David barely noticed it, at first. A single black speck crawling across his kitchen counter, weaving through the crumbs of his morning toast. Then another. And another.
By the time he crouched down, he saw the full line—thin, perfect, stretching from the crack beneath the fridge all the way to a tiny hole near the window. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, moving in perfect formation.
He didn’t think much about it. Ants happened.
So he swiped a paper towel across the counter, breaking the line.
The effect was immediate.
The ants stopped. All at once, their tiny bodies stiffened, their paths cut short by his careless motion. They didn’t scatter. They didn’t resume their journey. They just…waited.
David frowned.
He expected them to reform, to reroute, to do what ants were supposed to do. But instead, they remained frozen in place.
Like they were listening.
The air in the kitchen felt suddenly heavier. The hum of the fridge, the ticking of the clock—everything sounded wrong.
David shook off the unease, grabbed a sponge, and wiped away the rest. When he looked down again, the ants were gone.
That night, he dreamed of patterns.
Endless, shifting threads, weaving in and out of one another, pulsing with something alive.
Somewhere in the distance, something moved. Not a person. Not an animal. Something greater.
And it was watching him.
The next morning, the ants were back.
But this time, they weren’t moving.
David found them on the kitchen floor, a perfect, unbroken line of black dots stretching from the fridge to the window. Unmoving. Lifeless.
They were dead.
Dozens of tiny corpses, frozen mid-step.
A cold shiver ran through him. He grabbed a dustpan, sweeping them up quickly, trying not to let the sight bother him.
It was just ants. That was all.
Still, he hesitated before wiping the counter again.
He left their line alone.
But the lines didn’t stop.
Over the next few days, he started noticing them everywhere.
The way the cracks in the sidewalk stretched in impossibly straight formations. The way the cars on the highway moved in eerie synchronization. The way the books on his shelf had arranged themselves into a sloping pattern, one that he knew he hadn’t organized.
It was all lines. Lines running through everything. Lines woven into the world.
And when he tried to disrupt them—knocking over a book, stepping deliberately on a sidewalk crack—something changed.
The world hiccupped.
Just for a second.
The cars on the street stuttered, pausing mid-motion before continuing as if nothing had happened. The wind halted, the leaves hanging motionless in the air before resuming their rustling.
And David felt it.
Something shifting just beneath reality. Something massive and aware.
A presence just beyond his comprehension, adjusting, correcting what he had disturbed.
He barely slept that night.
By the next morning, the ants had returned.
Alive this time, but different.
They moved in a pattern more intricate than before, looping and twisting in a deliberate, unfathomable rhythm. Not a simple line, but a design.
A warning.
David didn’t touch them.
But as he stood there, staring, a realization settled into his bones.
It wasn’t just ants. It never had been.
He had interrupted something bigger.
Something ancient.
Something that had been weaving the world together in lines, unseen, since the beginning of time.
And now, it knew he had noticed.
David backed away, careful not to step on a single one.
Some things were meant to be left undisturbed.
Some lines were never meant to be broken.
