The year is 2026.
They say this calendar began with Christianity. Yet long before it, countless civilizations rose and fell, leaving behind histories older than the dates we cling to now.
As far as I can remember, there was the Middle Age, the Ice Age, the Stone Age—there was even the age of dinosaurs, an era so vast it feels almost unreal.
And yet, why does the evidence feel so unconvincing?
Or perhaps it isn't the evidence that is lacking—but the stories themselves, altered and reshaped over time.
One thing is certain.
Whatever erased those histories will return.
What has been done will be done again.
What has been will be again.
There is no stopping it—not even for concepts themselves, let alone authorities.
Year 2026
February 18
9:47 P.M.
It was the final day of the traditional Aquarius season, wasn't it?
To have one's birthday fall on such a day was said to be rare. Statistically, it wasn't.
What made it different was the moon.
That night, it flickered—unnaturally so.
For a second, it seemed as if the craters on its surface had intensified. Not quite intensified… spread. Like fractures crawling across pale stone.
The flickering came from them.
They looked like gates.
And if they truly were gates—
then where did they lead?
And my eyes, fixated on the moon, began to hurt.
From discomfort it grew unbearable, forcing me to avert my gaze. Yet deep within me, the feeling that something had gone terribly wrong refused to settle.
Despite the unbearable pain, I knew that if I failed to resist the urge to bow—if I tried to know what was not meant to be known—I would lose something important.
Despite the unbearable pain, I knew that if I failed to resist the urge to bow—if I tried to know what was not meant to be known—I would lose something important.
So, I looked at it.
On the surface of the moon, the scene was almost unholy—nothing short of terrifying, something fundamentally wrong. Countless seed-like gates flooded the hundreds, then thousands, of lunar craters. I guessed there were around five hundred thousand seeds already, yet more continued to appear even as I tried to process what I was seeing.
There were larger ones too—around sixty of them—five or six times bigger than the others, standing like colossal growths among the countless seeds. But even more colossal than those, there was one.
On the lower part of the moon, gigantic tentacles occupied nearly one-fourth of its surface. It looked like a fragment of a titanic creature, incomplete, as if the rest of it lay elsewhere. And upon closer inspection, each tentacle carried millions of seeds, flickering with death and malice.