THE FRACTURED SKY
The sky broke open on a quiet Wednesday.
One moment, Dr. Evelyn Carter stood in the control room of The Lyra Observatory, sipping her third cup of coffee. The next, the world cracked apart.
The anomaly appeared without warning—a jagged rift of shimmering violet light, splitting the sky like torn fabric. It stretched from the upper atmosphere down to the horizon, a chasm in reality itself.
And then the signal began.
A low-frequency hum, an unrelenting pulse that rattled the bones. Not from the anomaly itself, but from every radio, every television, every electronic device on Earth. Even the oldest, unplugged equipment whispered the same sound.
Evelyn's heart pounded as she turned to her assistant, Jonas.
"Tell me you're seeing this."
Jonas' face was pale, sweat gathering at his temple. "Evelyn… the signal—it's not just a broadcast."
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
Jonas pointed at the waveform on the monitor. It was too precise, too structured—a pattern repeating in shifting sequences, like a puzzle waiting to be solved.
"It's a message," he whispered.
A message from something beyond the fracture in the sky.
And then the world changed forever.
---
Within hours, reports poured in from across the globe.
People were disappearing.
Not in mass abductions or sudden tragedies, but something far stranger.
Witnesses claimed that individuals simply blinked out of existence—one second there, the next vanished, as if reality had simply erased them.
No bodies. No traces. Just gone.
Governments scrambled for explanations. Scientists threw out theories—quantum destabilization, spacetime anomalies, extraterrestrial interference. None of them made sense.
Evelyn sat at her desk, staring at the endless feed of missing persons reports.
"Jonas," she said slowly, her voice trembling, "we need to decode that signal."
---
Three days later, Evelyn and Jonas found themselves on a classified military vessel, standing before the anomaly.
The rift pulsed, shifting like a wound in space itself, exuding an unnatural gravity. Satellites caught within its range had already vanished. Entire aircraft had been swallowed whole.
Yet they had to go in.
A team of scientists, military personnel, and engineers gathered inside the experimental research ship Erebus, its hull lined with unknown technology recovered from classified excavation sites. The mission was simple: cross the rift, determine the source of the anomaly, and return.
Except no one truly believed they were coming back.
Evelyn gripped the armrest as the ship's engines roared. The Erebus inched closer, its hull vibrating against the gravitational pull.
And then—
Everything unraveled.
---
Silence.
Then the stars realigned.
Evelyn gasped, her breath fogging the glass of her helmet.
They weren't in space.
They were in somewhere else.
The Erebus floated in a sky that wasn't a sky—an infinite expanse of shifting geometries, colossal structures bending in ways that defied physics. Vast cities hovered upside down, illuminated by fractured suns that flickered in and out of existence.
Jonas' voice crackled through the comms. "Oh my God."
Below them stretched an impossible landscape—massive towers grown, not built, formed of materials that looked alive. Strange symbols pulsed along the walls, shifting in response to their presence.
"This place… it's not just another dimension," Evelyn murmured. "It's a construct."
Something had built this.
Something far older than humanity.
And then they heard it.
A voice—not through the radio, not through any medium they could define.
But inside their minds.
"You were not meant to find this place."
---
The presence surrounded them, an overwhelming intelligence pressing into their thoughts.
Evelyn clutched her head, gasping. The others staggered, struggling to breathe under the sheer weight of it.
And then—they saw.
Memories flooded into their minds.
Not their own—but something older, something vast.
They saw the rise of The Architects—an ancient, post-physical civilization that had mastered the fabric of reality itself. They had built this place, not as a home, but as a prison.
A prison for something far worse.
And then came the final revelation.
The signal, the rift, the disappearances—they weren't an attack.
They were a warning.
The Architects had sealed away something beyond comprehension, something that should never be freed.
And humanity, in its ignorance, had opened the door.
---
The city shook.
Massive structures collapsed as something stirred in the void.
A presence older than time itself, long-imprisoned by the Architects, had sensed them.
And now, it was waking up.
Evelyn screamed as the Erebus' alarms blared. The rift—their only way home—was destabilizing.
"We have to go!" Jonas shouted.
But the presence wasn't letting them leave.
The ship's engines roared as the Erebus tore through the fractured sky, barely escaping the collapsing reality behind them.
And then—
They were back.
The rift sealed shut behind them, vanishing into the night.
For a moment, there was silence.
And then the stars flickered.
Something had changed.
And the world would never be the same again.
---
Weeks later, the disappearances stopped.
The world moved on, pretending it had never happened.
But Evelyn knew better.
She sat alone in the observatory, staring at the silent monitors.
Until—
A signal.
Not the old one.
A new one.
She stared in horror as the screen filled with alien text.
And then, translated into English, it said:
"IT SEES YOU."
And the sky cracked open once more.
---
THE END.