"It didn't fall like a star. It fell like a secret that wasn't supposed to be seen."—Kael Iskandar, personal journal
Jakarta, IndonesiaPresent Day — Earth-616
The night sky was broken.
Kael Iskandar sat cross-legged on the rusted tin roof of his boarding house, camera in hand, eyes locked on the heavens. The traffic noise below blurred into a soft rumble—motorcycles, honking, a distant street vendor yelling about gorengan. But Kael wasn't listening. He was staring at the impossible.
Above the city, high past the blinking satellites and light pollution, a fracture hung in the sky. It wasn't lightning. It wasn't a plane trail. It was... wrong. Like someone had taken a razor to the fabric of the stars and peeled it just enough for something else to bleed through.
He lifted his old Nikon DSLR—third-hand, taped lens, battery half-dead—and snapped a picture. Click. Click. Click.
Each frame showed the same thing: a glowing rift, pulsating red-blue, shaped like an eye turned sideways.
He checked the time: 1:17 AM.
He leaned back and muttered, "Definitely not a comet."
Suddenly, the rift blinked.
No—collapsed.
A streak of light burst downward, brighter than anything Kael had ever seen. It didn't fall straight. It zigzagged, like it was fighting gravity. And then—
BOOM.
A flash. The ground shook. Somewhere south—maybe near Ragunan Zoo—something had crashed.
Kael was already moving.
He ran down the fire escape, hoodie flapping behind him, boots barely tied. His phone buzzed—texts from his mom, ignored. He hopped the gate, slipped past a sleeping security guard, and disappeared into the maze of narrow alleys and rain-slicked roads.
He didn't know why he was running.
It wasn't rational. It wasn't safe.
But deep inside him, something pulled. Like the light was meant for him.
Thirty minutes later, breath ragged, shirt soaked, Kael stood at the edge of an abandoned construction site—locals called it "Tanah Mati," the Dead Ground. It was supposed to become a shopping mall years ago. Then the investors pulled out. Since then, it was just a slab of overgrown concrete, ringed by rusted fences and half-buried signs.
Tonight, the weeds glowed.
He stepped forward.
In the center of the lot, nestled inside a small crater, was a shard. Not a rock. Not metal.
It looked like glass, but it pulsed with an inner light—like someone had trapped a nebula inside crystal.
Kael reached toward it.
don't.
The voice wasn't from outside. It echoed in him.
He froze.
His hand hovered above the shard, fingertips tingling.
you are not ready.
His mind stung. Like ice cracking down his spine. Visions flashed—cities crumbling, stars dying, a boy screaming with a voice that wasn't his.
Then... silence.
Kael blinked.
The shard was gone.
No—it was in his hand.
He hadn't touched it. But somehow, it had moved.
It pulsed once, gently, like a heartbeat.
And then the world shifted.
The stars twisted. Gravity hiccuped. His vision split—he saw two versions of himself, briefly overlapping. One standing. One burning.
He fell to his knees, gasping.
And then... everything was normal again.
The shard lay cold in his palm.
Kael Iskandar didn't know it yet, but he was now a beacon.
And something in the multiverse had noticed.
[To be continued in Chapter 2 – A World Watching]