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I never liked silence. The real kind. The kind that hangs in the air like smoke after everything's burned down.
Now… it's all I have.
Is this how it ends?
Something's still moving up there… shadows that don't belong on this Earth.
Me… kneeling on scorched ground.
Everything smells like fire and metal. I can taste the dust in my mouth. My jacket's burned through in places. There's blood crusted behind my ear. I haven't seen another human face in hours.
They say when you're dying, your life flashes before your eyes.
For me, it's not my life — it's ours.
Humanity. Our story. Our arrogance.
We looked to the stars for answers… and found silence.
But maybe the answers were here the whole time — carved into ancient walls, painted in caves we thought were myths, buried under stories we called gods and monsters.
Rakshasas. Devas.
We turned them into bedtime stories.
We told ourselves they were symbols — good vs evil, dark vs light.
We never asked: What if they were real?
What if Earth was just one battleground in someone else's war?
And what if… we were never just observers?
I used to laugh at conspiracy theories. Ancient aliens, secret wars, hidden knowledge…
Now I bleed under their sky.
And somehow, in this chaos, the only thing I can think about is that night.
The box.
The light over the river.
The moment I stopped being just Neil.
One week. That's all it took.
Seven days between "just another guy"… and this.
If I don't make it — and honestly, I don't think I will — maybe someone will find this.
Maybe they'll understand that we were never alone.
And we were never in control.
Let me tell you how it started.
________________
[One week earlier]
The office lights buzzed overhead — dull, cold, fluorescent. Most of the desks were empty now, chairs pulled out like ghosts had just walked out of a meeting. It was past 8 PM, and the only sound left was my fingers tapping this godforsaken keyboard.
I glanced at the time in the corner of my screen, then at the coffee beside me. Half-drunk. Bitter. Cold. Just like the day.
"Great," I muttered. "Missed the last metro again."
I stood up, stretched, felt something crack in my back. That sigh I let out? It carried more weight than it should. This wasn't the life I pictured. Wake up. Work. Sleep. Repeat. I used to have dreams — real ones. Travel. Write a story that mattered. Maybe even chase something bigger than spreadsheets and passive-aggressive emails.
But dreams don't pay rent. And rent comes every month, on time.
He locked up, slung his bag over one shoulder, and headed for the exit. Downstairs, the same bored security guard — Suresh — looked up from his phone.
"Late again, Neil bhai?" the guard said, half-smiling.
Neil chuckled. "You know me. Can't resist free overtime."
Suresh shook his head. "One day you'll forget the way home."
"Only if I'm lucky."
They shared a small laugh, the kind that didn't fix anything but made the night feel a little less empty. Neil stepped out into the open. The air was unusually still — no wind, no traffic hum, not even a stray dog barking.
He walked through the lot, past sleeping scooters and shuttered snack stalls. The city always felt quieter at this hour, like it was holding its breath. He took the longer route home.
At the corner of the lane, an old street cart still had its light on — a single flickering bulb hanging from a rusted hook. The smell of masala and fried oil wafted through the air, and Neil's stomach growled.
He walked over. "One plate pav bhaji, bhaiya."
The vendor barely looked up, too focused on flipping buns on the griddle. Neil watched the butter melt into them, golden and guilty. He pulled out his wallet, counted the loose change. Just enough.
As he waited, he stared at the steam rising from the food, thinking about how easily he traded hours of his life for a few coins and a warm meal. Time was money, they said. But the older he got, the more it felt like time cost more than money ever would.
The plate landed in front of him. He ate standing up, leaning against a wall with peeling movie posters. Every bite was hot, heavy, and somehow comforting.
When he was done, he thanked the vendor, wiped his hands on his jeans, and started walking again — this time toward the bridge.
It was always quieter near the Yamuna. Fewer lights, fewer people, and just enough space to think without feeling watched. The old bridge stood ahead, dark and stretched across the water like a shadow in the moonlight.
That's when he saw the fire in the sky.
A streak of burning light tore through the clouds, silent at first… then a low rumble followed, like the Earth itself was muttering a warning.
he thought it was just a plane — a flashing light streaking the sky.
But it wasn't moving like a plane.
The fire trailed behind it, orange and violent, cutting through the night like someone had slashed the heavens open. It was fast. Too fast. And it wasn't falling — it was crashing.
Neil froze in the middle of the empty road, his half-digested dinner turning to ice in his gut. The streak of flame arced downward, and with a distant boom, it vanished behind the trees near the riverbank.
The sky lit up for half a second — a silent explosion of white-gold light. Then darkness again.
He looked around. No one.
No cars. No bystanders. Just him, the old bridge, and the echo of something impossible.
Every instinct told him to turn back. Go home. Forget what he saw.
But curiosity has a strange way of sounding like courage when no one's watching.
He jogged down the sloping path toward the river. His shoes kicked up dry leaves, his breath catching in his throat. As he neared the crash site, the faint scent of smoke and something… metallic, filled the air.
That's when he saw it.
Not a crater. Not debris. Just a box — small, dark, and steaming — half-buried in the wet soil like it had been dropped from the sky on purpose.
Neil stepped closer. It was humming softly. A pulse. A rhythm. Like a heartbeat.
He reached out without thinking, touched the surface — and instantly pulled back. It was hot. Burning hot.
But something in him couldn't let go.
He looked around again — still alone. Then, without a word, he took off his hoodie, wrapped it around the box, and picked it up.
That was the moment everything changed.
____________
[ Present Time]
Why me?
Was it fate? Some cosmic accident?
Did I choose this… or was I chosen?
Maybe the stories were never stories.
Maybe someone — or something — had always been watching.
And maybe…
this was just the beginning.
The box had pulsed once in my arms.
Then went still.
And one week later…
So did the world.
Let me tell you how it started.