The first drops fall with a faint hiss, almost too quiet to notice over the hum of the city. At a glance, it looks like any ordinary rainstorm—thick clouds rolling in, thunder grumbling across the horizon. But when the rain touches the ground, the illusion breaks. Steam curls upward from the pavement. Car roofs bubble and pit. People stop in their tracks as the air fills with the stinging scent of chemicals.

It isn’t water. It’s acid.

Screams scatter through the streets as umbrellas disintegrate, fabric shriveling into ribbons. Skin burns where droplets land. Within moments, the orderly rush of city life collapses into chaos—pedestrians cramming into doorways, cars skidding as drivers try to flee the open road. Concrete begins to crack as the runoff eats away at it, forming shallow, smoking craters.

Everyone knew the storms were coming. For weeks, scientists had warned about the unstable atmospheric compounds, about the geoengineering satellites malfunctioning in orbit, about the rising toxicity levels in the air. But warnings had become background noise in a world where every day brought a new disaster. Nobody thought it would be this fast—this sudden.

Above, the clouds roil unnaturally, glowing faintly green against the lightning strikes. The downpour thickens, the city slowly dissolving beneath it. Inside your chest, a realization settles like a stone: the sky is no longer safe.