THE DAY THE SKYLOCK OPENED

Skylocks don’t open gently.

They don’t creak like old doors or shimmer like hopeful visions.

They rupture — violently, absolutely — the way truth breaks the mind of someone who’s spent too long lying to themselves.

Everyone remembers where they were when it happened,

but no one agrees on the moment it began.

Some say the wind stopped first.

Others swear the light dimmed, as if the sun flinched.

A few insist the world exhaled —

a slow, ancient breath pushed through the bones of the earth.

But those who were closest to the fracture…

they all agree on one thing:

The air went wrong.

Not cold.

Not hot.

Just wrong —

like the atmosphere was suddenly made of something that didn’t belong to this world.

It happened over a stretch of empty plains outside the edge of a sleeping city —

the kind of place no one looks at unless they’re lost or trying to be.

The ground was dry, cracked in the careless way time erodes land that has no one to love it.

Nothing sacred.

Nothing magical.

Nothing worth remembering.

Which, of course, is exactly why the Skylock chose it.

People talk about fate like it’s gentle —

like it guides or nudges or whispers.

But the force that opened the Skylock wasn’t a whisper.

It was a demand.

A command issued from a place far older than prophecy,

older than gods,

older even than the quiet craving that lives behind human hope.

The first crack appeared without warning.

A thin slit of glowing gold ripped down the center of the sky,

as if someone had taken a blade to the heavens and dragged it downward.

There was no thunder.

No roar.

Just silence —

pure, absolute, ringing like the world was holding its breath.

Then the ground began to shake.

Stones lifted off the earth as if gravity forgot its part in the arrangement.

Trees bent but did not break.

Birds froze in midair, caught between instinct and awe.

Even the clouds pulled back, folding like curtains retreating from a stage too sacred to witness.

And from that rift —

that impossible, shimmering wound —

a structure began to descend.

It wasn’t a ship.

It wasn’t a temple.

It wasn’t anything a human language was built to name.

It was geometry forged into terror —

lines that shouldn’t connect,

angles that didn’t exist,

symbols older than the idea of symbols.

Each piece of it rotated with impossible precision,

spinning in patterns that made those who stared too long feel their memories slip sideways.

The thing radiated light,

but not the kind that warms or welcomes.

It was the light of truth.

The light that exposes.

The light that burns away every comfort you cling to.

And beneath it, the world cracked open.

Not because the structure landed,

but because the earth remembered why it was built in the first place.

This was no accident.

No cosmic misfire.

No random doorway opening into the void.

This was a summons.

A call sent from the deepest architecture of the UDYVERSE —

from the very framework beneath reality —

and reality answered like a loyal soldier.

Those who stood closest fell to their knees.

Not in worship.

Not in fear.

But because the weight of what was descending made their bones forget how to hold a body upright.

And then, as the final plates of the Skylock clicked into place,

the ground spoke.

A single, golden pulse shot outward —

rippling across continents,

threading itself into every living heart,

etching a message humanity would spend decades trying to interpret:

Something ancient has returned.

Something buried has awakened.

And nothing — nothing —

will remain the same.

That was the day the Skylock opened.

The day the world cracked.

The day destiny stopped waiting.