The sky split at 8:17 p.m.
No thunder.
No warning.
Just a thin red line tearing across the clouds as if something sharp had dragged itself through the heavens.
People noticed because it was too straight.
Too deliberate.
Conversations paused mid-sentence. Traffic slowed. Someone dropped a phone on the sidewalk and didn't pick it up.
The red line widened.
Clouds peeled apart around it.
A low vibration hummed through the air—not sound, but pressure. The kind you feel before a migraine. The kind that makes your teeth ache.
A car alarm started.
Then another.
Then every alarm on the street erupted at once.
The city felt… wrong.
He was standing outside his apartment building when it happened.
He didn't know why he had stepped outside.
One moment he had been inside scrolling through meaningless headlines, and the next he was in the parking lot staring upward with everyone else.
The fracture in the sky pulsed.
Something moved within it.
Not falling.
Descending.
A burning mass of crimson light pressed through the tear in the clouds. It wasn't tumbling like rock. It wasn't breaking apart in the atmosphere.
It was slowing.
Choosing.
Someone nearby whispered, "Is that a meteor?"
But meteors didn't correct their trajectory.
This one did.
Phones were out now. People filming. Livestreaming. Laughing nervously.
"It's probably gonna burn up."
"It's just debris."
"It's SpaceX or something."
The object glowed brighter.
And then—
The vibration sharpened.
His breath caught.
Something pressed against his mind.
Not pain.
Not sound.
A presence.
Cold.
Measuring.
A thought that was not his own slipped into the space behind his eyes.
Observe.
He staggered.
The word hadn't been heard.
It had been understood.
The red object grew impossibly large.
Windows across the street shattered simultaneously. Glass burst outward in a synchronized wave.
The meteor did not strike like a bomb.
It struck like a heart collapsing inward.
For one impossible second—
Everything went silent.
The city froze.
No wind. No alarms. No sound of impact.
The red light imploded.
Then the world detonated.
The shockwave ripped outward with a scream of displaced air. Cars flipped. Streetlights folded like paper. Concrete fractured in spiderweb patterns beneath his feet.
He was thrown backward.
The sky turned red.
He hit the ground hard enough to empty his lungs.
Dust filled the air.
Screaming filled the silence that followed.
Then came the mist.
It rose from somewhere beyond the buildings—a low, crawling fog that shimmered faintly in the dark.
Red.
People coughed.
Someone tried to stand and collapsed.
A woman a few steps away grabbed her head and began screaming, high and sharp, like something was drilling into her skull. Blood streamed from her nose.
Another man convulsed violently, slamming against a parked car.
And some—
Some just stood still.
Perfectly still.
Eyes wide. Pupils dilating.
Breathing slowing.
The mist rolled over him.
It smelled metallic.
Warm.
He tried to move.
His body refused.
The pressure inside his skull intensified until it felt like his thoughts were being pried open.
Images flashed behind his eyes—fractals, branching threads, something vast and neural and impossibly complex.
He tasted copper.
His heartbeat spiked.
Then skipped.
Then stuttered.
He dropped to his knees.
Around him, chaos blurred.
Screams warped into distant echoes.
The red mist thickened.
The presence returned.
Closer now.
Not speaking.
Not commanding.
Studying.
His heart slammed once more.
Then—
Stopped.
The world snapped into black.
No pain.
No fear.
No light.
Silence.
For the first time in his life—
Nothing.
Absolute, perfect, total absence.
And in that absence—
Something touched the void.
It did not understand it.
It could not map it.
It had never encountered silence before.
The contact lingered.
Curious.
Careful.
Not invasive.
Just… observing.
Then—
A pulse.
His heart restarted with violent force.
Air tore into his lungs.
His eyes flew open.
The red mist had thinned.
The street was wreckage.
Bodies lay scattered.
Some unmoving.
Some twitching.
And some—
Rising.
A man who had been face down moments ago slowly pushed himself upright.
His movements were wrong.
Too smooth.
Too precise.
His head tilted slightly to the side, as if recalibrating.
His eyes were unfocused.
Then they sharpened.
Locked onto the nearest person.
The screaming began again.
But this time—
It was shorter.
Closer.
Wet.
He rolled onto his side, chest heaving.
His heart pounded violently against his ribs, as if trying to escape.
Something was different.
The pressure in his head had not vanished.
It had settled.
Like a weight resting just behind his thoughts.
The presence was still there.
Quiet.
Listening.
Watching the same scene through him.
Across the street, three figures stood motionless in the drifting red haze.
They turned in unison.
Not toward the screaming.
Toward him.
The presence stirred.
Not alarmed.
Not afraid.
Interested.
One of the figures took a step forward.
Its head tilted.
And for the first time—
He felt it.
A thin thread stretching from their minds.
Touching something inside his own.
The presence reacted.
Not defensive.
Not aggressive.
Curious.
The thread snapped.
The figure stumbled slightly.
Its gaze sharpened.
Focused entirely on him.
The mist swirled between them.
His heart hammered.
And somewhere deep in the silence of his mind—
The presence formed a second word.
Viable.