They had been in the plane for little more than 12 hours and were now flying over a vast stretch of ocean. The sky was now a deep shade of gray.
Trei curled up on his seat next to the window, resting his forearms on the foldable tray table as he thumbed through his notebook which he had filled up over the past few weeks with notes, possible debate motions, sample essays and random pieces of trivia. The staple information for a competition which would ask questions about IKEA furniture. He'd read through his notebook twice already and his eyes were starting to hurt.
His teammate,Ethan , a lanky boy with dark brown hair, pale skin and almond eyes peered down at his notebook and squinted at the cramped and somewhat messy handwriting. "You're still revising? You know more than enough, you were selected for the debate showcase, won 5 medals and everything. You do know you can stop panicking right? You're treating it like a university entrance exam." he teased.
Trei sighed, he was tired of everything. The voices of the other passengers, the incessant pain in his eardrums like they were going to explode, nevertheless he flipped to the next page as he spoke. "There's a difference between the Tournament qualifiers and the almost Tournament qualifiers, and that is their knowledge."
Ethan chuckled and closed Trei's notebook, much to his disappointment. "The key is to act confident and be charismatic when delivering your arguments, Trei. They'll instantly favour you. Just wing it and they'll believe you."
Trei raised a brow "And what if your opponent is someone whos actually well-prepared?"
Ethan shrugged, rubbing the side of his neck. "I tend to bullshit harder."
Trei opened his mouth to respond by bringing up the Ikea question from last year but was cut off by an announcement from one of the teachers who had accompanied the teams.
"Also, reminder," Mrs. Park continued, "this is a long-haul flight, so please do not attempt to swap seats. Remember, you all will be on a completely different continent, new rules, laws, culture. You will not be leaving to explore alone and maintain some shed of self-respect and don't get into fights in public, And if you need anything, the flight attendants are here to help. Now, get some rest—some of you look like you haven't slept since your exams last month."
That last remark was clearly aimed at Trei.
Ethan grinned. "She means you."
Trei ignored him and glanced out the window. The sky outside was darkening, the last streaks of red and gold fading beyond the clouds. The world below was nothing but an endless stretch of ocean, the sun was bloated and round, Trei felt as though it was dying, slowly expanding until it would burst.
Another student,muttered something under her breath about how she would definitely try her best to misbehave during the entire 5 days of the event, earning several glares from fellow students warning her not to give the teachers a chance to repeat whatever they said.Mrs. Helia shot a warning look at Jihye and started another tirade. A few groans rippled through the cabin. One kid in the back muttered, "Here comes the lecture."
"It's not a lecture," Ms. Damaris said, looking at the girl over the top of her half-moon spectacles, somehow hearing her. "It's a reminder. The culture where we're going is different from ours. So no running around, no shouting in public, and absolutely no wandering off without a teacher. Is that clear?"
"Yes, ma'am," a few voices echoed.
"I said, is that clear?"
"Yes, ma'am," the group chorused louder.
"Good, because I do not want to head a flight to the next round with teams from all over Asia only to be held up by airport security because someone brought 5 swords with them. And another exchanged death threats with a TSA agent."
Trei exchanged a look with Ethan. "You think she's nervous?" he asked under his breath.
"Definitely. She gets that tone when she's worried one of us will get arrested at customs."
"Well, we did accidentally break that glass trophy last year," Trei pointed out.
"You did," Ethan corrected. "I just watched it happen in slow motion."
Behind them, Priya, leaned forward between their seats, chewing gum aggressively. "Did anyone pack extra formal wear? I swear the schedule said we might have a dinner thing."
"I packed one," Trei replied.
"Same," Ethan said.
Priya groaned. "Ugh. I brought like six outfits and now I feel underdressed."
"You brought six outfits and feel underdressed?" Trei blinked.
"I like to be prepared, okay? Fashion is war."
From the other side of the plane, another teacher—Mr. Irfan—walked down the aisle, double-checking seat numbers. He gave a sharp nod of approval. "We're going to be flying over the Pacific Ocean shortly, folks," he said. "Get your passports in your seat pockets and please, try not to spill anything on the paperwork. You wouldn't believe how often that happens."
"Is this still part of the lecture?" Ethan asked Trei, smirking.
"Pretty sure this is just trauma speaking," Trei replied, flipping through the packet one last time.
He looked out the window for the first time in a while. The horizon was still dark with early morning clouds, the sea far below almost blending into the sky. Light fractured across the waves like broken glass. It felt peaceful—eerily so.
Trei's thoughts wandered. He wasn't thinking about the competition. He'd already prepared the debate cases, the collaborative writing outlines, the quiz strategies. His brain was cycling through something else—something heavier. Something colder. The memory of a strange dream he'd had the night before they left flickered in the back of his mind. Something about a golden door. About voices that weren't quite voices.
