Endless Spiral - Descending

At first, we thought it was a storm, a weather event. A wound forming above the atmosphere. A pressure change. A distortion in the magnetosphere. Some new celestial sickness drifting in from the emptiness between sight. Then the satellites began turning their cameras to it. Not failing. Not burning out. Not turning away. Every screen on Earth showed the same impossible shape for seven seconds, though no two witnesses described it the same. Some saw a crown of black glass suspended over the moon. Some saw a wound opening in the sky. Some saw wings. Some saw machinery. Some saw the face of God. The oceans lowered like the world exhaling. Cities went silent without loss of power. Birds dropped from the air in perfect spirals. Children spoke in tongues unknown to man. The holy in their sacred places forgot their prayers. And above us, something descended. Not falling. Not arriving. Descending. As if Earth had always been beneath it. As if gravity belonged to it. As if the sky was only a curtain it had finally decided to tear down. No government claimed contact. No religion claimed certainty. No scientist dared use the word “life.” It was too deliberate to be an asteroid. Too silent to be a war. Too vast to be a machine. Too hungry to be a miracle. People filled the streets not to riot, not to pray, not to flee, but because every locked room suddenly felt like a coffin. They stared upward with their mouths open, waiting for meaning, waiting for orders, waiting for annihilation to introduce itself. And still it came closer. Dragging night behind it. Bending the clouds into symbols that hurt to remember. Casting shadows in directions where there was no light. Some said it was from another world. Some said another dimension. Some said the old gods had found their way back. Some said Hell had been misnamed, and Heaven had been misunderstood. But the truth was worse. We did not know what it was. We only knew that it had seen us. And it was descending.