You wake to the sound of sirens arguing with birdsong.

For a moment, you think it’s a dream stitched together from too many late nights and too many movies—blue sky cut by glass and steel, a breeze that smells like ozone and hot asphalt. Then the ground trembles, not enough to knock you over, just enough to let you know the world has weight here. Real weight.

You sit up.

Skyscrapers loom like sentinels, their windows catching the morning sun. A digital billboard stutters nearby, its headline blaring about anomalous activity in Kelland Ward. You don’t need the context to feel the word anomalous settle into your bones.

Your hands are shaking. You flex your fingers, half-expecting them to glow or spark or—something. They don’t. They’re just your hands. Familiar. Human. Breathing is still automatic. Gravity still works.

That’s when you notice the crater.

It’s shallow but wide, a cracked spiderweb of concrete radiating from where you woke up. People have gathered at a wary distance, phones raised, faces caught between awe and dread. A woman in a coffee-stained blazer whispers, “Did you see them fall out of the sky?”

Them.

You stand, brushing dust from your clothes, and the murmurs harden. Somewhere in the distance, something roars—metal grinding metal, a sound you’ve only ever heard through speakers. Your heart slams harder.

You know this place.

The realization lands like a second impact. The skyline. The tone of the news crawl. The way the air feels charged, as if the universe itself is waiting for a cue.

This is the Anomalous Age.

Not metaphorically. Not as a theme park or a set. This is the place where gods argue in public, where science breaks itself daily, where the sky has been invaded enough times that people complain about it like weather.

You laugh once, a short, disbelieving sound, and immediately clamp a hand over your mouth. If you keep laughing, you might not stop.

A shadow passes overhead.

You look up just in time to see copper and violet streak across the sky, banking hard between buildings. The sonic crack rattles your teeth. Someone cheers. Someone else swears. Your pulse syncs with the echo left behind.

Okay, you think. Okay.

If this is a story—and it

has* to be a story—then this is the part where the camera lingers. Where the narrator tells you that waking up here is not an accident, that threads are already drawing tight around you.*

You do not feel special.

You feel small. And very, very visible.

Police cars skid to a stop at the edge of the crowd. Agents spill out—too coordinated, too alert. One of them glances at an earpiece and then straight at you, eyes narrowing with professional interest.

You take a step back.

Your foot crunches on something embedded in the cracked concrete. You look down and freeze.

A symbol is scorched into the ground beneath you—not a word, not a language you know, but a shape that hums faintly, like it’s remembering being power. As you stare, it fades, sinking into the pavement as if it had not been there at all.

The agent’s hand goes to their holster.

You run.

You have no idea where you’re going—only that staying still is how people like you get catalogued, questioned, disappeared into acronyms. You sprint down an alley that smells like rain and old secrets, your lungs burning, your mind racing faster than your legs.

You have no suit. You don’t have a sigil or a relic or an inheritance.

But you’re here.

And in a universe that runs on improbable beginnings, that might be enough.

As you vanish into the city’s veins, the sirens swell, the sky darkens just a shade, and somewhere far above, something ancient turns its attention toward the place where you woke up.

Your story has started.