We thought we were peaceful — until the first city was destroyed.
Not invaded. Not bombed. Destroyed.
Its name was Halveth, City of Harmony — a harmony that was built where ley-lines crossed like veins in the ground. A city where solar towers were dwarfed by cathedrals of stained glass, where monks and engineers strolled silently at dawn, and the hum of machinery blended with the susurration of prayer. Its inhabitants believed it was impenetrable — blessed, even. The media called it the future of living together.
And then one night, something dropped.
There were no sirens. No shadows across the clouds. Just a nervous pressure, as if the sky had inhaled and didn't know how to exhale. Lights flashed. Radios spoke in nonsense. And then — silence.
And Halveth was lost.
Instead: a crater radiating heatless light, buildings dissolving to dust so fine it wafted in the air like snow. Security cameras reduced to white noise. Drones dropped from the sky. And on the edge of the blast zone, one man was recovered — crawling, his flesh burned raw, his eyes cooked shut. He died muttering a single word:
"Feathered."
What occurred was named everything by everyone. Alien invasion, divine judgment, the end of the world. The Feathered Anomaly. The Sky Wraith. Entity 0-Featherfall. The Silence. The Pale Visitant. Everyone named it something.
But names do not mean a thing when you're blind to reality.
And reality was: it had barely begun.
---
They closed the crater within hours. Black helicopters circled overhead. Hazmat teams searched through ash. Aides retransmitted repeats of smiling anchors on a red banner that spelled out Technical Difficulties.
The public was not buying it.
Demonstrations erupted in the surrounding cities. Halveth had friends, families, lives. Half a million people didn't just become quiet. Internet chat rooms blew up with grainy video: birds hovering in mid-air, a tide of golden static spreading across the skyline, a caught whisper — something that sounded like crying.
Religious leaders called it a cleansing. Scientists said it was spatial anomalies. Governments around the world put emergency protocols into action under codes the public had never heard of.
But in every pub, every stream, every sleepless living room. one question burned hotter than the crater itself:
What did we just see?
And why did it look like it was gazing back at us?
---
In a small apartment on the city's outskirts, beyond the crater and out of reach of consequence altogether, a man stood in front of a shattered mirror, readjusting the lapel of a worn blazer.
He was tall — not statuesque, but wiry in the same compact, muscular manner as a man who works with his hands. His complexion was a warm bronze color, sun-scorched and blunt, with the faint traces of small scars that come from years of mending what people threw away. His face was smooth shaved for once, a rare attempt at looking the part. His dark hair, which usually was a tangled mass of sleep and indifference, had been slicked back — patchy in spots, but neat enough. He wore a shirt he'd ironed twice and a jacket whose shoulders didn't fit quite so well but that made him feel he belonged to something greater. And his eyes — still gray, still quiet — held something they hadn't held in years: hope. The kind that made you lift your head slightly more straight. The kind that made even the grimiest city dawn seem like promise.
A bowl of cereal untouched on the side of an instant cup of coffee, steaming, and the TV in the background cycling Halveth's ashes. Expert panels. Talking heads. Static overlays of the crater beeping like crime scene photos.
Aren glanced back once, scrunching his brow up, and then grabbed the remote and flipped it off.
"Doesn't concern me," he growled.
He didn't know anyone from Halveth. He didn't have time for fear or conspiracies.
He had a train to catch.
And a job to start.