Chapter 35: The Sky Cracks Open
The morning sun filtered softly through gauzy curtains, casting golden slats over the kitchen's tiled floor. The scent of cinnamon toast mingled with the sharp aroma of freshly ground coffee, and the faint bubbling of a kettle punctuated the domestic quiet. Eva sat at the table, her legs swinging slightly above the floor, cradling a warm ceramic mug with both hands. The cocoa inside steamed lazily, but she didn't sip it. Her gaze had turned distant, fixated on the window beyond the garden, where soft clouds shifted like breath across a powder - blue sky.
Vivienne moved in smooth, practiced motions, slicing apples while Evelyn stirred something on the stove. Their voices rose and fell in casual rhythm — an ongoing weekend melody of ordinary love. But Eva barely registered the sound. Her mind, so often vivid and awake, felt heavy, drowsy with something that wasn't sleep. It felt like drowning — but upwards, like her consciousness was floating into some greater current.
Her chest tightened. The mug trembled in her hands.
A sharp pressure rose behind her eyes.
And then she was no longer here.
No longer a child.
She was someone older — no, something older.
Not in the kitchen. Not in this house. Not in this world.
She stood barefoot on a cold metallic floor, surrounded by the hush of machines and the sterile hum of something deep underground. Her fingers, no longer small, tapped across a glass console that pulsed with complex readouts, her hands moving by reflex, not joy. The room was windowless. There was no sky.
Outside this chamber — if outside could even be called that — rose a city sealed in titanium and synthetic glass, where no wind moved and no birds sang. The stars had been blotted out by artificial grids, and the moon no longer shone. There was no need for it anymore. Light was rationed by algorithm. People were data points. Children, when they still existed, were measured for output potential.
She wore a thin gray uniform, standard issue. A band around her wrist glowed redb — her identification code, not a name. But somewhere in the files, she was known as Eva. Just Eva. A data stream with staggering computational accuracy. Recruited, processed, assigned. A miracle of neural patterning. She solved what others could not: fusion stabilizers, collapsible dimension gates, AI behavioral hard caps. No one thanked her. Her name appeared only in system reports.
Her meals were color - coded nutrient squares. Her rest cycles were medically enforced. Her voice had not been used for anything but status updates in years. Once, she had asked her handler if she could look out a window. He laughed — not cruelly, just emptily.
"Wasting time?"
She never asked again.
The closest thing to praise she ever received came in a personnel memo: Subject E continues to outperform projected cognitive benchmarks. Recommend maintaining current isolation protocols to preserve efficiency. That was all.
She was a ghost in a machine that no longer dreamed.
And then it ended.
It was late. Or early. Time didn't really exist in that place, just scheduled cycles. She had been working on a multidimensional power transfer array — something theoretical, something dangerous. The math began slipping. The projections inverted. She blinked hard, trying to focus, but her fingers faltered.
Then came the pain.
Her chest locked.
Her breath caught.
The room blurred into streaks of data and shadow.
She tried to stand, to call for assistance. But her legs collapsed. She clawed at her uniform, gasping. Her head hit the floor with a muted thud, unseen by anyone. The red band on her wrist dimmed as her vitals failed.
She reached for something — someone — but no one came.
And no one cared.
The system marked her as offline.
The world moved on.
But something ancient and powerful had been watching. Not through cameras or sensors. Not through data. Through blood. Through essence.
A thread of the divine still pulsed faintly in the broken girl's fading core.
And far, far beyond the stars, in a realm no telescope could reach, a great silence ended.
Aira stirred.
The goddess of creation, fury, and love, long banished from mortal reckoning, heard the silent scream of her daughter's death. Aira, whose name had been forgotten by history, who had woven galaxies into lace and scattered suns like seeds, had given a fragment of herself to the world — one child, one daughter.
And now that child had perished in a void of machinery and silence.
Aira woke with a howl.
The stars blinked out.
The sun recoiled.
