The Sky Was Ripped Open
The first of them returned on a Sunday, under a sky torn down the middle.
For six days, the world had bled.
No one knew where the monsters came from. They simply arrived — clawing out of split air and burning fissures, ripping through homes, cities, the last illusions of control. At first, people thought it was some new bio-weapon, a secret war gone wrong. Then came the names.
The press, desperate for something to call them, settled on: "Ashwrought."
Things made of blackened bone and flickering light. Too fast for tanks. Too quiet for satellites. They moved in swarms, tore through everything warm, and left behind no bodies — only ash, still twitching with heat. Some had faces. Most didn't.
Nothing worked for long. Not bullets. Not missiles. Not prayers.
And then, six days after the world began unraveling, something else started falling from the sky.
People.
But not 1001.
Only thirty-seven.
No one knew why them, or why now. They didn't fall like victims. They arrived — in pulses of burning air, sparks of white-hot energy that seared holes in the clouds. They didn't scream. They didn't flail.
They landed.
Some struck concrete with enough force to crack roads. One fell through the roof of a cathedral in Prague and stood up in the rubble, uninjured, eyes like molten glass.
They weren't the same as the ones who'd vanished. Not anymore.
Their skin shimmered faintly, some with glowing marks across their spines and arms. Their bodies didn't bleed. Their weapons — if that's what they were — flickered in and out of visibility like hallucinations shaped from light and rage.
Earth watched in silence. Then in fear.
The survivors — if they could still be called that — didn't explain much. Most spoke in short bursts. Some didn't speak at all. A few had forgotten their original names, holding onto only what they'd become.
They had a name for the monsters.
Not Ashwrought.
"Rav'nar."The Burned Hunger. The Shepherd's Teeth.
And they had a name for the thing behind them, still watching through the cracks in the sky.
The Shepherd of Ends.
And then, on the eighth day, a man walked out of the husk of Detroit. Not falling. Not vanishing. Walking.
The city was already half-eaten. Buildings gutted, soldiers gone, streets cracking from the breath of something massive that had passed through days earlier. There were still fires. Always fires.
He came barefoot, his left arm encased in living metal, red lines pulsing beneath the skin like veins of lava. His eyes were wrong. Not glowing — deep, like looking into coals under black glass. His name was Caleb Noor.
The sword in his hand wasn't steel. It hummed.
He didn't speak until someone asked, trembling, who he was.
He answered:
"One of thirty-seven."
"We didn't win."
"We just lasted longer than the rest."
And then, behind him, the sky cracked again. Not for another return — but for something larger.
The war wasn't coming.It had already started.