It's the 25th of December 1900, just a minute before impact, and two minutes before midnight. At the snowfield camp on the western edge of Nunavut. There the Inuits, the ones who stayed waited for their friends and family.
The fire crackled low in the snow-banked ring, little more than a cough of flame struggling against the wind.
Three figures sat around it—one sharpening a bone knife, another chewing on seal blubber, and the third, the eldest, sat unmoving. Wrapped in bear fur, eyes half-shut, he listened to the wind like it was reciting scripture.
They hadn't gone with the others.
Unarjuk had tried, of course. He'd ranted, raved, painted nonsense in the air with his hands. Promised fire. Promised rebirth. Promised that the stones would remember them. That they'd be more than just frozen names in a forgotten tongue.
He'd laughed when they said no.
And then he'd gone—dragging eleven more fools with him into the dark.
The young hunter, Kavi, spat a tendon into the snow.
"They should've been back by now," he muttered.
His older brother, Talik, shook his head. "They won't come back."
Kavi glanced toward the northwestern ridge, where the sky dipped low and the world beyond the sea ice turned blacker than usual. Meighen Island lay out there. Too far to walk in a day. Too empty to be worth trying.
"They'll freeze before the stones remember anything," he said.
The elder, Nukaq, finally opened his eyes.
"They will not freeze," he said softly. "They will burn."
The brothers turned toward him.
Nukaq didn't blink. His eyes were wet with reflection, staring at something far beyond the firelight.
Kavi frowned. "What do you mean 'burn'? There's nothing out there."
Then, the wind died. Just like that. As if it had reached the edge of its own voice and fallen silent.
The flame in the center of their ring suddenly hissed, flaring brighter—not from fuel, but from fear. The shadows it cast grew long and thin.
Talik rose halfway to his feet.
"What was that?"
Nukaq didn't answer.
Because something else did, as suddenly the sky seemingly exploded open with fire.
There was no warning, not like with thunder, it was just a sudden, impossible explosion of light that came from the northwest—so bright it turned snow to silver, ice to mirrors, and shadows to seared ghosts. The stars vanished. The aurora died. For one long moment, night became a funeral pyre.
And there they saw it, a beam or a pillar of light that seemed impossibly straight and endless, as if there was no end to it.
It seemed wide as a mountain's shadow, and carved from gold, white, and bleeding red. It fell from the sky like a tower made of wrath and light, striking Meighen Island with such force that the sea ice cracked under their feet.
The brothers stumbled. Kavi dropped his knife. Talik hit the snow, eyes wide, mouth moving without sound.
Then the wind returned, but not as a whisper. It came screaming with force, causing the fire to blow out.
Steam rolled across the plains like breath from a lung too old for mercy.
And from the horizon came a sound not quite thunder, but more like the moan of something ancient being torn away.
And in the distance the sky shimmered. The light didn't flicker, It just held.
For nearly a full minute, the beam remained, a spear of judgment, painting the north with holy flame.
Then, like placing a cup over a candle light it was gone.
Just like that, and darkness returned.
The wind died.
The stars blinked uncertainly back into place.
And the three men stood there in silence, blinking in the afterimage of a new age.
Talik fell to his knees.
Kavi's lips trembled in disbelief.
While Nukaq did not move, he only spoke, voice low, old, and final:
> "The island is no longer empty."
***
Meanwhile elsewhere around the Arctic Circle, just before impact.
Time: 23:59, December 25, year 1900.
A Fat Seal Named Iguk was in the middle of a nap under the ice, dreaming of squid.
He had just caught one in the dream—big, juicy, slow—and was preparing to gurgle victoriously when the entire ocean lit up from above like someone had opened the sun and dropped it in sideways.
His eyes popped open.
> Blub?
He floated up, surfaced near Meighen's southern shore, and blinked at the pillar of fire descending from the heavens.
Iguk had never seen god before.
He blinked again. Then immediately dove and didn't stop swimming for an hour.
Elsewhere, A Bowhead Whale Named Old Blubber had survived spears, storms, and a particularly memorable encounter with a Russian whaling cannon.
He had never, in his long and blubbery life, seen the sky catch fire.
When the light hit, it lit up the water like day. Fish darted. Ice groaned. Somewhere in the deep, plankton wept.
Old Blubber rolled onto his side and let out a confused, thunderous moan that translated roughly to:
> "Nope. Not today. I'm turning around."
Then he did just that.
Then from a different point of view, a Snowy Owl Named Grelda point of view.
Grelda had just gotten comfortable on a ridge near Ellesmere.
Her feathers were fluffed. Her feet were warm. Everything smelled like mouse.
Then the entire world flashed white, and her perch sizzled.
She exploded upward in a flurry of wings and profanity, shrieking:
> "WHAT IN THE NAME OF FROZEN VERMIN WAS THAT!?"
A vole, nearby, suffered a heart attack on the spot.
And as for the Polar Bear Cub Named Nugluk.
