The morning did not begin with sunlight.
It began with a sound—an endless, low hum, as though the world itself was remembering a song it had almost forgotten. When I opened my eyes, the sky above me was neither blue nor gray, neither bright nor dark. It was blank—a smooth, colorless surface, like someone had erased the sky with a careless hand.
The city around me did not notice. Cars rolled along the streets, people hurried past with coffee in hand, and the neon signs on the corner still buzzed. Only I seemed aware that the horizon had no horizon, that the heavens had been peeled away like old wallpaper.
I touched the railing of the overpass, grounding myself. Cold. Real. The hum trembled in my bones.
Then the first letter fell.
It did not fall like paper—it cracked the air like glass, a glowing symbol that landed before me on the pavement. It wasn't English, nor any language I knew, but I understood it instinctively: "You are late."
My name is Kael, and until that morning, I was no one special. A dropout. A drifter. Someone who lived between places, between choices. But the sky had been stolen, and someone—or something—had decided I was supposed to notice.
And the hum in my bones whispered one terrifying truth:
This wasn't the first time the sky had forgotten its color.