“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.”

  ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Chapter 1: Aphelion

  Where were you, the day the world ended?

  I remember how it felt, on that cold, grey day. The rain drumming hollowly down, the city a colorless sketch of itself. I’d just made a delivery, still shivering in damp clothes as I trudged back to my bike.

  In truth, I wasn’t looking forward to the next one. Three hours in, and fatigue had given the world a hallucinatory quality: I’d come right from classes, right after college let out, and it felt like I’d been moving through a dream.

  The streets seemed blurred, out of focus, like a painting that was just slightly off-kilter. I wasn’t even sure if I was walking or floating. Everything felt a little too soft, too distant. I remember the hum of the city fading, like a sound that couldn’t quite reach my ears.

  It suited my mood, for I’d just gotten the news.

  Justin’s going to die.

  The doctors didn’t say it like that, of course. They never do.

  They wrapped it in softer words, in ‘treatments’ and ‘options’, but I could hear the finality in their voices, the soft resignation beneath the professionalism.

  They were telling me that my brother, my little brother - just fourteen - was dying.

  The cancer had spread too far. There was nothing they could do.

  In that moment, as I stood there in the rain, none of their words mattered. None of the sterile hospital rooms or the quiet, muffled voices in the background could make a dent in the sharp, jagged truth of it.

  I wasn’t sure how to feel. How do you feel when your whole world tilts on its axis, when the earth beneath your feet cracks open? How do you keep breathing when you realize that someone you love - the one who used to tug at your sleeve and pull you into their messy world of video games and bad jokes - is fading away?

  The hum of the city, that distant, almost forgotten sound, was all I had left. It was the only thing that seemed real, a tether to a life I no longer recognized. The rest of it, the pain, the grief, felt too heavy to bear.

  So, I let the rain soak through my jacket and the world spin around me, watching the city turn into a ghostly blur as I tried not to think about the hollow ache in my chest.

  But I couldn’t escape it.

  It was worse for my parents, of course. In the wan light of the screen, they’d looked like pale ghosts of themselves: Dazed, hollowed-out by grief. To them, it was a slow-motion nightmare, an ordeal that never ended - an alien landscape where words like palliative and remission and adenocarcinoma promised salvation or doom.

  “They’re thinking - they’re talking about putting him on a feeding tube,” my father had said, his voice hoarse. He’d seemed so dreadfully bowed and hunched, a quiet bewilderment in his eyes.

  It hurt to see him like this: He’d always seemed so dauntless, so invincible, a brawny blonde giant who could carry the weight of the world without breaking a sweat.

  But now, he looked small, fragile, his strength drained by something he couldn’t fight. The reality of watching his son wither away.

  My mother had been quieter. Her face, always full of energy and sharp with purpose, had become a mask of exhausted stoicism. She would only speak in soft murmurs, talking about medications and the arrangements at the hospice.

  She put a brave face on it, but I could see the truth in her eyes. The way they darted around the room, avoiding mine, as though afraid to confront the truth.

  She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t let herself fall apart. Not yet.

  But in those small, stolen moments when she thought I wasn’t looking, I saw it. The way her hands shook as she shuffled her papers, the way her breath hitched each time she mentioned Justin.

  Like she was already saying goodbye, even before he was gone.

  Half a continent away, far from everything I’d ever known, I felt like a traitor.

  I’ve never been book-smart. Getting the scholarship had been like winning the lottery:

  Something earnestly-desired, yet undeserved.

  I’d always scraped by in school, never the brightest in the class, but just clever enough to get by. My grades were solid enough to keep me off the radar: Good enough to not be noticed, sure, but not so good that I’d be put on any pedestal.

  It was a miracle, really. A combination of good timing, the right essay, and maybe just a little bit of charm that got me through the door. I had the papers, the financial aid package, and the acceptance letter - Everything in order, all in its rightful place.

  But inside - Inside, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be there. Everyone around me seemed so much smarter, more confident, as if they'd been born with the knowledge I had to work twice as hard to grasp.

  So there I was, on the edge of something I wasn’t sure I was ready for. Trying to convince myself I’d somehow earned it. Every day felt like I was playing catch-up, like the clock was ticking faster than I could run.

  And all the while, I couldn’t help but feel like a fraud. Pretending to belong, in a place I wasn’t sure I’d ever really earned.

  I’d wanted to turn the offer down, at first. I’d talked - half-heartedly, grasping at straws - about getting a job. Finding some way to help with Justin’s mounting medical bills, to shoulder my part of the burden.

  My mother had refused, flat-out.

