The world looked just as indifferent as it had a moment ago. Yan‑Lum still sat on his small stool, a blade of dry grass between his teeth, eyes half‑closed against the heat. Only the Teralins around him had begun to change their behavior—first subtly, then unmistakably.

Their pale scales, mottled with faint orange patches that usually dulled under the noon blaze, now shimmered with a restless, trembling light. Their wings—huge, translucent, opal‑like membranes—opened and closed in uneven intervals, as if trying to catch a breeze that didn’t exist. They never flew in this heat—but this wasn’t ordinary heat. This was disturbance.

One Teralins stopped right beside Yan‑Lum’s foot. Its wings quivered briefly, releasing a soft buzzing tone—but this time the sound was higher, sharper, like a tightened string. Two others pressed themselves flat against the ground, bodies low, their scales darkening into ashy grays as if trying to merge with the stone. And a third, the largest of them, spread its wings wide until they nearly glittered apart in the scorching light.

Yan‑Lum blinked. “What the…?”

Somewhere far away, deep beneath the surface, in the Dark Cavern that shared nothing with this place except the same world, the glowing cone of sand trembled again. Not gently this time—but as if something beneath it had shifted, something large and slow, waking from a sleep far too long. A vibration ran through the stone, sharper than before, and for a moment the damp air of the cavern seemed to thicken, as if listening.

A few grains slid down the cone’s peak. Like the first grain in an hourglass deciding to run again.

The Teralins tightened into a circle. Their wings shivered—not from heat, but from a resonance their bodies couldn’t suppress. The fragile membranes stretched, opal colors breaking into sharp, nervous flashes.

Yan‑Lum straightened. The blade of grass slipped from his mouth.

“This is… really strange.”

One Teralins tried to take off—something they never attempted at midday—but its wings spasmed halfway through the motion, folding in a jerky, broken twitch, and the creature fell back onto the stone. Its scales turned the color of cold ash. That was a bad sign.

Another crouched low, wings pressed tight to its body, as if trying to muffle a sound only it could hear.

Yan‑Lum felt a chill crawl down his spine. Not from wind—there was none. But from something that came from nowhere.

In the cavern, the vibration returned. This time as a deep, distant rumble that lasted only a heartbeat, yet was enough to make the glowing cone ripple like water.

And then—silence. A silence so deep it felt as though even the stone held its breath.

On the surface, the ground beneath Yan‑Lum’s stool didn’t shake. It simply vibrated. Briefly. A sharp, precise pulse, like someone plucking a string stretched beneath the entire world.

The Teralins scattered. Their small bodies darted in every direction, wings trailing behind them like shattered glass veils, their buzzing rising into a thin, panicked whine.

Yan‑Lum pushed himself up from the stool. “Hey! What’s—”

He never finished.

PUF.

No flash. No scream. Just a faint puff of dust rising where he had stood a moment before.

The Teralins stopped at a respectful distance, wings pressed flat to the ground, their scales dark as soot. Their buzzing faded into nothing. The twin suns continued to blaze without mercy.

And the world, which had seemed so unchanging, had just lost one man.