Chapter 1: The Day the Sky Changed
It began not with a sound, but with an *absence*.
Birds fell silent. Cicadas ceased their thrumming chorus. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Dr. Aris Thorne noticed it first from the International Space Station, his coffee floating forgotten beside him.
*"Control... do you see this?"* he whispered into the comms, eyes locked on the monitor. Beyond the cupola window, the sun hung like a molten coin—but it wasn't the star that chilled him.
Something *else* bled into the starfield.
Not light. Not matter.
A fracture in the dark.
Back on Earth, in the humid predawn of Abuja, **Anthony Richard** stirred in his sleep. His phone glowed 4:43 a.m. on the nightstand. Downstairs, the generator hummed, powering the fridge where yesterday's *jollof* rice sat. Across the city, street vendors stacked loaves of agege bread, and night guards leaned against gates, half-dozing.
No one looked up.
***4:44 a.m.***
The fracture unfolded.
From orbit, Thorne watched it slither around the sun's limb—a serpent of **Vanta-Blue**, darker than the void between galaxies. It absorbed starlight, leaving only a negative silhouette: an emptiness that *moved*.
*"It's bypassing the corona—direct trajectory toward Earth!"* Control's voice crackled, sharp with panic. *"Radiation readings are... zero? That's impossible—"*
The anomaly struck the ionosphere.
---
In Lagos, a fisherman hauling nets off Bar Beach screamed as the sea turned to liquid obsidian. In Tokyo, salarymen stumbling home froze mid-step, their shadows evaporating. In New York, Times Square's neon billboards flickered and died, plunging the city into a silence deeper than any blackout.
But it was Abuja that faced the heart of it.
Anthony woke gasping, his chest tight as if crushed. His phone screen blazed:
**4:44**
*Frozen*.
Outside his window, the world had vanished.
Not darkness—**void**.
A sky stripped of stars, moon, horizon. Just an infinite expanse of *Vanta-Blue*, a shade so deep it hurt to perceive. It wasn't black. Black absorbs. This... *consumed*. Light died inches from its source, swallowed by a blue so absolute it felt alive.
And through it, **lines danced**.
Glowing fractures like cracked glass. Neon-green hieroglyphs flickering in and out of existence. Code fragments bleeding into reality:
`> ERROR: REALITY_INDEX_CORRUPTED`
`> SOURCE: UNKNOWN`
Anthony stumbled to the window. The streetlights below were feeble halos, their light collapsing inward. A neighbor's generator sputtered and died. Across the street, Mr. Okafor's prized rooster let out a strangled squawk—then fell silent.
*"Tony?"*
His mother's voice drifted up from the kitchen. Fried yam and pepper soup. The scents felt jarring, blasphemous against the silence pressing in.
---
Satellites died in waves.
GPS signals dissolved. Communications failed globally in under 10 seconds.
Dr. Thorne watched from the ISS as the Pulse rippled across the planet. Not like an aurora, but like a **virus**.
*"It's rewriting the atmosphere,"* he breathed. Sensor feeds showed the ionosphere *folding*—layers of reality compressing, then snapping back with phantom data.
`> STRUCTURE DETECTED: NON-TERRESTRIAL`
`> SIGNATURE: ARTIFICIAL`
On Earth, the distortions began.
In Paris, a child's reflection in a café window turned and winked—then shattered the glass with a laugh. In Mumbai, rainwater hung suspended mid-air, droplets vibrating like liquid crystal. And in a bunker beneath Geneva, scientists at CERN watched their particle collider display a single looping message:
`> WARNING: FOREIGN ARCHITECTURE DETECTED`
`> RUN DIAGNOSTIC? [Y/N]`
---
Anthony pressed his palm to the cold glass. His reflection lagged—a half-second delay, like buffering video.
*"It's not real,"* he whispered.
But the chill seeping through the pane was. So was the **hum**. Not a sound, but a pressure. A bass note resonating in his molars, his ribs, the marrow of his bones.
Downstairs, the TV hissed static.
*"—repeat, stay indoors. This is not a drill—"*
His father's voice, taut with fear Anthony had never heard: *"Grace, get away from the window!"*
Anthony's little sister, Emmanuella, appeared in his doorway. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated in the gloom.
*"Tony... the sky's *breathing*,"* she whispered.
He followed her gaze.
The Vanta-Blue heaved like a lung. Ribbons of corrupted light—crimson, acid-green—snaked through it. For a fleeting second, Anthony saw **shapes** in the chaos: vast, angular structures shifting in the deep, bigger than cities.
Then the glitches hit.
A streetlamp below *stuttered*. Not flickering—repeating. Light on. Off. On. Off. Each cycle identical, like a stuck frame. A neighbor's car alarm blared for precisely 1.2 seconds—then looped.
*TWEET-TWEET-TWEET—*
*TWEET-TWEET-TWEET—*
*TWEET-TWEET—*
Anthony's head throbbed. Behind his eyes, **numbers scrolled**:
`00FAC901`
`LOADING PROTOCOL...`
`ERROR. ERROR.`
---
At the 9-minute mark, the Pulse intensified.
Vanta-Blue deepened into **Void-Blue**. The glitching symbols flared brighter, searing afterimages into retinas. In Sydney, a flock of seagulls disintegrated mid-flight—not into gore, but into pixelated fragments. In Rio, Christ the Redeemer's stone face briefly morphed into something insectoid and grinning.
Anthony's phone suddenly blared an emergency alert:
**`SINGULARITY PULSE CONFIRMED. SEEK SHELTER. DO NOT LOOK AT SKY.`**
The government's name for it. Cold. Clinical. Utterly inadequate.
He gripped the windowsill. His knuckles ached. Deeper, in the pit of his stomach, something **uncoiled**. A serpent of ice and electricity. It slithered up his spine, whispering in a language of fractured light:
*`> ADAPT`*
*`> SURVIVE`*
*`> PREPARE`*
Emmanuella moaned, clutching her temples. *"Make it stop..."*
---
**Minute 10.**
The world began to scream.
Not from fear—from *physiology*. In London, a bus driver's skin turned to molten glass. In Delhi, a woman's cry shattered every window on her street. And in a lab in Nevada, a test subject dissolved into sentient mist.
Anthony's vision fractured.
*Double exposure.*
He saw his room—but overlaid with a desert of black sand beneath twin purple suns. A towering figure stood there, silhouette jagged as broken code, one hand outstretched toward him.
*`> INITIATE?`*
***"NO!"*** Anthony gasped, staggering back.
The vision vanished.
---
**Minute 11.**
Silence.
Absolute, suffocating silence.
The Vanta-Blue sky evaporated like smoke. Stars winked back. The moon reappeared, pale and indifferent.
Across Abuja, generators coughed to life. Car alarms ceased their looping cries. Distantly, a baby wailed.
Anthony slumped against the wall, trembling. Sweat soaked his shirt. His phone blinked—4:55 a.m. The world felt... thin. Brittle. Like a painted backdrop over something vast and hungry.
Downstairs, his mother called again, voice trembling: *"Tony? Emmanuella? Come down, now!"*
But Anthony didn't move.
Because beneath his skin, where the ice-serpent had stirred, something **new** pulsed. A dark, coiled energy. Waiting. Watching.
*`> DIAGNOSTIC COMPLETE`*
*`> HOST: ANTHONY RICHARD`*
*`> STATUS: COMPATIBLE`*
And in the restored night sky, unnoticed by satellites or survivors, a single Vanta-Blue symbol flickered—a jagged rune—before dissolving like a secret.
The Singularity Pulse was over.
The Awakening had just begun.