It started as a groan beneath the earth—long, low, and unnatural. Ruben was halfway through a rusted tin of sardines when the entire building beneath him shuddered. The tremor knocked his can to the floor, where it rolled, clinking, into a pile of broken glass. For a moment, he thought it was another Bloom Nest surge. The kind that sent spores shooting into the air like fireworks made of blood.
But then the sky darkened.
Not from clouds. From something else.
From the earth across the ruins of EDSA-Aurora Boulevard junction—something rose.
Ruben staggered out of the shattered 7-Eleven he had holed up in, squinting into the dusk. The ground across the street was splitting open, like the skin of the city was being peeled back by invisible claws. The old Araneta Coliseum loomed behind it, broken and hollow, its dome caved in like a crushed soda can. But what erupted from the earth in front of it dwarfed even that.
At first, he thought it was a building collapsing in reverse.
