The first tremor wasn't seismic. João felt it in his teeth, a high-frequency vibration that hummed up through the soles of his worn trainers as he walked home from his university classes in Lisbon.
The sky, moments before a typical azure, seemed to bleach, colours draining away until it was the flat grey of an old photograph.
People paused on the Rua Augusta, looking up, phones momentarily forgotten. A collective uncertainty rippled through the crowd.
He lived in a small flat overlooking a narrow, cobbled street in Alfama. His grandmother, Avó Beatriz, was usually there, humming fado tunes and preparing dinner.
Tonight, the flat was silent. A half-peeled potato sat on the cutting board, the knife beside it.
The television screen was black, but it emanated a low thrum, the same unsettling frequency he'd felt outside.
"Avó?" João called out, his voice tighter than he intended. No reply.
He checked her small bedroom, the bathroom. Empty. A cold knot formed in his stomach. Beatriz never left without telling him, never left food half-prepared. He noticed her shawl was still draped over her favourite armchair.
He tried her mobile. Straight to voicemail. He called his cousin, Sofia, who lived across town. Her phone rang and rang, unanswered. Panic began to prickle at the edges of his awareness.
He went to the window, peering down into the street. It was strangely deserted for this time of evening. The usual sounds – distant chatter, the rumble of the number 28 tram, stray cats fighting – were absent. An unnatural quiet had fallen.
Then he saw them. Standing at the end of the street, where it opened onto a small praça. Three figures.
They were tall, unnaturally so, draped in robes that seemed to absorb the dying light, shifting between black and a deep, oily purple. Their faces were obscured by deep hoods, but João felt an intense pressure emanating from them, a sense of ancient, malevolent power that made his skin crawl and his breath catch.
They weren't moving, just standing, like newly erected, obsidian statues.
His phone buzzed violently in his hand. Sofia's name flashed on the screen. He answered, breathless. "Sofia? What's happening? Where's Avó?"
"João... oh god, João..." Her voice was thin, stretched with terror. Static crackled fiercely on the line. "They're everywhere... figures... the sky..."
"What figures? Sofia, talk to me!"
"Black robes... they just appeared... people are... changing..." A wet, tearing sound came through the phone, followed by a choked gasp.
Then, a voice that wasn't Sofia's, low and guttural, speaking words that slid like ice shards into his brain, incomprehensible yet filled with uttermost cruelty. The line went dead.
João stared at the phone, his hand trembling uncontrollably. Changing? He looked back towards the figures at the end of the street.
One of them slowly lifted a hand, long fingers extending from the voluminous sleeve. The gesture wasn't aimed at him, but towards the buildings lining the street.
A low groan echoed through the stone facades. Cracks spiderwebbed across plaster. Tiles vibrated loose from rooftops and clattered onto the cobbles.
But it wasn't simple destruction. The buildings seemed to writhe. Windows warped, stretching like taffy before shattering inwards. Doorways twisted into grotesque, screaming mouths.
The very geometry of the street contorted, angles becoming fluid, stone flowing like thick liquid before resetting into impossible shapes.
Fear, cold and absolute, seized him. This wasn't an attack, not in any conventional sense. This was reality itself being unmade and remade by alien wills.
He stumbled back from the window, heart pounding against his ribs like a trapped bird. He had to get out, find Beatriz, find anyone.
He yanked open the apartment door and froze. Standing in the dim hallway, just outside his flat, was another figure. Identical to the ones below.
It hadn't been there seconds ago. It simply was. The pressure intensified, crushing the air from his lungs. He couldn't see a face beneath the hood, only a depthless dark that seemed to pull at his thoughts.
Instinct took over. João slammed the door shut, fumbling with the locks, his fingers clumsy with terror.
He could hear no sound from the hallway, no footsteps, no attempt to force the door. There was only the oppressive weight of its presence.
He backed away, scanning the small flat for a weapon, anything. The kitchen knife? Useless.
He thought of the fire escape outside the kitchen window. It was rusted, precarious, but it was a chance. He scrambled into the tiny kitchen, the thrumming from the dead television seeming to pulse with the figure's proximity.
As his hand reached for the window latch, a voice spoke, not from the hallway, but from inside his head. It wasn't words, more like concepts impressed directly onto his mind – ancient, cold, and vast.
You belong to us now. All belongs to us.
The kitchen windowpane turned opaque, swirling with colours that shouldn't exist. He saw reflections in it, not of his kitchen, but of screaming faces contorted in agony, landscapes shifting like nightmares, stars bleeding across a torn cosmos.
The fire escape beyond the glass began to twist, metal groaning as it corkscrewed into unusable shapes.
Trapped. The realization hit him with physical force. He sank to the floor, gasping for air that felt too thin, too charged with wrongness.
The presence outside the door hadn't moved, hadn't made a sound, yet he felt it probing, examining him like an insect under glass.
Hours crawled by. Or perhaps it was minutes. Time felt broken.
The unnatural quiet outside persisted, punctuated occasionally by distant, inhuman shrieks or the grinding sound of reality reshaping itself.
The thrumming from the television intensified, becoming a physical vibration within his bones. The black screen flickered, displaying brief, distorted images – faces he knew, Beatriz, Sofia, his university friends – their features melting, eyes burning with an unnatural light.
He huddled against the cabinets, trying not to look, trying not to think. The voice, or the impression of thought, returned.
