The world was ending. First, the disappearances. People blinked out of existence—no screams, no bodies, just empty spaces where they once stood. Then came the dead. They rose, not as mindless horrors but as silent figures, their hollow eyes watching, waiting. Some still bore the wounds that had ended them—jagged gashes, shattered skulls—but they did not attack. They simply wandered, flickering like candlelight, vanishing one by one.
The water ran red, thick as blood. The earth trembled in rage. Cities crumbled under the weight of nature’s fury. The living, driven mad by fear, tore each other apart in the streets. And through it all, the ghost stood. No one knew who it had been in life, only that it appeared wherever the world cracked, whispering words no one understood. Its form shimmered, barely holding together, its mouth moving in a soundless chant: Cross the veil.
No one listened. No one could.
Until Layla.
She had lost everything—her mother to the riots, her brother to the disappearances. There was nothing left but survival, but what did that even mean when the world itself was dying? One night, as the sky burned with an unnatural fire, she saw the ghost again. It stood at the edge of a ruined street, its transparent form wavering between existence and nothing.
The words burned in her mind. Cross the veil. Layla swallowed hard, stepping forward as the last of the city collapsed behind her. The ghost didn’t react, didn’t move. But something shimmered in the air around it, like a ripple in glass. She reached out. Her fingers met resistance, pressing against something unseen yet solid. And then—
Light.
Blinding, warm, endless. She gasped, stumbling forward as the darkness behind her vanished. The air smelled of rain-soaked earth, of fresh grass and something impossibly sweet. The sky stretched vast and golden, untouched by ruin. Rolling fields spread in every direction, unmarred by time. And she was not alone.
People stood in clusters, staring at their hands, their feet, each other. Some she recognized—faces she had seen disappear without a trace. They were all here. Alive. She turned back. The world she had left was still there, a fading echo, unraveling like mist. She saw the ghost one last time, watching her with eyes that gleamed with something almost human. Then, it too, was gone. And Layla understood. The apocalypse wasn’t death. It was a door. And they had been given a choice.
