They called it the night the sky bled silver.
It began as a whisper in the void — a lone comet hurtling through the cold dark for eons, drawn by a force no human would ever name. Some later argued it was no true comet at all — maybe an ancient asteroid, a wandering world-killer from the dark. But in the stories that survived, it was always the comet that came too close.
It came closer and closer, unnoticed by all but the few eyes who peered through high-powered telescopes and sent warnings far too late.
When it broke the atmosphere, the heavens burned. A trail of white flame split the night, brighter than any sun. People ran into the streets, faces upturned — some praying, some screaming, all powerless.
Then the comet's shell — black rock older than Earth itself — slammed into the land. Cities crumbled in an instant. Tides rose and swallowed coasts. But hidden beneath the crater's choking dust, something stirred.
The shell cracked further — a final breath of heat and pressure. The silver core seeped out, flowing into the scorched soil, bleeding into deep veins that reached for Earth's molten heart. And the strangest thing — the moment it touched the core, the world did not explode. Instead, the planet drank it in like thirsting roots.
Storms rose where they had never formed before. Forests wilted, then grew back twisted and hungry. Mountains split, revealing veins of ore that hummed under the touch. And life — plants, beasts, and people — changed. Not overnight, but slowly, like a poison or a blessing that seeped into every cell.
When the ocean pulled back in places, drawn away by the comet's wound to the world's bones, the sea beds cracked open. There, beneath salt and silt, lay fragments of empires so ancient no living tongue remembers.
In the decades that followed, the old world broke apart. Kingdoms fell, empires vanished, but from the ruins rose something no one had words for yet.
The power that survived was the power that grew in human blood. They called it Celestia—a name whispered into existence, its origin lost to the ash and wind. People don't know when it started, only that some early survivors claimed it came to them in dreams. They were called Awakened.
And for those who could not awaken it, there was only what they could dig up and wire back together. Crude lights, rusted drones, a scavenger's hope that the old ghosts of metal could protect them from the monsters born from the silver core.
In the stories told around dying fires, parents whispered to children: Remember the comet. Remember the silver that changed us all.
***
Somewhere, years later —
A boy sits cross-legged on a crumbling rooftop, staring up at the scarred sky. Ash drifts like snow, catching in his hair.
"Tell me again," he whispers, voice barely louder than the wind.
Beside him, an old man watches the horizon where the silver veins still glow faint under the moon.
"When the sky bled silver," the old man rasps, "the world learned to breathe again — in a voice none would ever tame."
The boy, presses a hand to his chest as if he can feel it there — the silver, the secret. In his blood. Waiting.
And somewhere, in the stillness of the post-apocalyptic night, it waited for blood to listen.
But what if the silence itself was a lie, and the core wasn't just waiting, but calling?