  “Don’t you dare,” she’d said. “Don’t you dare, Gabriel.”

  She’d looked at me with those tired, knowing eyes of hers. The ones that had seen too much, carried too much.

  “This is your chance. You’ve worked your whole life for this, and you’re not going to throw it away. I’ll handle that. We’ll handle that. You go to school. You be somebody, Gabe. You owe it to yourself, and you owe it to him.”

  In the darkness of the room, with only the flicker of the TV casting shadows on the walls, I could hear the quiet hum of the machines that had become so familiar in the last few months.

  My brother’s shallow breathing.

  The soft beeping of the IV drip.

  The steady rhythm of the world outside that carried on, oblivious to the war being fought within.

  Her words hit me harder than I expected, but they didn’t take away the guilt gnawing at my chest.

  Still, I knew she was right.

  But what if it wasn’t enough? What if they couldn’t manage?

  In the end, I’d agreed. I remember that last autumn, waiting for the bus: My parents, smiling bravely, as I stood by the side of the road. Luggage in hand, a kind of shame stinging my eyes and the back of my throat.

  They waved as the bus pulled away, their faces painted with pride, but I saw the cracks. The tightness of their smiles, how the weight of it all was slowly pulling them down.

  I’d forced myself to look away, to focus on the road ahead. But even as the bus trundled away, I couldn’t shake the thought of Justin lying in that sterile room, hooked up to the machines that breathed and pulsed for him.

  The bus ride felt endless, each mile stretching farther between me and home. Every stop felt like a betrayal, taking me one step further into a life that left them all behind.

  Even then, it’d felt like running away.

  I knew what I had to do, but I didn’t know if I was strong enough to do it.

  What if I wasn’t enough?

  What if none of it was enough?

  Claire had known, right from the start.

  We’d met at a party, one of those sprawling, too-loud gatherings that felt like an entirely different world. Everyone else looked like they belonged there, their laughter easy, their confidence built on the assurance of wealth and power.

  I stood at the edge of the room, nursing a drink I didn’t really want, trying not to look too out of place as the crowd swirled around me like a glittering sea of privilege. The bright, too-white smiles, the casual ease with which they conversed about things I barely understood, made my skin itch.

  I could feel the weight of my cheap shoes, my worn-out jacket, pulling at my shoulders. As if every inch of me was screaming: I don’t belong here.

  That’s when Claire found me. She wasn’t part of the crowd, not in the same way. Her eyes - dark, sharp, like she saw right through me - locked on mine across the room.

  There was something about the way she moved, so effortlessly, so unbothered by the ostentation around us. She wasn’t pretending to fit in: she just…did.

  She approached me with a calmness that seemed to silence the noise, like we were the only two people in a room of dozens.

  “You look like you need saving,” she’d said, with a smile that didn’t quite reach her deep brown eyes. “-what’s on your mind, stranger?”

  Maybe she saw the discomfort, the anxiety hanging around me like a cloud. Or maybe, deep down, she’d always known that we were both out of place in different ways.

  Her family was on the edge of the upper crust. Not rich, but close enough that with a little luck, they'd get there in a generation or two. They’d pinned all their hopes on Claire, as if she were their ticket to that next level - Fiercely intelligent, driven, polished in ways I could barely comprehend.

  But there was something about her, a restlessness in her eyes that told me she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the path they had carved out for her.

  Maybe that’s what made us both stand out in the same way. Out of place, but in completely different worlds.

  It was my first college relationship, and it had lasted almost a year. Daren, her older brother - closed-mouth, unsmiling - had never liked me. For his sister’s sake, he’d held his peace: Still, more than once, I’d felt the quiet pressure of his measuring gaze.

  Like I was being weighed in the balance, and found wanting.

  That, I think, was where the trouble had started. I can’t prove it, but I sensed that he was working away at her. Introducing Claire to an endless succession of his preppy friends, sowing the seeds of doubt. Showing her a world I couldn’t touch, one I could never be part of.

  Every casual comment, every subtle look Daren threw my way seemed designed to make her question everything about me, from my background to my future. It was, in many ways, a silent war - a guerilla campaign waged with the very best of intentions, but with utter and unrelenting ruthlessness.

  He was patient. After all, he had all the time in the world.

  Slowly, I watched Claire pull away. Not in any dramatic way, but in a thousand small, quiet moments. The texts had gotten shorter, the plans more distant - At some point, we’d stopped talking entirely.

  And though I couldn’t put my finger on it, I knew Daren was there, somewhere behind it all. A silent hand on the scale, tipping her away from me.

  Is it any wonder that I didn’t like him?

