The beach was too quiet for what it was supposed to be.

Andy walked barefoot along the shoreline, the wet sand cool beneath his feet, each step leaving a print that the tide erased almost immediately. He watched it happen again and again, the ocean undoing him with casual indifference.

“Figures,” he muttered, hands shoved into his pockets. “Even the beach doesn’t let things last.”

The sun hung low, painting the water in gold and copper. It should have been romantic. That had been the plan, anyway. He let out a dry laugh.

“Hell of a honeymoon spot,” he said to no one, glancing at the empty stretch of sand beside him. “You would’ve loved this. Or at least pretended to.”

The wind carried his words away. No answer came back.

Andy stopped walking. His chest tightened, not sharply, but with the dull ache that had settled in ever since the altar. Ever since the silence. He stared at the horizon, jaw clenched.

“Guess I should thank you,” he said quietly. “Wouldn’t have ever come here otherwise.”

He kicked at the sand, then sighed and kept moving, following the curve of the beach where the shoreline smoothed out again. That was when something caught his eye.

A faint glow.

He slowed, squinting. “What the hell…?”

The sand ahead of him shimmered faintly, tinged with a soft purple hue that pulsed like a slow heartbeat. Nothing else disturbed the beach there. No debris. No rocks. Just sand that didn’t behave the way sand should.

Andy crouched down. “Okay. Either I’m officially losing it, or that’s actually glowing.”

Half-buried in the sand was an object that didn’t belong. He brushed grains away with his fingers, uncovering more of it until the shape became clear.

Perfectly smooth. Spherical. About the size of a baseball.

The light inside it swirled, deep violet shot through with threads of silver.

“Right,” he said. “Glowing mystery beach orb. Totally normal. Happens all the time.”

He snorted. “This is what rock bottom looks like, huh? Talking to weird beach balls.”

Andy circled it on his knees, studying the way the light responded to his movement, brightening slightly, as if aware of him. A chill crept up his spine.

“…You’re not some kind of prank,” he murmured. “Because I really don’t have the energy.”

He tapped it lightly with a knuckle.

Nothing.

He exhaled, tension easing just a little. “Okay. Solid. Real. Not exploding. Good start.”

The orb hummed faintly under his touch, vibrating just enough for him to feel it. His brows knit together.

“That’s… new.”

He swallowed. Part of him screamed to walk away. To leave it there and keep moving, pretend he never saw it. But another part, the one that had booked a honeymoon for one and boarded the plane anyway, leaned in.

“Well,” Andy said softly, “my life already went off the rails. Might as well see how far this goes.”

He picked it up.

The moment his fingers closed around the orb, it fractured.

Not slowly. Not gently.

The surface split along its etched lines in his hand, bursting apart in a violent bloom of violet light.

“Whoa—hey—!”

Heat surged through his palm, intense and electric, as purple energy poured through him. The sand beneath his feet felt suddenly unstable. The horizon lurched upward, the world stretching away at impossible speed.

“No, no, no, this is not happening,” he said rapidly. “This is not how this ends—”

The beach roared, the sound swelling until it swallowed his voice. His stomach dropped as if he’d stepped off a cliff, the sky and sea blurring together.

The light collapsed inward.

Gone.

Silence rushed in, heavy and disorienting.

Andy blinked. Once. Twice.

“…Huh.”

The sand in front of him wasn’t sand anymore. It was a landscape. Grains rose like boulders, ridges casting long shadows. His heart began to pound.

“This… this isn't possible,” he whispered.

He looked down at his hands.

They were still his hands. Just… smaller.

“No,” he said flatly. “Nope. Absolutely not.”

He staggered backward, nearly falling as his sense of balance failed him. He turned sharply, scanning the sand where the orb had been.

There was nothing.

No fragments. No scorch marks. No sign that anything had ever been there at all.

Andy stared at the empty beach, chest heaving.

He let out a breath that turned into a laugh, thin and disbelieving.

“Six feet,” he said. “Six damn feet, and now I’m… what, six inches?!”

The beach loomed around him, vast and uncaring, the ocean now a distant thunder.

Andy swallowed hard, forcing himself to stand straight.

“…Okay,” he said quietly. “Okay. Think. You’re still you. Just… smaller.”

He glanced back at the empty stretch of sand, eyes narrowing.

“Whatever that was,” he muttered, “I have to find shelter.”

And with that, Andy took his first careful step forward into a world that had suddenly grown impossibly large.