The F-35 was once the pinnacle of Earth's aerial dominance, stealth given wings, crafted from generations of warfare and unrelenting technological refinement. Yet now, it might as well have been a fragile kite, drifting helplessly against the incomprehensible forces at play.
Lieutenant Commander Blake Greer clenched his jaw as the radar cut out again. No lock on, no target acquisition, just a cascade of indecipherable static flooding every display. Systems that once offered pinpoint control now spouted nonsense.
Then, just ahead, the sky twisted.
Not in any way the laws of physics should permit, but reality itself was folding inward. A ripple shimmering and silent, bent the heavens as if space had become fluid. Whatever it was, moved not with propulsion but with intent.
The thing he was chasing on closer inspection was not moving, rather, it was resonating.
"Command, this is Eagle Two. I have visual on target... requesting permission to engage."
Silence.
Then something pulsed.
For an instant, the cockpit's interior folded inward and Blake saw himself, almost like his existence was unwritten in the blink of an eye. Then, without a thought, his hands moved and he pulled out of the dive, not knowing why he chose that course of action. Seconds later, the shimmer vanished, and so did a mile of coastline below, replaced by a vast expanse of trees.
**Within the Empyrean Spire - Earth's Orbit**
The command nexus, suspended in layered geometrics that intersected with Earth's upper atmosphere pulsed with low harmonic frequencies. The spire was a construct grown from mineralized time and emotion calcified into matter.
Lord Khaliel stood before an assembly of his inner circle, his form now too radiant and fractured to fully comprehend with mortal senses. His existence was split, one side akin to a cathedral, the other a storm.
"Provide the status of Dominion field operations?" Khaliel commanded, his voice no longer localized as it rang through every corridor of the spire.
Thauriel stepped forward, limbs unfolding with unnatural grace. "The binding contracts have been deployed across, military, financial, and communicative infrastructures. Localized authority figures are experiencing compliance symptoms, and some have already been carrying out orders in alignment with our script."
Khaliel nodded. "The illusion of choice persists, then?"
"Barely. Their minds are fragmenting faster than predicted. The artifact's pulse accelerates all entropy."
"Let them splinter. So long as the directive remains clear."
He turned, and with a gesture, opened a viewing chamber for those present to witness Earth's occupation.
**Los Angeles**
There was no battle. No marching angels. Just the presence felt by those living there....
Atop City Hall floated an entity classified as a Virtue,
one of the higher operatives of House Empyrean. Its form shimmered in and out of visibility, not cloaked but incompatible with full perception. Where its outline settled, light bent unnaturally, casting kaleidoscopic shadows along the street below.
It radiated forces indistinct from weather itself: microbursts of wind, static-filled rain that smelled of copper and ozone, the gentle groan of shifting tectonic plates beneath the asphalt. Traffic had ceased three days ago. Now even the wind obeyed it.
It did not speak. But storms broke apart at its whim. Children stopped crying when it passed. And those who raised weapons in defiance found themselves blinded not with pain but by the realization that they were just an afterthought to this 'thing'.
On a rooftop nearby, a Dominion-class celestial observed from a cloaked station embedded within House Empyrean's harmonic field. This one was smaller, more focused with its primary role to observe probability threads among the populace, and dampen resistance through targeted influence and binding contracts issued via infiltrated media and administrative structures.
"Los Angeles is stabilizing," the Dominion reported via encoded resonance back to the spire. "Conformity levels rising. Dream interference at 43% saturation. Resistance probability at projected decay rates."
On the other side of the country in the President's bunker, the Defense Council had fractured. Half believed they were already dead, that the world had ended the moment the clouds first opened. The other half believed there was still time. Still leverage. Still.... something.
"Sir," said the analytics officer, pointing at a screen. "They're not reacting. Every contingency we've triggered, they've anticipated. Every surge, strike team, it was all routed before we even moved."
Waiting for a response, the analytics officer glanced upon the President's frail body as he began to speak, "It's as if they're rewriting the Earth."
In a chamber where sound refused to form, Khaliel stood before an obsidian cradle carved from stillborn starts. Within it: a single human child, floating in stasis.
Perfectly preserved. The first candidate.
Khaliel leaned in closer to the child and whispered, "Your kind lacks the harmony required to house divine resonance. Your minds fracture and your flesh rejects it."