Nugluk was pawing at a frozen seal turd, trying to decide if it was food, when the sky suddenly yelled.
He looked up, squinted at the glowing death-lance descending across the sea, and let out the kind of confused huff only a half-pint apex predator could make.
His mother, five paces away, didn't even look up. She just grunted:
> "If it comes closer, bite it."
Nugluk wasn't sure what "it" was, but he decided he hated it already.
High up in the sky, A Puffin Who Had No Business Being This Far North flew.
He was lost.
He was already questioning his life choices.
Then the sky cracked open and a beam from heaven obliterated part of the map he hadn't figured out yet.
The puffin turned 180° mid-air and began flapping with panicked religious urgency.
Somewhere, he would found a coastal bird cult. But that was another story.
***
Far away, a lone Arctic Fox was Watching from a Hill.
It sat still, tail wrapped around its paws, ears twitching.
The light didn't scare it.
It only watched.
Then it sneezed once, peed on a rock, and wandered away.
Because prophecy was fine and good—but there were still eggs to steal.
***
Then just before impact, at the Danish Meteorological Research Camp, Thule, Northern Greenland. Captain Frederik Madsen was stirring cod soup with the tip of his bayonet when the sky caught fire.
It was a clear night, which meant brutally cold. Stars were sharp, the moon low and fat like old cheese, and the air still enough that you could hear a sled dog fart through three layers of wool.
The team was four:
Madsen, military and moustached.
Elsa Jørgensen, the geologist who didn't believe in ghosts but did believe in thermodynamics.
Niels, the assistant who was always one crisis behind.
And a dog named Snebjørn, who was an optimist and a thief.
They weren't drunk, but they wanted to be.
Then Elsa dropped her spoon.
> "...What is that?"
Everyone turned.
On the western horizon, a column of light had stabbed the sky.
No—through the sky.
A pillar of gold and white, wide as a mountain and perfectly vertical, descended from the heavens with no warning, no noise, no explanation.
For a moment, it was as if a second sun had risen over the Arctic—at midnight.
The camp was cast into hard-edged shadow.
The snow glowed.
The thermometer cracked.
The dog, Snebjørn rolled onto his back and played dead.
Elsa shaded her eyes with a gloved hand.
> "It's not aurora. That's... heat. That's a beam."
Frederik didn't respond. He was staring too intently.
Niels finally asked what they were all thinking:
> "Is it... us? Did we do that?"
"No," Elsa whispered. "We're not important enough."
The light held for nearly a full minute. In that time, the world turned silent. Even the wind stopped to look.
Then—just as suddenly—it vanished.
The darkness returned, awkward and embarrassed, as if it had been caught sleeping.
The stars blinked back into place, a little uncertain.
Madsen exhaled slowly, fog blooming from his nose like smoke.
He turned to the others.
> "Well. Merry Christmas."
Snebjørn immediately stole his biscuit.
***
Elsewhere, a German Imperial Survey ship named Kaiser Wilhelm IV sailed. Located at latitude: 80° North, drifting off the coast of Ellesmere Island. Date: December 25, year 1900, time: 23:59
Oberleutnant Erich Beck sighed, he hated Christmas.
He hated the north more.
He hated the cold that bit through uniform wool, the way the sea groaned like something dying under the ice, the way the men pretended powdered chocolate could replace wine. Mostly, though, he hated being on this floating metal coffin filled with Protestant optimism, imperial delusion, and salted fish.
His gloves were too small. His boots were still wet from two days ago. His bunk was directly below a leak that dripped with perfect, mocking rhythm onto his forehead between 0200 and 0300 every night.
He was thirty-four. Unmarried. Demoted. Slowly going blind in one eye. And presently freezing his balls off on a godless ship staring into the void of a polar night.
He stepped out onto the observation deck to be alone with his misery and mumbled to himself in broken French:
> "May the ice take me."
Then came the moment when the sky opened with a flash. No—an eruption. From the northwest.
At first it seemed like lightning. But it didn't fade.
It held.
A beam of molten light cracked through the heavens like a spear from some cosmic artillery god, slamming down into the far horizon—straight down, with impossible precision. The clouds evaporated from its path. The stars fled.
The sea lit up like liquid gold.
It was beautiful.
Terrifying.
Impossibly… perfect.
Beck stumbled back against the rail, heart hammering, suddenly breathless.
> "No," he whispered. "No—this isn't—"
His words died.
His knees buckled.
And for the first time in nearly a decade, he prayed.
Not in German, or in Latin, just in silence.
From the bridge above, Captain Franz Albrecht von Damm strode out in full uniform, his greatcoat whipping like a banner in the sudden artificial dawn.
He stared into the beam, eyes unblinking, as if it had been aimed for him alone.
Then he whispered to no one:
> "It is a sign."
A lieutenant nearby turned, frowning.
> "Sir?"
Von Damm didn't take his eyes off the light. His voice was steady. Clear.
> "God has fired first. Our destination is now known."
