The unravelling of Number Eight

Chapter One: The Sparrow Who Fell Forward

The Sparrow Academy trained its children to be perfect.

Number Eight had never quite gotten the memo.

While her siblings moved in flawless formation - Number One with his crushing grip, Number Two with her blades, Number Six bending light around himself until he was nothing but a shimmer - Eight sat cross-legged at the back of the training room, staring at a spot on the wall that wasn't there anymore.

She saw things. That was one of her powers. The others had powers you could throw at a problem. Eight had visions. You could only wait to come true.

"Eighth," Reginald's voice cut through the room like a scalpel. "Focus."

"I am focused,"she said, not looking at him. "There's a crack in next Tuesday."

The other sparrows paused. Number Three raised an eyebrow. Number Seven snorted.

Reginald's monocle glinted. "Elaborate."

But Eight couldn't. The vision was already slipping away, like water through her finger. All she caught was the feeling of falling - and the smell of ash.

The mission came three days later. A temporal anomaly in the city centre. A rift in the air, shimmering like heat haze over concrete. Reginald called it a "minor fracture." Sent the Sparrows in to seal it.

Eight stood at the edge of the rift, and she knew.

This was the crack she'd seen.

"Don't touch it," she said.

Number One ignored her. He always did. He reached into the rift -

And the world turned inside out.

Eight felt herself pulled forward, through time, through space, through the screaming voices of her siblings fading into static. She landed hard on concrete that was cracked and overgrown. The air tasted like rust and old fire.

She stood up slowly.
The city was gone. Not destroyed - ended. Skyscrapers leaned like tired giants. The sky was the colour of a bruise. And in the distance, something that looked like the sun was bleeding across the horizon.

A voice crackled from a broken speaker nearby, looping on a recording:

She smiled. There was still life.

"This is the final broadcast of the Umbrella Academy. If anyone is listening - the world ended on June 30th. We failed. We're sorry."

Her smile vanished.

Eight's blood went cold.

The Umbrella Academy. Not the Sparrows. A different Academy. A different timeline.

She was stuck in a future that had already lost.

And somewhere behind her, the rift she'd fallen through snapped shut like a door locking.

All rights go to the Umbrella academy bye