He then extended a hand and light spilled from his fingers, shaped not like fire but more like words. Glyphs.
They began to embed themselves onto the bones of the newborn.
"But you child, shall be my first composition."
Behind him, Serach watched silently.
"You would violate the tenets of birth?" she finally asked.
Khaliel's wings pulsed for a second. "We exist above tenets. What lives within this child will not be human, nor will it be a celestial, but something suited to the coming age."
He turned to face Serach and ordered, "Prepare the Seed. When Earth breaks, it shall speak first."
---
**Vatican City**
The Pope lay prostrate beneath the altar of the Sistine Chapel, his voice reduced to a raw whisper from hours of screaming.
Above him, the ceiling he once revered had begun to shift. At first, the changes were subtle..... so slight that only a man who had spent a lifetime in its presence would notice. But now, the deception was gone. The paint moved.
The angels in the frescos had turned their gaze downward. Their eyes followed him. Some wept openly, tears staining the plaster like water on stone. Others bled, crimson streaks trailing from their mouths and eyes like sorrow etched in oil.
From the high balcony above, a Dominion observed the holy city, unmoving. Its wings folded inward like collapsing geometry, fractal upon fractal, a shape that defied reason. Its form wavered between flesh and cathedral stone, neither fully of this world nor apart from it.
And outside, the crowds fell silent.
Not in awe. Not in revelation.
But in absolute surrender.
They obeyed, not because they understood.
But because understanding had been taken from them.
Deep beneath Earth's crust, in a place no drill or satellite had ever reached, the air itself grew dense with pressure less gravity. The tunnel revealed through harmonic resonance, as if the planet had always contained a lock, waiting for the right key to open it.
At its heart: a shaft miles wide, spiraling downward in impossible geometry. The walls were inscribed with symbols that pulsed with meanings too old for any know language to decipher. Each flowing mark cast shifting light that rewrote shadows in real time.
At the base it pulsed.
Not a machine, not alive. But aware.
Its rhythm was slow as if it were deliberate, like a heart that had waited eons to beat again.
Teams of Dominion-class archivists lined the terraces of the upper shaft, floating on platforms of folded space. Their task was to document the shifting script, to weave its meanings into strands of probability, and ensure the harmonic scaffolds remained intact.
Virtue-ranked stabilizers worked in tandem with Dominion tacticians to keep the deeper levels of the site from collapsing under their own reality-bending weight.
A sudden ripple bent the shaft's gravity inward.
Lord Khaliel arrived, not descending, but stepping across a bridge of still air that formed beneath each footfall, the dimension reshaping itself to suit his presence. The resonance of the chamber shifted around him. The scripture paused—not erased, but momentarily hushed, as if listening.
Clasped in his right hand, encased in translucent crystal, was the same containment orb he had used aboard the Empyrean Spire during the artifact's first flare. It had not left his side since.
Now, he raised it again.
Its surface flared in response, arcs of light bridging between the orb and the shaft below, forming a lattice of golden threads that pulsed in time with the artifact's beat.
A shiver ran down the walls. Symbols glowed brighter. The thrum quickened.
Behind him, Thauriel emerged, limbs folding inward as he approached. His voice vibrated directly into the marrow of those nearby.
"You have returned to the point of convergence. The artifact recognizes you."
Khaliel did not look back. "It was always meant to."
He stared down into the heart of the shaft, where the object now stirred—its form still obscured by heat haze and refracted light, but its mass undeniable. It felt like standing near the event horizon of a black hole.
"Have you calculated every variable my Lord?" Thauriel asked.
Khaliel lowered the orb slightly, fingers still resting on its surface. "I have accounted for all outcomes. There are no random paths left unspun."
The artifact pulsed again, brighter this time. One symbol on the shaft wall vanished, replaced by a mark no Dominion had ever seen.
Thauriel's limbs stiffened.
"And if the artifact was not waiting to be found," he said slowly, "but to be awakened?"
For the first time, Khaliel smiled.
Or did something like it.
His face flickered, briefly becoming many faces, layered echoes of himself unfolding outward, then collapsing back into form. A momentary glimpse of what he was becoming.
"Then reality," he said calmly, "will adjust."
And the orb, still glowing began to hum in harmony with the artifact below.