4:09 PM.
The red glow of the command chamber clung to twenty-one leaders, each face etched with exhaustion and disbelief. The cosmic message still reverberated in their bones.
Dr. Tian Wei stood before the holographic displays, his hands clasped behind his back like a man bearing the weight of an entire species.
"It knows we're here," he said at last, his voice steady as steel. "It does not demand surrender—it requests audience."
The silence broke.
Elena, eyes sharp despite the shadows under them, whispered, "If it meant harm… we'd already be cinders beneath its wings."
Kai gestured at atmospheric scans, data streams glowing across his visor. "The darkness is gone. Sunlight has returned. That thing—whatever it is—restored it."
One by one, heads nodded. Fear remained, but reason burned brighter.
First Contact Protocol.
The words none of them ever expected to invoke now carried the weight of survival.
Tian's decision was swift. "I'll go. Amara, you'll be my second. Your insight will cut through what my instincts cannot."
Amara stepped forward without hesitation. Her eyes, usually cool and calculating, carried a strange fire. "I am ready."
The Mark VII Environmental Protection Suits awaited them.
White armor traced with azure conduits—designed for alien starscapes, yet destined for Earth's rebirth. Each carried force-field generators, radiation dampeners, neural translators, and biometrics linked directly to command.
Technicians worked in silence, locking clasps, calibrating energy grids, sealing helmets. Every hiss of hydraulics felt like a heartbeat in the room.
When the lift engaged at 4:17 PM, every soul left behind pressed their faces to reinforced glass. 187 hearts prayed silently as the two envoys rose through 120 meters of stone and steel, into the realm of the unknown.
The hatch split open.
Blinding light poured in.
The world above had transformed—no black fog, no choking miasma. Clear skies stretched wide, touched by golden beams of sunlight. Air shimmered, fresh and breathable, alive again.
But overshadowing it all…
The colossal being still waited.
Obsidian wings unfurled across the heavens, blotting light, then letting it bleed through in sacred rhythm. The very ground trembled under its presence.
Tian's voice cracked across comms. "Surface contact achieved. Vitals stable."
Then it spoke.
The voice was not thunder, not command, but a resonance that settled into their bones. Soft. Calming. Eternal.
"Do not be afraid."
Every nerve stilled. Every breath slowed. The fear that gripped them loosened—like a father laying a hand upon a frightened child.
They stepped forward. Fifty meters from the head of a god.
The twelve green orbs regarded them, endless galaxies trapped in each iris.
"I am Kakabhushundi."
The name struck like a lightning bolt. An ancient Sanskrit whisper—The Crow of Time. A myth. A watcher spoken of only in half-forgotten scripture.
"I watch stories unfold across the vast ocean of existence."
The words flowed with harmonics beyond human hearing—truth woven into vibration.
And then came the blow that shattered their comprehension.
"Your existence… is an anomaly. Unlike anything in my long travels."
He had broken his own law. An intelligence that observed, never interfered, now stood before them, speaking.
"I come to guide you. Go east."
Two feathers broke free.
Obsidian black, three meters long, their surfaces pulsed with alien light. They drifted like sacred relics, embedding themselves in the soil with a hum that resonated through marrow. Proof of contact. Promise of power.
Then the Traveler ascended.
Wings eclipsed the sun, throwing the land into brief midnight before releasing it back to dawn. Air trembled reverently at his departure.
Silence.
Tian's voice carried over comms, ragged yet unyielding.
"Contact concluded. Entity departed. We… we have gifts."
The two feathers glowed softly, living sigils in the dirt. Behind them, hills stretched eastward like a painted path.
Amara's breath caught inside her helmet. "This… changes everything."
The choice was no longer one of survival alone.
It was destiny.
And all 187 souls would have to walk it.