The light did not feel warm.
It burned.
Villagers fell to their knees, some crying, some laughing, others screaming as if their minds could not decide what reality had become. For years they had prayed for sunlight. Now that it had come, it felt like judgment instead of salvation.
Gideon stood unmoving.
Because the sky was bleeding.
The fracture stretched wider, jagged like a wound torn open by something that refused to heal. Beyond it, there was no blue—no heavens—only an endless expanse of shifting darkness.
And within it—
Shapes.
Massive. Silent. Watching.
"You see them, don't you?"
The voice came from behind him.
Gideon turned slowly.
Old Mara stood there—the village outcast, the one children were warned never to approach. Her blind eyes stared directly at him, unseeing yet knowing.
"You always were different," she murmured.
Gideon's jaw tightened. "What is happening?"
Mara smiled faintly. "The world is remembering."
A tremor shook the ground. A deep, echoing crack split through the center of the village square. People stumbled, their screams rising into chaos.
"The sky is breaking!" someone shouted.
"No," Mara whispered, stepping closer to Gideon. "It's opening."
Her hand reached out, trembling as it hovered over his chest—over the glowing symbols beneath his skin.
"They sealed you," she said. "Not to protect the world…"
Her fingers pressed lightly against him.
"…but to protect it from you."
Gideon's breath stopped.
Before he could respond—
Something fell from the sky.
Not like rain.
Not like fire.
Like intention.
A black shard, twisting as it descended, struck the earth with a deafening impact. The ground shattered. Dust and shadows exploded outward.
From the crater—
Something rose.
Humanoid in shape.
Wrong in existence.
Its limbs bent at impossible angles, its skin shifting like liquid night. And where its face should have been—
There was nothing.
Only a hollow void that seemed to pull the world into it.
The creature tilted its head.
And then—
It screamed.
Not a sound—
A force.
Reality rippled. Windows shattered. Blood poured from ears. The very air seemed to collapse inward.
Gideon didn't cover his ears.
He stepped forward.
And for the first time—
He wasn't afraid.