The sea was calm. Too calm, some would later say.
A rusting trawler drifted across the open Atlantic, sunlight glinting off its hull. The fishermen aboard moved with the relaxed rhythm of routine — laughter, shouted instructions, the splash of bait fish hitting the waves. It could've been any summer morning on any quiet ocean.
But there were no rods. No lines. No reels.
Above the boat, circling the air like hawks, flew five winged figures — lean, humanoid silhouettes backlit by the sun. Their wings stretched wide and powerful, feathers tipped in iridescent metal. From a distance, they could be mistaken for birds. Up close, they were unmistakably human — or something close to it.
The crew called them Solborn. Children of sky and storm. Hunters reborn from a war the world had tried to forget.
One of the Solborn gave a sharp whistle and pointed to a rippling patch in the water — shadows, shifting fast beneath the surface.
"Bluefin!" someone yelled.
The closest Solborn tucked his wings and dove, a silver net unfolding from his arms like a blooming flower. He vanished into the sea with a thundercrack, sending spray skyward. Moments later, he exploded back out, dragging a thrashing bluefin nearly half his size.
Cheers erupted from the deck.
"Good catch!"
"That's three today!"
"For once, the sea's kind."
They shouldn't have said that.
The first tremor was gentle — a subtle pulse beneath their boots.
The second came harder. The water shifted strangely. Not a wave. A pull.
The fish vanished. Just… scattered. Gone, like smoke on the wind.
"Something's wrong," muttered the old man at the bow. His hands clenched the rail. "This isn't a current."
The surface began to swell. Not rise — swell, like something beneath it was breathing. A spiral formed, slow at first, then widening faster than the eye could track. Waves churned outward in every direction, but the center kept pulling down, down, down.
Then the sea broke open.
The water didn't just swirl — it collapsed. The ocean floor gave way with a sound like a planet cracking. The whirlpool widened, and widened still, until the trawler was a mere speck inside its mouth.
They could no longer see the horizon.
Everywhere they looked — east, west, bow, stern — was nothing but darkness. The entire world had turned into a spinning void. It swallowed the light, the sky, the sea itself. A monstrous vortex where gravity failed and reason collapsed.
The boat began to sink.
Not violently — but inevitably. Slowly. Gracefully. Like a stone swallowed by the stars.
The engine screamed in reverse, but the hull didn't lurch. It simply drifted downward, slipping beneath the surface without a splash. Every sound grew muted. Every breath felt thinner.
"Where's the sea?" someone whispered.
"It's still here," another murmured, voice trembling. "We're just not in it anymore."
Time stretched. The deck tilted forward by degrees. The sky faded to a ring of light above. Then even that disappeared.
And rising with them, from that unnatural abyss, came something worse.
It rose slow, deliberate, like it had waited to be seen.
It was a god cast in flesh and shadow.
A hulking mass of muscle and dark-purple scale, its body sculpted with grotesque perfection — a colossal barrel chest heaving with unnatural rhythm, arms so massive they dwarfed its own torso, each ending in claws that looked forged for extinction. Its waist tapered into a narrower core, only to explode again into titanic, corded legs thick enough to anchor a mountain.
Its shoulders jutted upward into sharp, armor-like points, like a crown of blades. There was no neck — only an empty collar of bone and obsidian flesh, from which a formless head emerged like flowing smoke. No mouth. No face. Just a pair of burning eyes — yellow rimmed in red — that pierced the dark like judgment itself.
Its wings spread behind it, silent and endless, casting a shadow large enough to drown a city block. It did not speak. It did not roar. It simply was — a being that unmade meaning by standing still.
It shrieked — high and sharp, like a blade dragged across a dying world.
The trawler crumbled in its grip, reduced to shrapnel in a heartbeat. Men died without even time to scream. Flocks of Solborn fled in every direction, breaking formation, wings scattering light like torn banners in retreat.
The beast turned skyward, sensing more.
Miles away, underground, the walls of Deepwell Outpost Theta pulsed red.
A young analyst stared at the readings on her console, sweat rolling down her neck.
[ANOMALY: CODE BLACK]
[SIGNATURE MATCH: DRACONIAN. CLASS: UNKNOWN.]
[SEISMIC RADIUS: 2700 KM. ESTIMATED MASS: >400,000 TONS.]
[GATE STRUCTURE: FAILING.]
[THIS IS NOT A DRILL.]
She didn't hesitate to press the call button.
"Sir," she said into the receiver, her voice brittle. "It's begun."
The man on the other end — a commander in an unmarked chamber lined with relics from a dozen wars — took a slow breath.
Then he opened three channels at once.
"UNEX Federation. Code Black. Full mobilization."
"Deepwell Foundation. Initiate Omega Directive."
"Ecclesia Callei. Notify the Choir. Light the signal."
A long silence followed.
Then, almost to himself: "We were never going to stop it. Only survive the first wave.
Above the Atlantic, the first Draconian spread its wings wide and cast its shadow across the waters of Earth.
The war for humanity's survival had begun.
And the sky was no longer safe.