Your fear is... noted. Catalogued. There was a sense of detached curiosity, the way a scientist might observe a chemical reaction.
Then, a new sound. Scratching. At the door. Not forceful, but persistent. Like fingernails dragged slowly across wood.
João squeezed his eyes shut. "Go away," he whispered, the words barely audible. "Please, just go away."
The scratching stopped. Silence returned, heavier than before. He waited, every nerve screaming. Slowly, cautiously, he opened his eyes.
The thrumming from the television had subsided slightly. The windowpane was clear again, revealing the now unrecognisable, warped street below under a sky the colour of curdled milk.
He pushed himself up, legs weak and trembling. Was it gone? Had it lost interest?
He crept towards the door, ear pressed against the wood. Nothing. He risked a glance through the peephole.
The hallway was empty.
Relief washed over him, so potent it made him dizzy. He leaned his forehead against the cool wood, taking deep, shuddering breaths. Maybe they were moving on. Maybe there was still a chance.
He turned, hope flickering faintly, and his gaze fell upon the television. It wasn't off. The screen glowed faintly, displaying a single, static image.
It was his grandmother, Beatriz. She was standing in their kitchen, exactly where he'd last seen her, potato and knife in hand.
But her eyes... they were wide, staring, utterly devoid of recognition. Her skin had a grey, waxy sheen, and her mouth hung open slightly, as if caught mid-breath. She wasn't moving. A living statue.
The voice echoed in his mind, softer now, almost intimate. We preserve what amuses us. A snapshot. Before the change.
João cried out, a raw sound of anguish, stumbling back until he hit the wall. His grandmother, frozen in the last moment of her normal life, displayed like a trophy. The cruelty was breathtaking.
The image on the screen shifted. Now it showed Sofia, her face a mask of terror, half-formed tendrils of shadow erupting from her back.
Then his friends, their bodies twisted, merged with furniture, with walls, becoming part of the distorted new reality.
You see? All is catalogued. All is assimilated.
"What do you want?" João screamed at the empty air, tears streaming down his face. "Why are you doing this?"
Want? The concept felt alien, amused. We are. You were. Now, you are part of us.
The scratching started again. Not at the door this time. It came from inside the flat. From the walls. From the ceiling. From the floor beneath his feet.
A dry, skittering sound, like a thousand insects crawling just beneath the surface. Plaster dust rained down. Cracks appeared, spreading like dark veins.
He looked wildly around. The geometry of his own home began to shift. The ceiling lowered, pressing down. Walls buckled inwards.
Furniture slid across the floor, melting and fusing into unrecognisable lumps of wood and fabric. The air grew cold, carrying the scent of ozone and something else, something ancient and decayed.
The television screen flared brightly. It showed his own face, eyes wide with terror. Then, his reflection began to warp. His skin greyed, eyes glazed over, mouth fell slack. The image mimicked the horrifying stillness of his grandmother.
A fitting addition to the collection, the voice whispered in his mind.
He scrambled towards the front door again, yanking uselessly at the locks, which had fused into solid metal.
The scratching intensified, coming from everywhere. Small, dark shapes began to push through the crumbling plaster – things with too many legs, multifaceted eyes gleaming in the gloom, chittering softly.
They weren't attacking, just emerging, filling the space, their presence a violation worse than violence.
The floor beneath him softened, becoming yielding, like packed earth. He looked down. His feet were sinking.
Not into soil, but into something that looked disturbingly like compressed flesh, pale and threaded with dark veins. It pulsed faintly.
He tried to pull free, but the substance clung to him, sucking him down. It crawled up his legs, cold and invasive.
The small, chittering creatures swarmed around him, ignoring him, simply occupying the space, witnesses to his assimilation.
The walls closed in, no longer plaster and brick, but rippling membranes of the same fleshy material. The ceiling dripped a thick, translucent slime that sizzled where it touched his skin.
The flat was no longer a flat. It was becoming an organ within some colossal, unknown entity.
He screamed, a long, ragged sound swallowed by the pulsating walls. The voice returned, a final thought impressed upon his dissolving consciousness.
You resisted. More interesting than the others. Your fear had… texture. It will be savoured.
Panic gave way to a terrifying numbness as the fleshy substance rose past his waist, his chest. It wasn't painful, not exactly. It was a dissolution, a merging.
He felt his thoughts fragmenting, his memories liquefying, becoming part of the vast, cold consciousness that surrounded him.
He caught a final glimpse of the television screen, still glowing faintly amidst the encroaching biological mass.
The image was fixed now: his own face, frozen in a silent scream, eyes wide and empty, skin waxy grey. A perfect replica of his grandmother's fate. A snapshot. Preserved.
The fleshy walls closed over his head. His consciousness didn't wink out.
It remained, aware but detached, floating in the immense, alien mind of the conquerors.
He felt the world outside, the screams of billions being silenced, the cities twisting into bio-organic monuments, the planet itself groaning as it was fundamentally changed.
He felt the wizards, their cold thoughts assessing their new domain, cataloguing, preserving the 'interesting' moments of terror and despair.
And João floated, a conscious exhibit in their gallery of conquered souls.
He wasn't dead. He wasn't alive. He was simply… recorded.
His final moments of terror, his unique flavour of fear, held static, eternally present but never changing, never fading.
A brutally sad, unique display in the heart of the wizards' grotesque new world.
He couldn't even scream within the vastness holding him. He could only exist, aware of his own preserved agony, forever. The ultimate specimen.