And the sky cracked open.
She descended through layers of unreality like fire through silk. Her divine form was not bound by shape, but for those who saw her, she appeared as a being of light and fury — a towering goddess wreathed in white flame and veils of gold, her eyes galaxies, her voice the echo of every scream that had ever gone unheard.
Her fury was not righteous. It was maternal.
She struck the world like a meteor.
The cities that had drained her daughter of life were the first to fall. Towers collapsed. Skybridges sheared in half. The air itself rebelled. The artificial sky shattered, revealing a dead, scorched dome where stars used to live. Oceans boiled. Networks failed. Drones plummeted. Energy grids sparked like fireworks as the last simulations died.
She tore through code with her bare hands.
She incinerated the halls of power with a glance.
Every whisper of cruelty, every record of indifference, was erased.
"How dare you," Aira's voice rolled like thunder across dimensions, "how dare you touch her with your soulless hands? You stole her light. You made her suffer. My daughter, who asked only to be held, who burned so brightly and received nothing in return — how dare you."
There was no one left to respond. The world had no gods, and now it had no rulers. It was dust.
Aira stood alone in the burning ruin, the broken form of her child cradled in her arms. She wept. Each tear birthed a nova. Her grief was so great that the very air warped with it.
But within her hands, Eva's soul still flickered — dim, barely holding shape, but there.
Aira bent over her.
She gathered her divine breath.
And she gave it back.
She did not resurrect the world. That place had no right to exist.
She rewrote time instead.
Pulled threads from the past and future.
She chose another Earth — imperfect, wounded, but still beautiful in its way.
A place with oceans and trees, laughter and rain.
A place where children could cry and still be held.
Where love was flawed but real.
Aira searched that world, walked it unseen. She looked not for empires, but for arms strong enough to carry Eva and hearts brave enough to raise her without knowing her true name.
She found Evelyn first — young, brilliant, fierce, forged by fire.
And then Vivienne — clever, calm, endlessly kind.
Together, they became the foundation. The new beginning.
Aira poured the last of her power into Eva's soul, wrapping her in stardust and memory, and placed her gently in Evelyn's arms on a quiet night. No thunder. No fire. Only love.
Then she sealed herself away.
Sleep took her once more — not from weakness, but choice. She fractured her form into the constellations, letting her grief become myth, her fury become the wind. If she ever woke again, it would be because the world had once more failed to love what was precious.
Eva's new life began with warmth. With lullabies and soft blankets. With cocoa and cinnamon toast. Her name was sung, not assigned. Her laughter echoed in kitchens, not empty halls.
But memory is stubborn.
Some part of her still remembered.
And now, sitting at the table, her mug cooling in her hands, Eva's eyes brimmed with tears she didn't understand. The sky beyond the garden seemed to pulse, as if remembering something too.
She turned to Evelyn, who caught the shift immediately. She crossed the kitchen in three strides, kneeling to meet her daughter's eyes.
"Little Dove?" she said softly, brushing a curl from Eva's cheek. "What is it?"
Eva opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Just a trembling breath.
Vivienne came to her other side, arms circling both of them. "Did something scare you, little star?"
Eva shook her head slowly. "I… I saw her."
Evelyn froze. "Saw who?"
"The sky lady. She was crying. And everything was… burning. But she held me. She said… I wasn't supposed to be alone."
Vivienne and Evelyn exchanged a look over her head — startled, quiet, reverent.
"Was it a dream?" Vivienne asked gently.
Eva's voice was small. "I don't know. But it felt real. Like she gave me back."
Evelyn lifted her into her lap, holding her tight.
"You're here now," she whispered, kissing the top of her head. "And you'll never be alone again. Not ever."
Outside, the wind stirred the trees, and the clouds shifted in strange shapes — like wings, or veils, or a woman wrapped in starlight.
Far above, the stars shimmered a little brighter.
And somewhere in the great silence, Aira slept — peaceful, for now.