Pune, India
Raghav Vishwanath sat at his usual desk, third row from the front, second seat by the wall. The old ceiling fan above him clattered with a rhythm he no longer noticed. Sweat trickled down his neck, smudging the ink on his half-filled answer sheet. Around him, the other students scribbled furiously, faces twisted in concentration, panic, and desperation. The IIT entrance mock test was a battlefield. But for Raghav, it was something else entirely.
His pencil moved without hesitation, solving problems almost before his eyes finished reading them. Vectors, calculus, thermodynamics—they came to him not as academic puzzles but as instinctive truths. He didn't know how or why. He never had.
The teacher glanced at the clock, then back at the silent student who was already reviewing his work. "Raghav," she said, eyebrows lifting. "Done already?"
He stood up with a sheepish nod and walked to the front. The classroom's collective anxiety eased as he passed, like a sudden wind cooling the heat. There was something about Raghav—something unspoken that made people feel safer when he was near. Older students deferred to him. Teachers respected him more than they should have. Even strangers on the street tended to move aside instinctively.
He returned to his seat and stared out the window. Birds flew in strange, spiraling patterns, and the light shimmered oddly against the concrete walls of the coaching institute. He blinked. For a moment, it felt like the world was holding its breath.
Akureyri, Iceland
The stream was freezing, but Balin Eiriksson stood still in its current, his feet planted on smooth stones as the cold water surged around his calves. He had risen before dawn, as always, and hiked out into the hills with nothing but a thermos of herbal tea and a sense of unease he couldn't explain.
He closed his eyes. His breaths came slow and deep, sending mist into the crisp air. Trout swam past him without fear, and birds nested silently in the trees overhead. The world was quiet around him, as if listening.
Back in town, his home was littered with handmade candles and clay amulets. The elderly came to him for pain relief, not just physical. They said his voice soothed them, said he reminded them of a time long gone. Balin didn't argue. He simply listened, served tea, and gave comfort. But inside, he felt… incomplete.
His dreams were filled with mist and spears. Of wolves and serpents and a death that never ended.
He opened his eyes. The stream no longer felt cold.
Oslo, Norway
Vidur Andersen's forge pulsed with heat. Sparks danced like fireflies as his hammer struck hot metal. The steel sang under each blow—clear, resonant, precise. His thick arms moved with mechanical rhythm, yet there was artistry in his every motion. He shaped armor, blades, and tools not found in any textbook or blacksmithing manual.
On the walls, old Norse runes etched into wooden beams glowed faintly in the firelight. He didn't know why he had carved them. He didn't even remember learning them. But they felt right.
Clients came from across the world. Some brought ancient weapons for restoration. Others requested bizarre items: spears balanced by lunar cycles, chainmail meant to hum in combat. They all found Vidur without advertisement, without a website.
This morning, he'd awoken drenched in sweat from a nightmare of a wolf tearing open the sky.
He wiped his brow and kept hammering. His hands remembered things his mind did not.
Athens, Greece
Thea Stavridis barked out orders across the NATO base's training yard, clipboard in one hand, combat boots sunk into the gravel. A group of younger soldiers fumbled through a clearing maneuver, and she sighed with quiet disapproval.
"Cover your flank, not your pride," she said. "Reset. Run it again."
Despite her rank—only a sergeant—her voice carried unusual weight. Officers often stopped by her drills, listening without interruption. Her critiques were sharp, her insights unerring. In the mess hall, even hardened lieutenants sought her opinion.
She felt it, too—that certainty, that command. As if strategy flowed through her veins. Maps made sense the way songs did to musicians. Yet she couldn't explain the dreams.
Last night, she had stood beneath a sky choked with smoke, watching an owl circle over burning cities. In the dream, she had known exactly what to do, and that terrified her.
"You seem troubled, Sergeant," a superior said quietly.
"It's nothing, sir," Thea replied with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
Behind her, an owl sat in the tree line, staring.
Manaus, Brazil
Rain beat softly against the jungle canopy, but none of it touched Diana Rocha. She walked barefoot through the muddy trail, a jaguar slinking beside her like a shadow. Her machete parted vines as she recorded the names of rare plants into her voice recorder.
"Nymphaea amazonum," she whispered. "Found closer to the river bend than usual. Petals show unusual luminescence."
Her connection to the rainforest wasn't scientific—it was spiritual. Plants bloomed where she stepped. Predators paused and bowed their heads. Locals had taken to calling her "A Caminhante da Lua"—the Moon Walker.
She laughed when they said it, but sometimes, when the moonlight reflected off her blade, she felt it too. As though she belonged to something older.
She hadn't seen a full moon in weeks. The sky had been… wrong.
That night, she'd dreamt of silver chariots and arrows falling like rain.
Nashik, India
Agneya Joshi stood in front of a group of factory workers, conducting a routine fire safety seminar. His voice was calm, clear, and deliberate. No one looked at their phones. No one yawned.
"Fire is not your enemy," he said. "Only your ignorance is."
He lit a demonstration burner, showing them how flames reacted to oxygen, to containment, to ritual.
In his apartment, ancient Sanskrit scrolls and chants filled every available shelf. He had started writing his own mantras, experimenting with syllables that came to him in dreams. He tested them on candle flames. Some burst blue. Others danced like cobras.
He didn't know why—but it felt like remembering.
Lately, he had seen visions in the smoke: a man astride a white horse, wielding a burning sword.
Reykjavík, Iceland
The glow of Magnus Runarsson's custom-built monitor lit his face in runic shapes. His VR game engine was open, running code he hadn't written. Not in any traditional language, at least.
"This is nuts," he whispered.
The lines of script pulsed with energy, forming strange glyphs he had seen only in folklore books. Yet they worked. He activated one, and a bolt of simulated lightning struck a mountain in-game. The physics engine had no idea how to handle it.
His AI assistant, Jarnbjorn, now answered in archaic Norse. It had started writing its own scripts.
Magnus wasn't scared. He was thrilled. This was it. The singularity. Or something beyond.
In the hallway, storm clouds gathered over his skylight. Inside, he smiled. Outside, thunder cracked without rain.
Everywhere
At precisely 3:17 PM UTC, the world changed.
It began as a flicker, a strange dimming that made people squint at the sun. In Times Square, tourists looked up in confusion as the LED billboards shimmered. In a Kenyan savannah, elephants paused mid-step. In Tokyo, traffic slowed as headlights flickered—not with a power outage, but something deeper.
Then the sky turned black.
Not gray, not dark, but void. A colorless, lightless emptiness bled across the heavens. It moved faster than any cloud, consuming sunlight as though it were ink spilling across parchment. The moon did not eclipse the sun—it vanished. So did the stars. One by one, constellations blinked out like dying embers.
In every home, every office, every street—light failed. Flashlights and phones, fire and filament—all dark. The universe itself seemed to stop radiating.
People screamed, but no sound came. The moment stole not only light, but noise, heat, and presence. The air grew thick. Time felt halted. It was not darkness as absence—it was an entity, a breathless silence stretching its limbs across the Earth.
And in that moment, a collective chill washed over humanity. Infants stopped crying. Dogs whined and hid. Birds fell from the sky mid-flight.
The silence was unbearable, like standing at the edge of eternity.
And then—
A pulse.
A heartbeat, strong and slow, echoed across the cosmos. The darkness cracked. Threads of light stitched through the black like lightning through ink. The sun snapped back into place, brighter than before. The stars shimmered into existence. Light bulbs flickered. Fire leapt.
People gasped, shouted, wept.
But no one could forget that second of absolute nothing.
And though the light returned, something ancient had awakened.
And somewhere, beneath the world, a wounded serpent stirred