He shook his head.
Not now.
He leaned back against his seat, and continued to watch the clouds go past them. After a few minutes of watching the sky he started to doze off. However after what felt like just a moment he was jolted out of his state by an announcement by the pilot. 'Hrm..?...did we land yet..?' he muttered.
"Ladies and gentlemen…we seem to be experiencing slight turbulence, please stay seated, don't panic and enjoy the rest of your flight."
In the background, a few students had started pulling out card games. Priya had roped in two juniors to help her redo her braid. Mr. Irfan and Ms. Damaris had finally taken their seats at the front. For a moment, things felt perfectly normal.
Until the plane lurched.
Not violently—just enough to make the overhead bins creak and a few drinks slosh in their cups.
People barely noticed, believing it was just the usual turbulence
He glanced outside again, and his stomach dropped.
Something was wrong with the color of the sky.
It wasn't blue anymore. Not exactly. It had a faint reddish tint, like the smudged edge of a bruise. And the clouds—what had once been soft and puffy—were beginning to swirl unnaturally. Fast. Aggressively. Like a storm coiling into shape, but inverted. The clouds seemed to swell up even more, and seemed like the reddish tint on them was getting darker.
Ethan looked outside Trei's window, his brows furrowed. "Are you seeing this as well?"
"It's probably just the sunset."
Trei glanced at his window and saw it was starting to fog up
He leaned closer, pressing his forehead lightly against the windowpane. Far below, the ocean glittered in strange streaks, and for a second, it looked like the surface was… boiling.
His fingertips rose instinctively to the cold plexiglass, where a soft mist had begun to spread. Not outside—the fog was clinging to his side of the window. Slow, like breath. Except he hadn't exhaled.
The condensation bloomed in curling tendrils, smearing the view into a vague swirl of grey on grey. He wiped it with his sleeve. It smeared worse.
Weird. Planes didn't fog up like this. Not here. Not mid-air.
He leaned in closer, squinting through the film. The clouds above were darker now. Meaner. The kind of grey that looked almost purple, like bruised fruit. And below them it seemed like the sea was boiling.
His chest tightened. "That's weird," he muttered.
"What is?" Ethan asked, craning his neck to look.
"Did you see that?" Trei tapped the glass. "The water—"
Whatever it was, it was gone. Calm again. Unmoving. As if nothing had happened.
Trei pulled back. "Forget it. Maybe I imagined it."
Half an hour passed.
The in-flight entertainment screens flickered to life with a low chime. The pilot's voice came through, calm and chipper.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we'll be cruising for the next few hours over the Pacific. Please remain seated while the seatbelt sign is on, and enjoy the flight."
In the background, a few students had started pulling out card games. Priya had roped in two juniors to help her redo her braid. Mr. Irfan and Ms. Damaris had finally taken their seats at the front. For a moment, things felt perfectly normal.
Across the aisle, Priya stopped mid-sentence, her voice cutting off like a snapped string. She pressed a hand to the window, face pale.
"Guys…" she whispered. "Um. I think the clouds are… bleeding? Or am I hallucinating"
Trei frowned. "Bleeding?"
She didn't answer. She just kept staring. Her pupils had narrowed to pinpricks.
He twisted in his seat and looked out his own window and immediately went still.
She was not in fact hallucinating.
The clouds were dark. Darker than before. What had once been had churned into roiling towers of bruised grey, shot through with strange streaks of dark crimson. The sky above the plane, once a canvas of soft evening light, now boiled with layers of grey and deep, arterial red. The two colors crashed into each other like oil and water, like a wounded storm had split open and was bleeding into the upper atmosphere.
And then a single drop hit the window.
It didn't slide or drip gently like rain. It struck with weight, like a drop of paint flung against glass, splattering in all directions. It was thick, viscous, and wrong.
Then another came, and another till it started to come down in sheets.
The rain spread quickly, staining the windows in streaks of dark crimson that refused to flow or fade. Each drop left behind a sluggish trail like coagulated blood. The clouds outside twisted more violently now, swirling in unnatural spirals that pulsed in time with the lightning crackling behind them.
And there was lightning now—jagged forks of blinding white and violet slashing across the sky. It wasn't just lighting up the clouds. It was splitting them. Carving them open like wounds. Each bolt left a seared line in the sky, like cracks in a broken god's skin.
Thunder rolled seconds later. It felt like the sky was howling as though it suffered a mortal wound.
A sound like something ancient screaming through torn metal and shattered time. A sound that reverberated deep inside the chest and gut, vibrating the seat cushions, rattling tray tables, vibrating teeth.
The entire sky groaned.
