The rains had been falling for three days straight, the kind of heavy, hammering downpour that could break the back of a weak roof. Hassan Mahamat stood at the doorway of his small farmhouse, arms folded, watching the muddy water snake through the furrows of his millet field.
It wasn't the rain that bothered him. In Chad, rain was a blessing — a stubborn, sometimes dangerous blessing, but a blessing all the same. What bothered him was the silence. The birds had stopped singing. Even the frogs had gone quiet.
The wind shifted. A strange humming sound rose from the far end of his land.
Hassan narrowed his eyes. That section of the field had been untouched for weeks, waiting for him to sow the new season's seeds. But now, under the curtain of rain, something was… glowing.
He grabbed his old straw hat and started walking. His boots sank into the wet earth with a sucking sound at every step. The hum grew louder, weaving with the sound of rain until it felt like the ground itself was vibrating.
When he reached the far corner, he froze.
The air above the soil shimmered like heat over a desert road, except this was no heat. It pulsed with light — gold, green, and a sharp, unnatural violet. The smell was strange too, like wet earth mixed with the sweetness of freshly cut mango.
And then, with a sound like fabric tearing in the distance, the air split open.
A hole hung in front of him — not in the ground, but in reality itself. It swirled like a whirlpool, revealing glimpses of places that made his heart pound: a silver forest under two moons, a river of fire winding through black cliffs, a sky where dragons wheeled and dove.
Hassan took a step back, gripping the wooden handle of his hoe.
The swirling slowed, and for a moment he thought it might vanish. But instead, a shape stepped through.
It wasn't human.
Tall and robed in shifting colors, its eyes glowed like embers in the rain. In one hand, it held a staff tipped with a stone that seemed to contain a storm.
"Hassan Mahamat," the figure said, its voice deep and echoing as if spoken in more than one language at once. "Guardian of the Rift."
Hassan's mouth went dry. "I'm just a farmer."
The figure tilted its head. "Not anymore."
Lightning flashed overhead, and in that brief light, Hassan saw more shapes moving beyond the rift — wings, claws, glinting eyes. The rain no longer felt like rain, but a curtain hiding the rest of the world.
Somehow, he knew this moment was the seed from which everything else would grow — for good or ill.
The rift pulsed again. Somewhere in the distance, the millet stalks swayed as if bowing.
And Hassan stepped forward.