CHAPTER 1- The Blank Screen
© 2026 LunaNoir
All rights reserved. This story may not be copied or distributed without permission.
Kiara's POV:
The café was quiet, save for the soft clinking of cups and the low hum of conversations drifting through the air.
I sat near the window, a cup of coffee slowly cooling beside my laptop. My eyes were fixed on the screen.
A completely blank screen.
The deadline was tomorrow.
A voice whispered inside my head. What are you doing?
I leaned back in my chair and sighed. I was supposed to prepare a presentation about the latest innovations in cybersecurity for our company. Not just prepare it-I also had to present it to our clients.
Great.
The irony wasn't lost on me.
I loved development. Give me a complex system, tangled code, or a stubborn bug and I could happily spend hours solving it. But conversations with clients? That was a battlefield I wasn't trained for.
Yet somehow, our company believed in 'holistic development of an individual' and thought I was perfect for the job.
Brilliant decision.
I rubbed my forehead and stared at the empty document glowing on my screen. Weird, right? I could explain complicated technical architectures without breaking a sweat. But when it came to small talk or discussing people's lives, I suddenly turned into an introvert hiding behind a keyboard.
I had never really asked anyone about their personal life.
Not friends.
Not colleagues.
Not even clients.
It wasn't intentional. It was just how I was wired. Sometimes I wondered if something was wrong with me-or maybe I just understood machines better than humans.
Either way, none of that mattered right now. The presentation had to be finished.
Tomorrow.
I took a sip of coffee and began typing.
And that was when it happened.
Something unusual appeared on my screen.
Something that definitely shouldn't have been there.
So I was here, giving my already tired brain an overdose of caffeine. I pushed myself up and walked to the counter to order a cappuccino.
While returning, I collided with a hooded figure. My heart jumped, and I muttered a curse under my breath. Great. Things couldn't possibly get worse right now, could they?
I returned to my table and froze. A small folded note lay under my black laptop. Curious and wary, I picked it up.
It read:
"Omnipresent, omnipotent."
-VISHWA
I laughed nervously. Clearly someone's idea of a prank.
I shoved it into my bag and tried to focus on my presentation.
Big mistake.
Hours passed. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, my mind a tangle of codes and calculations. Finally, at 12 a.m., I completed the presentation. Exhausted, I had no energy to make it home. Somehow, I dragged myself to the couch in my tiny apartment and collapsed.
Sleep came immediately-but even in that exhausted haze, a nagging thought lingered in the back of my mind:
Who the hell was VISHWA?
And why did they already know I was here?
"Kiara's first encounter with VISHWA is only the beginning... What happens next will leave you questioning everything."
