The Pristine Veil by Anabel Lozano

The desk was immaculate. Not a single misplaced document, not a fingerprint smudging the polished glass. It reflected the overhead fluorescents with eerie precision, as if attempting to mimic a sterile, untouched reality. The entire office mirrored this perfection—pristine surfaces, symmetrical arrangements, the quiet hum of well-oiled machinery. Outside, the city pulsed in synchronized efficiency, a metropolis of glass and steel where every step was calculated, every movement designed to serve an outcome.

Yet beneath the polished exteriors, beneath the carefully curated personas, chaos whispered.

Elijah sat at his desk, fingers poised over the keyboard, yet unmoving. A hollow rhythm drummed in his ears—the soft ticking of the clock, the occasional shuffling of papers, the muted chatter beyond his office door. Everything was in its place, yet nothing felt right.

There was a crack beneath the veneer, a hairline fracture in the polished world he inhabited. He could feel it, but he could not yet see it.

His eyes flickered to the reflection on his screen. A ghost of himself stared back, composed, professional, unshaken. But beyond that image, something shimmered in the glass’s depth—a distortion, almost imperceptible, like a ripple on still water. Elijah blinked. It was gone.

The phone on his desk vibrated, shattering the silence.

A message.

“Have you ever wondered what lies beneath?”

No name. No number. Just the question.

Elijah sat back, fingers tightening around the phone. He should ignore it. He should. But his mind refused to let go.

Instead of replying, he stood. His steps were steady as he walked to the window, but inside, something frayed. Outside, the city moved like clockwork—predictable, seamless, pristine. Yet as he watched, something shifted.

A streetlamp flickered.

No, not flickered—glitched.

For a fraction of a second, the entire city seemed to shudder—as if the buildings exhaled, as if the streets trembled with a pulse unseen. And then, just as suddenly, it was still.

Elijah’ breath came shallow. Had he imagined it? The gleaming metropolis stood untouched, the illusion seamless once more.

But he couldn’t unsee it.

He turned back toward his desk, toward the pristine order of his office. Only this time, he saw it. The crack.

A thin, jagged line in the surface of the glass desk, splitting its perfect reflection. He ran a hesitant finger over it. The glass was smooth—unbroken. Yet the crack remained, as though it wasn’t part of the surface but something buried beneath it, something only visible to those who knew where to look.

The phone vibrated again.

“Not everything that gleams is whole.”

Elijah exhaled slowly.

His fingers hovered over the keyboard once more, but this time, he did not return to the structured reports, the carefully constructed sentences. Instead, he typed a single word:

"Explain."

The reply came instantly.

“Step outside.”

For the first time in years, Elijah hesitated. His life had been measured, every decision calculated. He was not impulsive. He did not chase mysteries.

And yet, his feet moved before he could stop them.

He stepped out of his office, past the orderly rows of identical workstations, past colleagues too engrossed in their routines to notice his departure. The elevator’s descent felt longer than usual, as if the building itself conspired to keep him within its structure.

The lobby gleamed, just as it always had. Everything gleamed.

But when Elijah stepped outside, the city had changed.

It was still the same—yet not. The skyline stretched high, the streets thrived with motion, yet there was something wrong with the air. The hum of the city wasn’t the same. It wavered, as if reality itself was adjusting, recalibrating, masking something beneath its surface.

The streetlamp ahead flickered again. This time, Elijah didn’t look away.

And then—the world cracked.

Not in a visible way. Not like shattered glass.

It was the feeling of something unraveling, something peeling back.

For the first time, Elijah saw the spaces between things—the fractures in the pristine illusion. The people moving past him weren’t moving naturally. They looped, their patterns predictable, too perfect. He followed the crack in the glass world, his eyes flicking toward something just beyond vision, just past the edges of perception.

And then, for the briefest second—he saw.

Not buildings, not streets, not the city he knew. But something raw beneath the surface. The swirling chaos behind the perfect order. The infinite, untamed energy holding the illusion in place. A truth he was never meant to see.

The phone vibrated in his hand one last time.

"Now you understand."

Elijah let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

And for the first time in his life, he didn’t fight the chaos.

He embraced it.

And the world shattered into something real.