless stream of images, his heart sank—every photo captured the same chilling detail: the meteors weren't just rocks. They were shrouded in a strange, pulsating blue light, an otherworldly aura that defied every law of nature he knew.
"Stay still," Jerald whispered to himself, his thumb hovering over a blurry photo of a neon-streaked sky. "Just stay a dream. Or a prank. Anything but another thing I can't control." He felt the familiar, cold knot of anxiety tightening in his chest, the same one he felt before a shift at Concentrix, but this was heavier—electric. "That blue... it's not fire. It looks like the static on my radio, but beautiful. And terrifying. Is this the 'different' I wanted? I spent years wishing for the routine to break, for the cycle of work and home to just stop... but not like this. Not with the sky falling down on us." He let out a shaky breath, the blue light from his phone screen mixing with the sapphire glow bleeding through his window. "Look at them. Thousands of people posting, crying, praying. For once, the whole world is as scared as I was when I was a kid. If those things land, there's no going back to the headset. No more being the guy everyone can just push around. If this is the end of the loop, then maybe... just maybe, I'm the only one here who's actually ready for the world to break."
Jerald stood frozen by his window, watching the sky break apart. The meteors, which had looked like tiny sparks moments ago, were now twelve massive balls of blue fire. They filled his vision, turning the entire city of Manila into a cold, glowing sapphire graveyard.
As the blue light got brighter, Jerald didn't feel fear for the world. Instead, he felt the heavy weight of his own life. A single tear ran down his face as the light triggered a flood of painful memories. Suddenly, he wasn't in his apartment anymore; he was back in high school, feeling the shame of being picked on by bullies. He felt the sting of the beatings from his parents and remembered the exact moment they threw him out of the house like he was nothing.
"So this is how it ends," he thought, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the windowsill. "The world spent twenty-four years treating me like garbage, and now it's finally deciding to throw itself away, too. It's almost funny. I survived my parents, I survived the streets, and I survived that soul-sucking office... only to be hit by a rock from space."
He looked at the blue fire and felt a strange, cold comfort. _"Go ahead. Burn it all. Burn the school where I hid in the bathrooms. Burn the house where I wasn't wanted. If I'm going down, at least I get to watch the world that hated me burn first. For the first time in my life, I don't have to worry about tomorrow's shift. For the first time, the routine is finally, truly dead."
After a few minutes of being lost in his painful memories, Jerald snapped back to reality and looked up at the sky. The meteors were incredibly close now, but as he stared, something felt wrong. The giant spheres of fire seemed to freeze in mid-air, hanging motionless against the clouds as if time itself had come to a grinding halt.
A look of pure confusion crossed Jerald's face. The sight was so unnatural that his fear was momentarily replaced by bewilderment. "Huh? Why isn't it moving?" he muttered, leaning closer to the glass.
The silence didn't last long. In an instant, the twelve meteors shifted from a fiery glow to a brilliant, solid neon blue. They pulsed once—a massive, rhythmic heartbeat of energy that sent a blinding shockwave of light across the entire planet. The flash was so intense that for a few seconds, the world vanished into a void of pure sapphire.
"Damn it! It's too bright!" Jerald yelled, shielding his eyes with his arms as the light seared through his eyelids.
When the glare finally faded enough for him to peek, the meteors were no longer stationary. They streaked across the sky like high-powered lasers, splitting apart and hurtling toward different corners of the globe.