  Look, I wanted to tell him. What’s your fucking problem, man?

  What did I ever do to you?

  But that would have brought it all out into the open. Made things a war in truth - one that I would almost assuredly lose.

  And maybe, just maybe-

  I was afraid he’d tell me.

  My phone chimed, just once. A bright, cheery ping, lighting up even as I peered down at the moisture-blurred screen.

  It was a text from Claire.

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  For an instant, my heart lurched with an abrupt swell of hope. I hadn’t heard from her in weeks, now: We were done, in heart if not in truth, and I’d been waiting - selfishly - for her to send me the big kiss-off.

  But the timing of this…It had to be something else. Maybe she’d changed her mind. Maybe she’d…

  "There's something on me."

  Four words. They hung like an absurd non-sequitur, beneath the last message: another cancelled date, another step towards the clean break that loomed inevitably in the future.

  I frowned, staring at the words, unsure what to make of them. But then, my eyes caught the photo attached to the message.

  Her arm was visible, pale under the soft glow of the lights. I caught a glimpse of her room - blurry, unfocused - with its mismatched pillows and faded posters, the old record player I'd bought for her sitting quietly by the bookshelf, its needle long since still.

  Even now, the sight of it made my chest tighten. Like all the moments we’d shared, that we’d lost, were echoing back to me all at once.

  But what stood out, what made my stomach twist, was the symbol carved into Claire’s skin. It was glowing faintly, pulsing with an eerie light, almost as if it were alive. The edges of the mark seemed to shift, never quite settling in place, like some kind of ancient script or…Something far worse.

  What?

  I felt a strange, uncanny dread. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew one thing for sure: that this wasn’t normal. Whatever it was, it was pulling her deeper into something I couldn't understand.

  "What is it?" I texted back, my numb fingers trembling slightly as I typed.

  What is-

  And then the sky cracked open, and the Broadcast began.

  For a split second, everything stopped. The rain, the city, even time itself.

  There was a flash, as the sky tore open. So sudden, so violent, it knocked the breath from my lungs. The ground beneath me shook - not like an earthquake or an eruption, but like the entire world was exhaling a long, shuddering sigh.

  It wasn’t an explosion. It wasn’t a fire.

  It was all of them at once, yet somehow infinitely more intimate.

  It was a pulse. A soundless wave that hit like a force I couldn’t comprehend, filling every corner of my mind, my body and the world around me. It radiated through me, like the shockwaves of some great, painless concussion: My vision blurred, my limbs freezing in place as if they no longer belonged to me.

  Every thought, every sensation, was ripped from my control. It was like someone had reached into the very core of existence and pressed pause, trapping us all in the same unbreathing moment.

  It felt like electricity, beneath my skin. Like how I imagined a stroke would be.

  Oh God, I’m dying, I remember thinking, struggling for breath that wouldn’t come.

  I don’t want to die, I don’t, I don’t-

  The Broadcast came. Piercing, invasive, like a voice that wasn’t spoken but directly injected into my consciousness. I could feel it in my skull, vibrating through my veins, a presence filling the space inside my mind that I never knew existed.

  White pain flared behind my eyes, and my knees buckled.

  I had time to think: This is it. This is what death feels like.

  I-

  The sidewalk rushed up to smash me in the face, and everything went black.

  Blink. Oceanic blackness.

  Blue light, streaked with storm-fires. Ethereal plainsong, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

  A cosmic emptiness so massive and everlasting, my mind numbed as I raced across it. Gone in a blink, just fast enough to prevent the sheer scale from taking my sanity with it.

  Blink. Countless worlds, arrayed like priceless jewels against black velvet. Not in series, but in parallel. Each one in their own quanta, reflections receding into infinity.

  Blink. Things moved between the stars. God-monsters, titanic beasts and horrors beyond description. Many-armed and tentacled, wings time-eaten and vast, beating against the solar winds.

  Hungry. Craving sustenance, craving the light and life and souls of eight million worlds.

  Their devouring presence made the fabric of the multiverse tremble, fracturing at the edges.

  The stars flickered, the suns dimming, as if reality itself had been sliced open, and the darkness was spilling in.

  Across every universe, the pulse of destruction beat faster, closer. Every universe but Earth.

  Earth, the world of void. Alone and untouched, an anomaly in the midst of an unraveling cosmos.

  A world bereft of magic or gods. A world unlimited in its potential.

  From Earth, eight million champions would be chosen, one for each stricken world. A tithe would be taken, from the hale, the healthy, the strong. If they died before the appointed time, the burden would pass to others: One way or another, the universe would have the saviors it needed.

