OFFSET

OFFSET

Burning Sky

People thought the World War II would be the biggest event of the 1940s, but they were absolutely wrong.

They thought the worst of it was over when the Allies defeated the Axis Powers. But the biggest event to happen worldwide came two years later, an event that involved every single nation on Earth. Even countries that had remained neutral during the war found themselves at the center of something entirely new.

The story began on June 24th, 1947. It was the year where the world is still recovering of the war in the past. Radios played big band music and breaking news in equal measure. Steam rose from street vendors in Saigon, church bells rang in Vienna, and children played baseball in Brooklyn lots still littered with wartime rubble. The world was trying to move on. Factories that once produced weapons now made washing machines and bicycles. Families gathered around radios in the evenings, eager for news that didn't involve loss.

Then, the sky changed.

Not just in one city or one country, but everywhere.

It began with a sighting. People across the world started noticing strange shimmers in the sky. It was as if the upper atmosphere had caught fire, and the glow kept growing. In places where it was day, it looked fantastical, like a cluster of stars shining in broad daylight. In regions where it was night, the shimmers became even clearer, like the beam of a prison searchlight sweeping across the darkness. The phenomenon ignored borders, appearing over both oceans and continents. Then, the shimmers grew larger, and it became clear what they truly were: a massive armada of alien ships.

They weren't like anything humanity had ever made or even dreamed of. A massive slab of matte black shell, all jagged edges and angular design, humming with faint pulses of shifting light. There were no engines, no wings, no visible means of flight, yet they hovered with precision, casting long, unnatural shadows over oceans, forests, desert and cities alike. They came in silence, thousands of them, aligned like they had mapped the planet long before we ever saw the sky. From nowhere. All at once. Each vessel seemed to know exactly where to position itself, as if following an unseen plan.

People stopped. Pointed. Photographers took to rooftops. Phones rang in newspaper offices. Radar screens lit up with unexplainable shapes.

Suddenly, the first ship exploded.

A deafening, violent explosion destroyed the ship in mid-air, pieces shredded into the stratosphere, pressure shockwaves flattening clouds for miles. The rest followed in sequence. One after another, thousands of these massive vessels detonated mid-air, without any human-being knowing the cause. There were no warning signals, no changes in behavior before detonation.

The Earth trembled as the sky rained fire.

It wasn't war. There were no invaders, no demands. Just death from above. No broadcasts, no patterns, no signs of intent preceded the event.

The remains came down fast with destroyed shells and burning fragments streaked across the sky, trailing black smoke behind them like vengeful comets. But that wasn't all. Among the debris, streams of light fell. Each with their own different colour, one is red, the other is pink and another is yellow. These lights moved differently from the falling wreckage, slower and more controlled.

They looked like a meteor shower at first, beautiful and also terrifying. People ran, some prayed, others stood frozen. But as the first of the lights reached the ground, something became terribly clear;

They weren't falling randomly.

Each streak of light curved mid-descent, changed course, and locked on to a person nearby. They moved with purpose, threading through clouds, skipping over rooftops and trees, before reaching someone, and entering them. Witnesses described the light bending sharply, as though reacting to movement or proximity.

Not striking. Entering.

It was like fire being drawn into a furnace. The light met the body, and then it was gone, inside. No scorch mark, no wound. Just a silent, instantaneous fusion. Dozens of cases. Then hundreds. Then thousands. All across the world.

In cities and in rural towns alike, the same event unfolded in parallel.

The phenomenon was over in minutes. The ships were gone, reduced to drifting metal and buried wreckage. The lights had vanished. The survivors were left blinking in disbelief, staring at the people beside them who now seemed... different.

They didn't glow. They didn't float. They were still human, but changed in some ineffable, undeniable way. You could see it in their eyes. The pupil of humans that struck with this lights changed into vertical slits. Some had blue irises, while the other had red.

It was the eyes the public noticed first.

Some were frightened. Some were jealous. Some believed these people had been chosen, others believed they had been cursed. But as governments scrambled for answers, the public did what it always did in the wake of catastrophe; it gave the unknown a name.

Inheritors.

They were called that because of what people believed. That the power, or curse given to them came from the alien vessels. That they had inherited something from the beings who had built those ships, something beyond science or understanding. The term first appeared in an Italian newspaper and spread like wildfire. Within a week, it was on every headline in the world. Newspapers printed the word in bold. Radio announcers repeated it with both awe and fear.

"The Age of the Inheritors Has Begun."

Authorities rounded up as many as they could, for study, for containment, sometimes for protection. Not every Inheritor was cooperative. Not every government was honest. But even early on, it was clear that these people were not simply victims or bystanders. They had become a new class of human, not by birth, not by choice, but by encounter. Inheritors were isolated, questioned, and observed, often without explanation.

No one knew why the ships exploded. No one knew if the lights were meant to empower or infect. And no one could explain why some people were chosen and others left untouched. Patterns were searched for; in age, gender, location, but none held up under scrutiny.

But every nation, every people, every culture was forced to adapt to a new truth:

Humanity no longer stood alone at the top of its own world.

Something had passed the torch, or dropped it.

And those who caught it would never be the same.

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