A jagged fork of lightning lit up the clouds just beyond the plane's wing, revealing a swirling black column rising vertically into the stratosphere—like a tornado made of smoke, blood, and rage.
The blood rain came harder now.
It struck the plane with the sound of fists. Heavy. Steady. A relentless pounding. The cabin lights flickered, dimming for half a second before flaring too brightly. Red emergency lights blinked on at the floor. Oxygen masks dropped like jellyfish from the ceiling with soft mechanical hisses.
People began to scream.
"What is that?!" someone shrieked.
"Is that blood?! That's blood!"
"What the hell is happening!?"
"Make it stop!"
The teachers were shouting over each other, trying to calm the students, but no one was listening anymore. It was hard to hear anything at all through the sheer noise—the rumble of the engines, the hammering of the blood rain, the growl of the thing the sky had become.
And then the smell hit.
A metallic, thick scent. Sharp. Familiar in the worst way. The smell of iron. Of open wounds. Of raw, ancient rot. The cabin air filters couldn't keep it out. It seeped into the vents, soaked into the upholstery, coated tongues and throats like a taste.
One girl retched into her airsick bag. A boy two rows down vomited into his lap and started crying.
Outside, the clouds boiled. The ocean below surged, furious and wild. Through gaps in the red-streaked windows, the sea looked like it was being boiled alive. Steam hissed upward in massive jets, clouding everything in fog. Black shapes writhed beneath the surface—titanic silhouettes that churned just beneath the waves. Something breached in the distance, a dark mass of too many limbs, then vanished again.
Lightning slashed downward into the water and it screamed back.
Thunder echoed like cannon fire. Something cracked—loud and sharp—and for a moment, it sounded like the sky itself had broken in two.
Trei was frozen in his seat. His fingers dug into the armrests. His mouth was dry. His heart pounded like it was trying to escape his chest.
Priya was sobbing now. Silent, wide-eyed tears that streamed down her cheeks.
"This isn't real," Ethan murmured, voice shaking. "It can't be. This isn't real."
Outside, the horizon tilted.
The sky and the sea were indistinguishable now. One rolled into the other. The red had taken over. The clouds split in jagged lines. Some had started to spiral downward, long threads of smoke and crimson dragging toward the earth like god-sized tentacles. Lightning struck again and again, one bolt tearing through the atmosphere so close that it lit up the cabin in a stark flash of white—
And for half a second….
Everyone saw it.A shape in the sky.A figure.
Miles high. Towering. Unmoving. Wings of black flame. Horns that branched into fractals. A face that was no face at all—just a mouth open in a silent scream that stretched across the heavens.
Not even a few moments later it let out a loud bellowing shriek and vanished.
And then the lights went out.
Darkness flooded the cabin.
Only the emergency strips on the floor lit the interior now in flickering reds and blues. Someone tripped in the aisle. Someone else was trying to break the overhead bin open for their inhaler. A stewardess fell to her knees and whispered a prayer over and over in her native tongue.
The plane tilted.
Again.
Harder this time.
Screams rose higher. Some began to chant. Others cried, calling family members, others screaming prayers which would never be answered .
The sky turned black.
Not the kind of darkness that accompanied nightfall or storm. This was deeper. Vaster. A total absence, as though the heavens had been torn open and stitched with shadow. A darkness so absolute it felt like it swallowed light, devoured it whole. It was everywhere, stretching across the horizon, folding over the ocean like a great ink-slick curtain being pulled across the world. Yet despite the suffocating dark, they could still see. Because the lightning didn't stop.
It came again.
Bolts of white-gold, violet, and scarlet tore open the clouds every few seconds, casting everything into brief, terrible clarity. Like a strobe light held over the end of the world.
Each flash painted the cabin and sky in broken, fragmented images—like snapshots from a nightmare.
The rain hadn't stopped. It was still blood. Still thick. Still hammering.
But the clouds—Trei realized—weren't moving anymore. They were hanging in place, suspended like heavy, rotted drapes. Motionless, except when the lightning revealed strange bulges in them—shapes, almost human, pressing from inside the vapor like they were trying to get out.
As for the sea? He didnt even know if there was a sea anymore. Just endless, crawling black beneath them. Moving. Breathing. Slithering. Like what would happen if ink became sentient
Yet, despite the suffocating dark, the passengers could still see.
Because the lightning would not stop.
It came in bursts, relentless and unnatural—pulses of light that lit the world in broken frames. White, then violet. Crimson, then gold. The flashes painted the inside of the plane and the outside world in brief, jagged glimpses—like pieces of a dying dream.
With every flash, the landscape below looked less like earth and more like something rotting.
The ocean had vanished. Or, perhaps, become something else entirely.
