All that the eyes could see was an abyss of creeping darkness. There was no up, no down, only drifting.
It felt strangely beautiful. Quiet and Peaceful.
No voices could reach him here. No pain, No judgment. Just silence.
Isaac couldn't tell how long he had been lost in it. Hours? Years? Maybe forever. It didn't matter. This darkness was a cage, but also a shield. His own prison, protecting him from the world.
Then, light.
A pinprick above. Expanding. Brighter. Closer. It stretched across the void, reaching for him, dragging him. He tried to resist, but he had no control.
The abyss shattered.
And in the brilliance of the light, the first thing he saw was a woman.
Her face half-covered by cracked eyewear. Blood streaking down her forehead. Her eyes widened in shock as they fell on him
as though she had never expected anyone to be there at all.
Water dripped from the ceiling, seeping through a thin crack above.
A drop struck his face. Isaac stirred, his eyes lifting toward the fracture.
Through the narrow opening, he caught a glimpse of the sky, gray, restless. The rain fell fast, each drop echoing in the silence around him.
He stared upward, dazed, lost in the blur of it all. Confusion weighed down on him.
Then, slowly, his body gave in.
Darkness claimed him once more.
48 Days Earlier
High above the world, a vast creature soared.
A bird, yet nothing like the birds of history. Its body was broad, wings stretched wide like a living shadow over the land. Blue feathers shimmered in the light, scarred and cracked from battles long past. Its eyes, two great orbs, with smaller ones below, burned with ancient awareness.
Its legs were thick and sharp, built with the strength to pierce iron. Beside them, an extra pair of wings jutted out, smaller but strong, and another tiny set near its main span. It flew with majesty, claiming the sky like a sovereign no force could dethrone.
Below, the world sprawled in purple-leaved forests and the broken ruins of an age long gone. The creature searched for prey, gliding with quiet dominion.
Then, sudden violence.
A blast tore through the silence. Not bullets or arrows, something sharper, crueler. The creature reeled as unseen fire struck its body, ripping into its ancient flesh.
It turned, eyes scanning the skies, but before it could react
Impact.
A plane, burst through its belly. Metal cut through muscle, spilling blood across the heavens. The beast let out a cry that shook the air, and its lifeblood rained down, exposing the attacker.
The plane tore through, unflinching, continuing on its course. As if the king of the skies was nothing more than an obstacle in its path.
This is how the Outskirt is: no one is certain of dominion.
The plane surged forward, faster, its speed unmatched. Its black frame shimmered, edges fading until the machine turned transparent, cloaked from the eyes of other creatures. Invisible.
"Damn… you had no mercy on that bird," a voice muttered inside the cockpit.
The pilot's eyes stayed on the horizon.
"And would it have mercy on us, if it reached us first?"
Silence. Then the co-pilot gave a dry laugh.
"Fair enough."
For a while, only the hum of the engines filled the cabin. Then the co-pilot spoke again, his tone lower this time:
"How did all this even start? All of it… this war, these monsters, the sky bleeding with them?"
The pilot tightened his grip on the controls, his gaze distant. "You really don't know?"
"I've heard rumors," the co-pilot said. "Whispers. Stories they fed us when we were kids. But never the truth."
The pilot's jaw clenched. "Then listen carefully. Because what they told us when we were young… wasn't just stories."
"It started long before anyone alive remembers, thousands, maybe ten thousand years ago. I don't know the exact number. Time gets messy when you're talking about the old world." The pilot's eyes flicked down to the ruined grid below: collapsed towers, vines strangling concrete, roads swallowed by purple forests.
"There was a civilization then, the greatest thing we'd ever made. We were the hunters, not the hunted. Machines, inventions, coordination, we turned the tables on nature itself.
"Then something came in from outside. Energy. Not like anything we'd seen. It seeped into our universe, and from it the anomalies were born. At first people called them miracles. Later they learned they were corruption, chaos wearing a human skin. Monsters followed. Cities burned. In days the population cratered. Billions gone.
"Some people survived, not just survived, but changed. They could touch the chaos without being eaten by it. They learned to bend it. They later developed to something we both know" the sentinels" the co pilot said.
The pilot continued.
"We trained them, armed them. They were our shields and our swords. For a time, we fought back. Then the flood came from the other side, creatures spilling out from that other place, tearing what was left apart.
"Humanity nearly ended. That's when he came, the All-Father. He fought like a god. With him we closed the War Pool, sealed the breach. But sealing didn't end the cost. The world was broken; the anomalies remained; the corrupted kept emerging. We rebuilt around that truth: destroy anomalies, reclaim territory, survive.
"Now we keep fighting the fallout. We hunt what the chaos leaves behind and try to hold the last of what's ours. That's the war we live in. That's why we fly."
The co-pilot's voice was hushed, almost lost beneath the hum of the engines.
"That's what we've been told. But… what if the All-Father never closed the rift? What if he only bought us time?"
For a long moment, the pilot kept his eyes forward, the black plane cutting through storm and silence. Then, with a faint, grim smile, he answered:
"Then we'd better make that time count."