(Written by Rohit Malhotra)
The night sky looked unusually calm, like a sheet of black silk studded with stars. But Mia felt something was wrong. She had been standing on the rooftop of her house for over an hour now, staring through the viewfinder of her camera. There was no sound, not even wind. Just silence. Unnatural, thick silence.
She aimed the camera at the constellation Lyra — the same part of the sky that kept appearing in her dreams. Dreams where she saw a blinking eye — massive, silent, watching her from above.
Click.
She took another photo. Then another. Then she paused.
A strange chill passed down her spine.
She zoomed into the last photo she'd taken and gasped.
There, in the corner of the sky — a black speck. It wasn't a star. It wasn't a plane. It was something else.
She frowned. The object wasn't just there… it was moving.
She tapped her smartband. "Siri," she whispered, "run an atmospheric scan. I'm uploading coordinates now."
Her personal AI assistant responded immediately. "Scanning… No known aerial object detected in provided sector."
Mia stared at the screen. The speck had moved a few pixels to the left. Her heart started racing.
"No known object… then what the hell is that?" she muttered.
---
Ten Years Ago
She was only eight when it happened.
One moment she was playing in the park near her home in Delhi — the next, she was gone. Eleven hours of absolute disappearance. No CCTV footage. No witnesses. Not even a clue. Her parents had almost lost their minds.
And then, without warning, she returned.
They found her sitting in the same park, perfectly unharmed — but her eyes… her eyes had changed.
They glowed faintly at night. She said things she didn't understand. She drew symbols she'd never seen.
Everyone thought it was trauma. But Mia remembered flashes — bright lights, metal walls, voices like static, and an overwhelming presence that kept saying the same words:
> "The door must remain closed."
Her left eye began to ache days later. It didn't stop aching for weeks. Doctors found nothing.
But something had been implanted. Something invisible to scans.
---
Now, at 18, Mia had learned to live with it. Her left eye could see frequencies and patterns no camera could detect. Sometimes it showed her things that hadn't happened yet.
Like the crack in the sky.
---
She blinked and looked back at her laptop. The image from her camera had finished uploading. She zoomed in again.
Her breath caught in her throat.
The black dot wasn't just a speck anymore. It had shapes around it. Layers. And at the very center — what looked like a pupil.
It was an eye.
And it had blinked.
"Siri," she said again, voice shaking, "record visual log, file name: EyeAbove_LogOne."
"Recording started," Siri confirmed.
She hit the zoom again — the object had moved. Not just moved — it had shifted focus. It wasn't looking at the Earth.
It was looking directly at her.
She staggered back from the screen.
"No. No, no, no— this isn't real."
But her eye began to pulse. A faint blue light flickered in her pupil.
The chip inside… was reacting.
---
Somewhere Else
Ronin sat alone in a bunker beneath the Himalayan base. Since the incident at the lab, he had been running. He and Ruby had seen things that should not exist — doors opening in thin air, creatures made of shadow, and memories returning like painful waves.
Now, his mind was heavy — but his body was preparing for something.
A ping on his encrypted tablet blinked.
Mia — Visual anomaly detected at 03:12 AM IST. Pattern matches Project Lyra.
He stared at the name. Mia.
Another from the original group. Another who'd been altered. Another who'd been chosen.
He didn't hesitate. He initiated a secure call.
---
Back on Mia's rooftop, her smartband buzzed.
Incoming call: RONIN.
She frowned. She hadn't spoken to Ronin in ten years.
She picked it up. "How did you get this number?"
Ronin's voice was calm, but urgent. "You saw it too, didn't you?"
Her voice trembled. "The eye…"
"Yeah. Same one. Different sky. It's been watching us for years."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I was part of the project. And so were you."
Mia's knees buckled. "I don't… I don't remember anything. Only flashes. Pain. Symbols—"
"You were implanted. Like me. Like Ruby. But you… you were the signal bearer."
"What does that mean?"
Ronin hesitated. "When the watchers wake, your eye will glow. And the world will start to bleed."
---
Her smartband buzzed again.
ALERT: Object shifting coordinates. Now overhead.
She looked up.
The sky was still dark — but now, stars were moving. Not all. Just a few.
They rearranged, formed a circle. And at the center — a black gap. Slowly widening.
The eye wasn't watching anymore.
It was descending.
---
Her voice cracked. "Ronin… it's here."
"I know," he said. "Listen to me, you have to leave the city. Now."
"Where do I go?"
"To where it all started. The gate."
Her head throbbed. A sudden surge of images — blue light, a temple hidden in snow, a girl bleeding from the eye, a creature with wings made of bones…
Then blackness.
She collapsed.
---
Hours later, she woke up in her bed. Her laptop was off. Camera unplugged. Band off her wrist.
But a new scar burned on her neck — a small circle, glowing faintly blue.
She touched it and whispered, "They touched me again…"
Her phone buzzed once more.
Message from Unknown:
> "The eye blinked twice. One blink remains. Then… the sky will open."