What lay beneath the plane now was not water—it was motion. Black, rippling, writhing motion. Like something alive. Like ink with muscle. Every now and then, something vast shifted beneath the clouds—like continents of flesh turning just under the surface.
Another flash.
Longer this time.
And through it—beyond the jagged horizon, half-veiled in blood-thick rain—stood another figure. Different from the horned being made of shadow.
Far away, yet impossibly tall. Not a silhouette cast by lightning, but a shape that seemed to drink the light around it. It stood motionless for a moment, arms lowered, head tilted. The clouds distorted around its form, bent by its presence.
Then it moved.
It danced.
Not joyfully. Not with purpose.
It danced like it had forgotten how to stop.
Its arms swung in slow, broken arcs. Its knees buckled and straightened like puppet joints tugged by the wind. It spun in jerks and halts, every motion twitching with weightless madness. Like it was caught in a rhythm it couldn't escape. A manic, violent rhythm. Arms flailing, jerking in impossible directions. Legs bending at angles no joint could survive. It spun, twisted, fell, rose again. With each movement, the sky bent around it—rippled like a disturbed surface of water. The clouds warped away from it in fear. The rain surged harder when it moved. Lightning burst around its head like a mad crown.
Lightning ripped the sky again.
That was when they saw its face.
And it was...Emotionless. Yet grieving. Anxious, yet calm.
As if the universe's mourning had been carved into flesh. Its eyes were wide, not in surprise or rage, but in some terrible understanding. Its mouth was not smiling. Not scowling.
Its lips were slightly parted. Like it had once screamed and never remembered how to close.
It was not rage that danced.
It was pure calmness, it looked almost serene. The type one has when they know they are about to die and have come to terms with it.
And yet, it danced still. Each motion a question. Each spin an ache. It did not acknowledge the plane, though its head tilted with every shift, as if...listening…
To something. To the unraveling of what once was.
Someone screamed in the cabin. A high, choked sound of unfiltered fear. It was joined by others. The teachers barked orders, but their voices were brittle now. Their calm had cracked. One man at the back was muttering prayers in Malay. Another tore at the window shade, as if that might make the thing go away.
Trei's knuckles were white against the seat rest in front of him. He couldn't speak. Could barely breathe.
Each lightning flash showed it again. Closer. Still dancing.
Still carrying that grief on its face.
"What... is that?" one of his teammates croaked beside him, voice barely a whisper.
No one answered.
Trei didn't think they could.
He wasn't even sure the figure was real. Maybe none of this was. Maybe they'd died mid-flight and this was hell.
But no.This wasn't hell.Hell would've made sense. This didn't. Another burst of lightning lit up the sky, and the figure stopped. Mid-spin. Mid-dance. Its arms hung limp. Its head slowly turned, as if sensing something.
And though it had no eyes to focus, no pupils to follow
Every soul aboard the plane felt the weight of its attention.Heavy. Ancient.
It started to dance again. And then it was dark.
After what felt like hours, lightning struck again and it seemed larger now, more clearer in shape.
Trei's mind raced, he wondered if this was some ancient deity of a pantheon destroying the universe, he went through the different names in his head; Maybe something more classical and wider known like the greek pantheon Tartarus, Nyx, Eris, Typhon…all good options but there had never been mention of them dancing, out of these ones, Typhon made the most sense as he controlled winds and storms. But then again there has never been any mention of him dancing.
The plane creaked and rolled in the air, Ethan lifted up the armrest between his and Trei's seat and clutched onto him for dear life.
Trei nevertheless still tried to come up with a suitable explanation.
Maybe something older like the Egyptian, Vedic or Mesopotamian pantheons? Apep? No-he's a snake, and the dancing figure is definitely not a giant serpent of darkness. Seth and Sekhmet are also good options. Shiva? No, he's ridiculously powerful, if it was him the world would have ended instantaneously plus he doesnt seem like the type to be over dramatic with blood rain. Plus he's more angry…this one's mourning.
Tiamat? I can't tell the gender, nor is this shifting into a dragon.Also wasn'y she slain by Marduk to create the world?
While Trei was busy trying to fit the madness outside into something he could comprehend, mythology, he noticed people had started to scream. Not that they weren't screaming before but they seemed to be much louder and were moving around the plane.
He moved Ethan's arm off of his face and saw why, the blood was seeping into the cabin. And it was…floating?
Thick crimson streams of it twisted in around the cabin, coiling into all sorts of shapes, some wrapped around the seats, people were climbing into each other's laps to not come in contact with it.
Trei looked out the window again, it seemed like the dancing figure outside had finally reached the end of its dance, it gracefully lifted an arm up to the sky, and then it clenched its fist.
A radiant light shone from the figure, pure and blinding, people in the plane shielded their eyes.
And then for the last time, the world went dark.