  They would bear the Mark of the Ascendant, the symbol of their purpose. The right to wield forces unimaginable. It would guide them, infusing them with strength and insight, honing them for their singular goal:

  To save their world.

  To stand against the vast, hungry darkness, or die trying.

  For those who survived, rewards would be given. Compensation would be offered.

  A chance to reshape the universe, to set right their story. To claim power beyond their wildest dreams, to redress any wrong, to rewrite history with a happy ending.

  If they won.

  If-

  Blink. Cold light, eons old.

  Blink.

  I woke to pain.

  Chilled with sweat and rain, I lay in the gutter, trembling like a half-drowned rat. My limbs quivered: I had to reach out with shaking fingers to touch my face, bare and helmet-free, before I could believe there was no blood on it.

  Everything ached.

  I’d bitten my tongue, the dull ache mingling with the taste of copper and quinine. Absurdly, I felt the sharp flare of annoyance: After all that, after everything I’ve seen - I’ve gone and bitten my tongue, too.

  Just as quickly as it’d begun, the Broadcast was over. In its wake, it’d left revelation, left silence: For one full minute, the world had held its breath, and nothing would ever be the same again.

  The air buzzed with disorientation, the city too loud and too still at once. People hadn’t fallen over, not in the way I had, but they had stopped - their lives frozen for a moment, like God Himself had hit the pause switch - and now they were stumbling back to reality, with the wrong kind of momentum.

  I could hear the first screams, now. Like countless people had only just remembered how to breathe, and their lungs couldn’t take it fast enough.

  Raw, jagged, the sounds twisted through the air. Alarms blared, mingling with shouts of confusion, of fear - the sound of a world snapping back to life, countless souls scrambling, trying to find their footing in the aftermath of whatever had just happened.

  Because the cars hadn’t stopped. Some had jerked forward, tires still spinning when the brakes were slammed down too late. They’d slammed into each other, fused into wrecks of metal and rubber, crumpled and contorted into new and appalling shapes.

  A woman in heels stumbled by, clutching her arm. Blood ran from her hairline, her face twisted in confusion: She looked around, wondering, as she limped past the unmoving form of a cyclist. Riding down the street at full speed, he’d slammed headfirst into the concrete, his limbs tangled with his bike’s frame - He wasn’t moving, not any longer.

  A glance told me that he’d never move again.

  The beginnings of a crowd had gathered around, the lucky and the walking wounded, their bodies shambling as if broken-legged. Most had gone pale, like they’d been drained of blood - Hands trembling, eyes wide with the recognition that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

  Some seemed to be trying to make sense of it, looking around like they were waking from a dream. Others were just blank, like they were still stuck in that frozen second, unable to return to themselves.

  For they’d just been there, suspended between life and oblivion, and now they were here, too. Still waking from a nightmare that hadn’t quite ended.

  I knew how they felt. It was as if the city and everyone in it had been momentarily sucked into the void, and now it was trying to claw its way back.

  But all the rhythm had been thrown off, perhaps forever, and I knew - even then - it would never get it back.

  Above, the sky had gone arterial-red. The clouds rolled dark and heavy, churning with the rotation that threatens a storm. My heart lurched in my chest, as something vast, something dark, passed before the sun: Even from here, I could intuit the colossal size of it, feel the weight of its presence pressing down on everything below.

  A name came to me, unbidden. Swimming up from the depths of my mind: Aphelion.

  A reeling sense of impossible age. The taste of dead suns. It had crossed the universe to be here, now - the arbiter of all that was yet to come. If I closed my eyes, if I let the Broadcast’s revelations unfold within my mind, I would know everything about it and the strange eons it had traversed-

  I tore my gaze away. How I managed that, I don’t know.

  Somewhere, an ambulance wailed, but it wasn’t going anywhere - it was stuck, sirens blaring for an emergency that had already passed. Still lost in the old world, the one where all things had been known.

  I tried to push myself up, groaning as every muscle screamed in protest. I didn’t know how long I’d been lying there, how long I’d been shut off along with everyone else…but the aftermath was all-too-real.

  This is no dream.

  Where were you, the day the world ended?

  I was staring up at the sky, watching the clouds burn away.

  I remember thinking, then, that maybe it would be easier if the world really did end. If everything, everyone, just stopped in one clean breath, the way the sky had split open.

  Obliterated, one and all, in that surreal, momentary flash.

  Maybe it would be easier if there was nothing left but silence.

  But then I thought: Justin.

  Lying in that sterile room, hooked to machines that didn’t care about the world’s breathless pause. He was still there, still fighting, still needing something I couldn’t even explain.

