(Written by Rohit Malhotra)
hadn't slept properly in weeks. The nights were no longer restful—they were haunted. He didn't know by what exactly, but the weight of something unseen, something watching, had begun to press on his mind like a constant presence in the room. At first, he blamed stress, then insomnia, and finally the late-night coffee. But none of those explained what he saw in the sky that night.
It was exactly 2:47 a.m. when he sat up in bed, drenched in sweat, unsure if he'd had a nightmare or a vision. His room was silent. Too silent. No wind, no traffic, not even the distant barking of stray dogs. It felt as if the entire world had been muted.
Compelled by a force he couldn't explain, Ronin walked to the window. He pulled back the curtains and looked up, expecting the familiar orange haze of the city sky. But what he saw made him freeze.
There was a crack.
Not a cloud, not a jet trail. A glowing fissure, cutting through the sky like a slit in dark fabric. It wasn't natural. It pulsed faintly, like it was alive. The light within the crack flickered with a bluish hue, and for a second, Ronin felt as if it was looking back at him.
His phone vibrated violently on the nightstand. He grabbed it, but there was no incoming call, no message, no network. Just a white screen with a single line of text flashing slowly.
You are awake. Good.
He blinked, confused. The screen went black. The phone died.
In another part of the city, Ruby was sitting in complete darkness, drawing with a pencil on sheet after sheet of paper. Her hands moved in fast, precise strokes, even though her eyes looked unfocused. Each sketch was the same—an image of the sky, split open by a crack, surrounded by strange symbols she couldn't read.
Behind her, her five-year-old sister Mia stood barefoot, staring at the sketches without blinking. Her voice was barely a whisper.
"They're coming back," she said.
Ruby looked up, startled. "Who?"
Mia tilted her head, smiled faintly, and turned away, humming a tune that Ruby had never heard before. The drawings kept coming. Ruby couldn't stop her hands.
At an underground surveillance lab hidden beneath an abandoned power plant, a man named Diamond leaned over a cluster of monitors. He was a former scientist with a military past, and currently an off-the-grid observer of abnormal atmospheric events. Tonight, the readings were off the charts.
He hit the record button on his voice log. "Third sky crack in seven days. All readings match the original Project Zero Sky anomaly. Brainwave disruption detected across ten targets. Phase One may have already started."
He switched to live camera feeds. One showed a close-up of Ronin, standing at his window, eyes wide, face pale.
"He's seeing it again," Diamond muttered. "He's triggering."
Back in his apartment, Ronin stepped away from the window and rubbed his face. He couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching him—not through a screen or a camera, but directly. He glanced at the hallway mirror, then did a double take.
It was fogged over, as if someone had breathed on it from the other side.
He moved closer, unsure. Slowly, words began to appear, as if being traced from within the glass itself.
Someone is watching.
His chest tightened. He spun around. There was nothing behind him. He turned back. The mirror was clean again. No fog. No words.
But something else was wrong. His reflection looked back at him—same face, same clothes—but blinked two seconds later than he did.
His breath caught. The reflection smiled slightly, even though Ronin hadn't.
The room lights flickered, then stabilized.
He backed away slowly, heart pounding.
He thought about calling someone, anyone. Ruby, maybe. But he hadn't spoken to her in months, not since the last fight. And besides, how would he even explain this?
Suddenly, the lights dimmed again, and a low humming sound started vibrating through the walls, like a deep frequency only barely detectable by the human ear. He pressed his hands to his temples.
"Make it stop," he whispered.
Just then, his laptop turned on by itself. The screen was filled with static, then a new line of text appeared.
You remember what we showed you. Don't run.
The screen flashed rapidly. Images flickered. A dark forest. A circle of light. Ruby's face, crying. A creature—tall, featureless, but undeniably there—reaching toward the screen.
Ronin slammed the laptop shut.
He stumbled backward and sat on the edge of the bed, breathing heavily. His eyes moved to the ceiling, where faint glowing lines had begun to form. The same lines he had seen once before, years ago.
He had told himself it was a dream.
But now, it was all coming back.