The sky shattered like black glass.
Above them, where the void of the moonless night had pressed down with the weight of cosmic indifference, a crack appeared not a simple fissure but a deliberate wound cut by something that existed partially outside the normal flow of reality. Through this gash in the heavens came the sound of wings, but not the gentle beating of any earthly bird. This was the thunder of pinions that had never known the constraints of physics, the hurricane roar of flight powered by forces that predated the invention of air itself.
