The first sign was the humming.

Not loud, not frightening—just a thin, trembling note that threaded through the trees like a silver needle. Most people in the village slept through it. A few stirred, frowning in their dreams. Only one person woke fully: Lira.

She sat up in her narrow bed, heart thudding, the sound vibrating in her bones. It wasn’t coming from outside. It wasn’t coming from inside either. It was coming from above—from the sky itself.

Lira pushed aside her blanket and crossed to the window. The night was clear, the moon a pale coin hanging low. Everything looked ordinary. The rooftops. The quiet fields. The distant line of the forest. But the humming grew stronger, and the air felt charged, as if the world were holding its breath.

Then the sky cracked.

A thin line of light tore across the darkness, silent and sharp, like someone had drawn a glowing blade through the heavens. Lira gasped and stumbled back. The crack widened, spilling white-gold radiance that washed over the village, turning shadows into silhouettes.

And from the light, something fell.

It wasn’t a star. Stars didn’t fall with purpose. This thing—this shape—descended slowly, almost gently, as if choosing where to land. Lira pressed her face to the glass, breath fogging the pane. The shape drifted toward the forest, trailing sparks that fizzled before they touched the ground.

When it vanished among the trees, the crack in the sky sealed itself with a soft sigh, and the night returned to normal. No humming. No light. No sign anything had happened at all.

Except Lira knew it had.

She grabbed her boots, her cloak, and the small knife she kept hidden under her bed. She didn’t know why she needed it—only that she did. Something in her chest pulled her forward, a tug stronger than fear, stronger than reason.

Outside, the village slept peacefully. Lira moved like a shadow, slipping between houses, crossing the empty square, and heading toward the forest path. The trees loomed tall and dark, their branches whispering secrets she couldn’t quite hear.

She hesitated at the edge.

Everyone knew the forest was strange at night. Old strange. Before‑the‑village strange. But the pull in her chest tightened, and she stepped forward.

The moment she crossed beneath the first branch, the air changed. It felt thicker, older, aware. The forest watched her. Not with malice—just curiosity, as if it had been waiting for her.

Lira followed the faint trail of sparks left by the falling shape. They glowed softly on the ground, like embers that refused to die. The deeper she went, the brighter they became.

Then she reached the clearing.

At its center lay a figure.

Not human. Not entirely.

It was curled on its side, breathing shallowly, its skin faintly luminous. Wings—tattered, shimmering—were folded against its back. And around its wrist was a shackle made of dark metal, etched with symbols that pulsed like dying embers.

Lira’s breath caught.

A being from the sky. A prisoner. A fallen something.

Its eyes opened.

They were bright, ancient, and full of pain.

“Help me,” it whispered.

And Lira knew—without understanding how—that the night the sky cracked was only the beginning.

For a moment, Lira was attracted by the light but another part of her was on edge, anxious about the peculiarity of the sky light that struck the sky and poured to earth brilliantly like lava from gold. She stood rooted to her own thin footprint, eye balls trained on the cocktail of clouds above, and the light and twigs of rays that occasionally floated in the space between.

Lira unhesitatingly rose up and looked down on her own toes and then slid back to where she was before the grand light, pushed aside her blanket and lay on it steering clear of the window that had all along brought her the fascinating but scary moments of the great light. The night was still clear and the moon still dominated the sky above, but humbling every time the other light struck it. Everything looked ordinary, again, except the rooftops reacting to the light with some sound. Mystery. Roofs only spoke when hailstorms came on to them, but otherwise ever so quiet. And the fields? They spoke too, with varying codes and tones that you couldn’t doubt nature was now a person with her own language. The distant line of the forest changed with the wind sound and with the beam of the dominant moon. The humming kept on growing stronger, and the air felt charged with the stubbornness of a wounded buffalo.

Lira scanned the air through the window that she was back to lean on, but the moist in her eyes drew more stars than the stars of the sky. Something was beginning to feel different as the temperature in her shelter changed, just as the feel of the atmosphere outside of it. Her senses gathered to invoke some peace because the light went on, and on, with every strike of it exuding a magical beauty from the blend of all colours borrowed from a thousand invisible rainbows of our planet.

Calm like a fallen tree that knows not what’s lying on, or eating into it from under, Lira teased herself with thoughts of the seaside of Playa Balandra, her heart’s most enchanting sand place, closed her eyes for her sake, so that she’s lost for a moment, and just let a dream come true. Every minute of trying to export herself to fantasy felt like eternity, but every attempt mattered like a drop of blood from her vein, her inquisitive heart barring the moment of fest from taking over and then she knew that she still had some business to attend to because the sky didn’t stop cracking and lighting up for her.