illphated
“The Last Messenger”
In the heart of a world that had forgotten how to look up, a raven flew with unnatural precision through a churning sky. The wind howled with static. Lightning crackled, not from clouds, but from something deeper—something wrong in the sky itself.
The raven’s wings, slick with midnight rain, beat steadily as it cut through the air like an obsidian blade. Tied to its leg was a rolled parchment—old, almost ceremonial, sealed with wax bearing an unknown sigil: a circle within a triangle, surrounded by stars that had never existed in any known constellation.
It had come from the observatory deep in the Siberian forest, where the last free astronomers worked in silence. They had seen the dark shape behind the moon before it blinked out. They had intercepted the signal that pulsed in unnatural rhythms. Not Morse. Not binary. Something older. Something universal.
The raven was bred for storms and silence. Chosen not just for its intelligence, but for its ability to slip between cracks in the world. When the satellite feeds were cut, when the digital world burned in electromagnetic fire, only analog messengers remained.
Below, in a forgotten stone church on the edge of Norway’s northern coast, Father Elrik stoked the coals of the ancient hearth. The wind outside had taken on a voice, something between language and warning. The bells no longer worked. The stars no longer stayed in place.
Then he heard it—the caw. Short. Sharp. Urgent.
The raven landed on the altar, dripping moonlight and ash. Its eyes locked with his as if to say: We are out of time.
With trembling hands, Elrik unfastened the parchment. It was a map—not of Earth, but of the sky. A sky rewritten. An arrow pointed inward, to Earth’s core. Notes scribbled in the margins read: They are not coming. They were always here.
The message was clear: the invasion had begun long ago. What approached now was not the arrival, but the awakening.
The raven let out a low, guttural cry and took flight once more—off to the next outpost, the next whisper of resistance. The old ways were all that remained. Ink. Feather. Fire.
And faith.