He turned on his heel and marched back inside.
> "Plot course for the light."
---
Beck remained on the deck long after the beam vanished, curled against the railing, fists clenched, eyes stinging.
He did not understand what he'd seen.
But for the first time in years, he believed something was waiting.
And that it had just arrived.
***
SS Hopewell, American steamship en route from Europe to New York, one minute before impact.
The upper deck of the Hopewell groaned with cold.
Most passengers were below, packed elbow-to-elbow between crates and coughs, swapping old bread and bad dreams for the promise of America. But Henry Lyle, age seventeen and three-quarters, was above.
He had no family with him. Just a secondhand coat, a satchel with three rolls of film, and a 1900-model Kodak Pocket camera, slung like a sacred relic across his chest.
He should've been below. It was freezing. He couldn't feel his fingers.
But he couldn't miss the sky.
The stars were clearer than anything he'd seen over London, or Rotterdam, or the soot-choked stations they passed on the way to the docks. Out here, they shone like the future — sharp, endless, too many to name.
Henry was already framing the shot in his mind: a time-lapse of the night sky, maybe, with the ocean like ink below it. He didn't know how to develop film properly yet, but that didn't matter. He would learn. He would become a photographer, maybe a newsman, maybe—just maybe—a director.
He didn't want to be famous.
He just wanted his life to matter.
Then the horizon exploded.
---
It wasn't thunder. It wasn't aurora. It wasn't fire.
It was a beam—vertical, pure, wider than the Statue of Liberty and brighter than any lighthouse on Earth. It descended, not like light—but like judgment, slicing through the northern sky and hitting the Earth somewhere far beyond where the sea maps ended.
Passengers began pouring onto the deck, faces wide with awe and terror. A priest shouted something in Italian. Someone screamed in Polish. Mothers clutched children. A crewman crossed himself so fast he forgot which hand held his cigarette.
But Henry?
He lifted the camera.
His hands shook. His breath steamed against the viewfinder. He blinked. Framed the column.
And pressed the shutter.
> Click.
He took another.
> Click.
One more.
> Click.
The lens fogged. His tears froze on his cheek. His legs felt hollow.
But through the camera, he saw something else—something he couldn't explain. The light had a shape, or maybe a weight. It wasn't just fire. It was presence.
Like the sky had decided that Earth wasn't alone anymore.
The beam held for nearly a full minute.
Then it was gone.
After that, silence crashed down like an aftershock.
Someone began singing softly in Yiddish.
A woman fainted.
Henry lowered the camera, breath ragged.
He stared at the spot where the light had been, his heart hammering like a printing press.
He didn't know what he'd seen. But for the first time in his short, uncertain life, he knew exactly what he wanted to do.
> Tell the world.
Whatever it took. However long it took. He would chase that beam until the day he died.
***
In Canada at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police outpost, Fort Conger, Ellesmere Island, the night was as it always was, cold.
Sergeant Jules Lavoie was on logbook duty and trying not to freeze to death.
The wind clawed at the outpost windows like a drunk bear with a grudge. His tea had gone cold. His pen kept skipping ink. The fire was down to its last gasp, and the dog outside hadn't barked in over an hour—which probably meant it was dead or thinking about it.
Fort Conger had three men, one weather vane, and precisely zero good reasons to exist in December. But it was Canada, and someone had to man the edge of the map.
Thomas Kinnell, the outpost's only other awake occupant, sat hunched over the wireless receiver, fiddling with a cracked earpiece like it owed him money.
> "Anything?" Lavoie asked, more to remind the fire that humans still lived here.
Kinnell shook his head. "Dead air. Either the lines are iced or Ottawa's fallen asleep."
He went back to adjusting dials that didn't help and twiddling knobs that had never worked.
Outside, the cold howled like an oathbreaker. The stars hung sharp and distant. The horizon trembled with aurora.
And then—
The north lit up like Judgment Day.
Lavoie stood. Kinnell froze.
No explosion. No rumble. Just a beam—a vast, searing pillar of red-gold-white light, stabbing straight down from the heavens onto a landmass they could barely name: Meighen Island.
It wasn't fire. It was too clean for fire.
It wasn't lightning. It was too still.
It was like God had found a map error and come down to correct it.
They stared in silence as the horizon burned without burning. Compass needles on the desk spun briefly, twitching like trapped flies. The logbook pages curled at the edges.
Kinnell whispered, more to himself than anyone:
> "It's not a flare. It's not a meteor. It's... symmetrical."
Lavoie crossed himself before he realized what he was doing.
Then, slowly, he walked over to the logbook.
He picked up the pen. Ink be damned. Cold be damned.
And he wrote:
> 25 December, year 1900. The northern sky fractured. A beam of light descended on Meighen Island. The snow is gone. Something is awake.
He paused.
Then underlined the last sentence.
Twice.
And similarly all around the northern hemisphere people saw the impossible, and the world would never forget this day, and it would never be the same.