I don’t know what it was. No one does. Not really.

But I felt it. Before I saw it. Like the air had a pulse. Like the earth had stopped spinning, just for a breath.

It started with the birds. They didn’t fly—they dropped. Silent. Mid-flight. Like marionettes with their strings cut, falling into the fields. No noise. Just thuds in the distance, soft and wrong.

Then came the sound.

Low. Not like thunder—thunder rolls. This was more like… pressure. Like something beneath everything. Not loud, but deep, and endless. A hum in the bones. A presence.

And the sky—God, the sky. It split. Just opened like it had teeth.

I stood there, frozen in that awful gold light, with soot in my mouth and dirt streaking my skin, and I knew. I didn’t know what it was, couldn’t explain it, but something in me knew this wasn’t a storm. This wasn’t nature. This was something that had watched us long enough.

And now it was coming for us.

People ran. I heard screaming behind me—shapes moving, stumbling, shouting names that no one would answer. Elias grabbed my arm, told me to move, but I couldn’t. It was like the world had snapped its fingers and everything we built—cities, memories, plans, futures—turned to paper.

And something was about to strike a match.

I looked up. And it wasn’t just what I saw, it was what I felt: We weren’t alone. We’d never been.

And whatever had arrived wasn’t here to talk. It didn’t want peace. It didn’t need war. It just wanted. And we were the thing it wanted from.

There was no announcement. No demand. No ships in the sky like in those old movies Dad used to show us. Just this light—burning and vast—and the unbearable certainty that something had changed. Not tomorrow. Not someday. Now.

Today was the last day the world made sense.

Today was the first day we belonged to something else.

And maybe tomorrow, if we’re still breathing, we’ll figure out what that something is.

But right now, all I know is this: We are prey.

And the sky is hunting.