  The weight of it settled on my chest, heavier than the ache in my limbs, heavier than the copper taste in my mouth.

  No, the world couldn’t end. Not yet.

  Not when I could still save him.

  Slowly, so very slowly, I felt life returning to my limbs. Carefully, cautiously, I rolled over onto my side - my ribs twinged, but nothing felt broken.

  My helmet had taken the worst of my fall. I’d hit the ground hard enough to craze the visor, but my head felt like it was still in one piece.

  All I needed was-

  -was-

  Breathless, not daring to hope, I looked down at myself.

  Please, I thought. Mind still swimming with visions, trying to bring my systems back on-line.

  Please, just this once-

  I’ve never had much use for God. Even when I was a kid, I’d always thought that He had no time for someone like me. After Justin got sick, I knew He wasn’t listening - for why else would He let that kind of shit happen?

  But then and there, I prayed with all the fervor of a zealot, with all the sincerity of a new convert.

  -let it be there-

  Let me be one of the Chosen. Please.

  But even then, I already knew. I bore no Mark, and I never would. In a world of eight billion, eight million was little more than a drop in a bucket.

  It would have been funny, if it wasn’t so awfully bleak. Everything had changed, but my circumstances were exactly the same.

  With a gasp, a grunt, I drew myself to my knees, then to my feet. Standing up was Everest, but I knew I had to move. My head still spun, my legs shaking beneath me, but - even as I groped for my phone - I knew I had been lucky, after a fashion.

  For in the distance, the city was unraveling. Smoke curled from a dozen points on the horizon, the air thick with the acrid scent of burning rubber and something far worse. A man ran past me, his face streaked with blood, shouting hoarsely about the end of days: Nearby, a woman knelt beside a crumpled figure, her sobs piercing the rising cacophony.

  Bodies were everywhere. Like the cyclist, they lay motionless, in the position they’d chosen to occupy for the rest of eternity.

  What else had happened, during that endless minute of darkness? How many had simply never woken up?

  I got a hand on my phone, but the cracked screen offered no lifeline. Just two words: No signal.

  The networks were down, or swamped. Possibly for all time, given the distortion that roiled overhead. Above the clouds, the sky was turning arterial-red, shot through with writhing lightning.

  I was surrounded by millions, all awakening to the same nightmare, but - for all intents and purposes - I was alone. Gritting my teeth, my phone clutched to my chest, I willed my leaden legs to move.

  You can do it, Gabriel, I told myself, pushing through the vertigo that threatened to drag me back down. One foot in front of the other, nice and easy.

  There you go.

  Glass shattered, somewhere. Again, closer this time.

  Somewhere, there was laughter.

  Somewhere, there were screams.

  My bike was close, miraculously untouched by the panic. Even the thought of riding made me sick: Given the way my vision was swimming, I was more likely to crash than escape.

  But I had to keep moving. I had to find somewhere safe, a place where the air wasn’t choked with the stench of gasoline and despair. Somewhere I could gather my scattered thoughts, where I could start to make sense of the unraveling world.

  Because I needed the Mark. Justin needed it.

  For even then, I knew: With it, I could save him. I could make everything - everything - right.

  Without it-

  -there's something on me-

  My breath caught. In my head, something went click.

  Right then and there, I knew where I could find a Mark. I could see it, in my mind’s eye: the shape of it, like the pattern a spider’s legs made in the dust. If I focused, I could see the way it moved - leaping from a dying host to a living one, in a neon-bright flare.

  Claire, I thought, as a slow nausea began to churn in my gut.

  Claire has the Mark.

  I kicked the bike’s stand up and swung a leg over the seat, my body protesting every movement. My hands shook, but I gripped the handlebars anyway, telling myself I could at least try.

  The road ahead felt endless, and yet, I knew it was the only way forward. Vomit stung the back of my throat, as my feet found the pedals. When I twisted the throttle, the engine chugged, then coughed to life beneath me: a rough, sputtering sound that echoed in my skull.

  For a split second, I thought it might die on me, leaving me stranded in this mess. But it roared louder, the vibrations pulsing through my bones, rattling my teeth as I clenched my jaw.

  It wasn’t much, but if I was lucky, it’d be enough.

  The plan was already there, dark and unforgiving, whispering its temptations in the back of my mind.

  I forced my focus to the road, to the shaky rhythm beneath me. Anything but what lay ahead. Anything but what I had to do.

  For deep down, I already knew.

  The question wasn’t what I had to do. It was whether I could live with myself after.

  TO BE CONTINUED