"When the world ended, Eli didn't notice at first.
He'd been sick—just a fever, or so he thought. The kind that leaves you hot to the touch and foggy in the head. It had knocked him out for days. Maybe even a week. His last memories before the darkness were of his mom arguing over the phone and his brother Derek coughing something thick and black into the sink. Then came sleep—deep, undisturbed, almost like dying.
When he finally woke up, everything had changed.
At first, nothing seemed off. His bed still groaned when he sat up. The ceiling light flickered, same as always. The air was dense but breathable. But something didn't feel right—something so wrong it made his skin crawl.
His room was far too quiet.
Eli swung his legs over the side of the bed, grabbing the nightstand for support. His limbs felt like they hadn't moved in ages. Sweat clung to him, but there was no pain, no itching or cracking bones. No strange growths. That alone made him feel different from the survivors in the stories he'd read before getting sick.
He stepped into the hallway. The house was empty. In the kitchen, a broken glass littered the floor, a chair lay on its side, and a strange metallic smell lingered in the air.
"Mom?" His voice was small, almost foreign in the silence.
Nothing. No reply. No footsteps.
He moved cautiously through the house. The once-white walls were now marked with streaks of faint, slimy residue—like something wet and heavy had brushed against them.
At the window, he pulled the curtain back.
And stopped breathing.
The world outside had become something unrecognizable.
It looked as though the city had been consumed by a living organism. Streets twisted unnaturally, thick with dark, vine-like tendrils that pulsed slowly. Buildings were wrapped in muscle and bone-like structures. Streetlights bent at impossible angles, flickering in strange, syncopated rhythms. The sun was nowhere to be seen, hidden behind swirling clouds of green and gray.
And the people…
They weren't people anymore.
Some moved on all fours, their limbs stretched and twisted. Others walked upright, but jerked along like marionettes. Some glided just above the ground, their shapes shimmering and shifting like they couldn't decide what they were. There were extra arms, eyes in strange places, mouths where they shouldn't be.
Each one different. Each one monstrous. But they didn't fight. They moved with purpose, as if following invisible paths.
Eli felt sick.
He was still human. Maybe the only one.
They had called it The Bloom, back when people still talked. It started in Central Europe—people waking up with strange new features, heightened senses, and an eerie calm about it all. Within weeks, it had spread everywhere.
There was no cause. No cure. No clear pattern.
People didn't die. They just… became something else.
Doctors labeled it a bio-restructuring disease. Scientists said it rewrote DNA like a living program, changing the human body into something "improved." The media, before it disappeared, called it evolution.
The infected didn't resist. They felt free. Some uploaded videos before they fully transformed, saying pain, fear, even death stopped making sense once the change began.
They said the world would bloom. And they were right.
It wasn't a virus. It was a redefinition of life itself.
But Eli hadn't changed. Not even a little.
And now, he was the anomaly.
He wasn't sure how many days had passed since he woke up. Three, maybe more. He stayed inside during the day, only going out at dusk, when the creatures seemed less active. He scavenged what food he could and slept in fits.
But he always felt watched—not by a person or creature, but by the world itself.
Buildings seemed to whisper as he passed. The concrete rippled like water underfoot. Trees no longer had leaves—just pale, breathing pods. Birds had become serpent-like things with feathers and mirrored eyes.
He kept moving, driven by a single question:
Why not me?
Why was he still human when everyone else had changed? Was he immune? Overlooked? Or something else entirely?
Then, on the fifth day, he found the body.
Or what was left of one.
A young woman, maybe in her twenties. She looked human—unchanged. Her body lay curled under a decaying bus stop, eyes open and dry. Around her were the corpses of mutated creatures, their bodies contorted in pain, as if they'd tried to claw their way out of themselves.
Eli knelt beside her, breath catching.
In her hand was a note—bloodstained, but still readable.
"We are not immune.
We are anchors.
They want us to become.
The Spire calls.
We are the last key."
The Spire.
He'd seen that word before—scrawled on a collapsed pharmacy wall: "Spire = Salvation."
He didn't know what it meant. A place? A person? A thing?
But it was calling to him.
Maybe it held answers. Maybe it would destroy him. Or change him.
All he knew was he couldn't stay like this—fragile, hunted, and alone.
He had to become one of them.
And maybe becoming was the only way to survive.