The sky was clear. Cold. Showing no sign that it would tear.
Then it tore.
A black hole, small at first, like a wound bleeding darkness itself. No sound. No wind. No tremor. Just... absence. A sudden absence of a piece of reality, as if the world had forgotten to hold its shape for a single moment.
Above American soil.
Within hours, the air turned to lead. Emergency meetings. Pale faces. Trembling fingers on phone buttons. One decision was issued with unnatural speed:
"We take full responsibility. We send a team."
A warplane. Carefully selected soldiers. They were called "The Messengers," as if the name alone would grant them some protection. The plane crossed the hole. Then the hole closed. No sound. No hesitation. As if the sky had snapped its jaws shut on prey too small to matter.
They vanished.
Hours later, another meeting. A quieter decision:
"We consider them dead."
Symbolic funerals. Statues. Speeches. Then... oblivion. The kind of oblivion that swallows everything in the end.
***
Fifteen years later.
Broad daylight.
The hole returned.
Same place. Same size. Same terrifying silence. And from within it emerged the same old plane, carrying the same Messengers.
Joy flooded the streets. People screamed. Cameras flashed. But the President—the same President who had sent them—stood among the crowd, smiling a smile that never reached his eyes. His gaze was watching something else. Something no one else saw.
He asked them in a calm voice, sharp as a blade:
"What did you find?"
Their leader, Flick, looked at him with an eerie calm, as if seeing through him:
"We came for a mission. And we will return soon."
They scattered.
Moments later, Flick returned alone. He stood before the President and spoke in a low voice, almost a whisper:
"We found it."
Then they launched again toward the hole.
One of the aides approached and asked in a hushed tone:
"Why did you let them go, sir?"
The President looked at the sky, where the hole had already sealed itself once more, and said quietly:
"Because if they return... the world will not be ready."
***
On the other side.
A cave. Fierce winds howling like the breathing of a beast. A being stood, cloaked in black that hid everything except the shadows that moved beneath it as if alive.
The Leader.
Flick stepped forward. Stood in silence before him, then said:
"We brought the infant you requested."
The Leader looked at him. No visible eyes, yet the feeling of being stared at was heavy as lead.
"This is not the Awaited One."
His voice was not a voice. It was cold seeping into bones.
Flick hesitated, then said:
"We will correct the mistake."
"Quickly."
"Shall we take the infant with us?"
"No. Leave him here."
"Why?"
"I am here for a specific purpose. My decision does not change."
They left.
Flick stood outside the cave. Stared at the endless horizon and whispered:
"We will return... we will bring the Awaited One. Then we go home."
Inside the plane, Emma looked out the window. Flick drew her attention. She looked at him in fear. Then said in a small voice:
"Okay... I will be quiet."
***
That night.
The President sat in his office. The darkness outside the window was unnaturally thick. He whispered to himself:
"Flick... when he said 'we found it,' he was holding something. It wasn't clear... but that wasn't the way to hold a weapon."
He paused. Then added, as if speaking to the darkness itself:
"It was a child."
And in the cave.
The Leader's aide asked in a trembling voice:
"Why do you want the Awaited One?"
The Leader answered, his voice seeming to emerge from the walls themselves:
"Because he possesses the power... to rule the ten dimensions."
The aide hesitated. Then asked:
"And why did you send the humans?"
The Leader smiled—a smile unseen, but felt.
"Because Flick controls his friends in a... strange way. He is stronger than he appears. Will they succeed? Or will their journey end here?"
In that moment, outside the President's office, in the thick darkness, the hole—which had been closed—seemed to breathe.
As if something... had only just begun.