Earth.
Azlif City.
Block 17.
It was an ordinary morning.
The streets were already getting busy.
Buses pushed through the traffic, shopkeepers lifted shutters, and people stopped at roadside stalls for tea before heading to work.
The smell of frying oil, spices, and fresh bread drifted between the buildings.
Near the corner, a tea seller was arguing with a regular customer.
“You charged me twenty yesterday.”
“Yesterday you had one.”
“I had two.”
“You had one and a half.”
“What does that even mean?”
The tea seller shrugged.
“You left half in the cup.”
“That doesn’t mean you can charge me for another one.”
“Then drink the whole thing next time.”
The customer muttered something under his breath and handed over the money.
A few streets away, four children were playing in a narrow alley.
Their parents had told them not to go too far from home, so they had decided the alley was far enough.
“I’m counting!
You guys hide properly!”
One boy covered his eyes against the wall.
“Don’t peek!”
“I’m not peeking.”
“You always peek.”
“I said I’m not!” He continued counting.Then he stopped.
Something had changed.
The other children noticed him looking upward.
“What?”
He didn’t answer.
“Why did you stop?”
The boy pointed toward the sky.
They looked up.
At first, there was nothing unusual.
Then one of the clouds shifted.
Not sideways.
It seemed to pull inward.
Another cloud followed.The morning breeze had been moving normally a moment earlier, but now the air felt strangely still.
“Is that smoke?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
A thin line had appeared across the sky.
It looked almost like a crack in glass.
Nobody knew what to say.
The crack widened.
A deep sound rolled over the city.
People on the streets stopped walking.
Car horns went quiet one after another.
Someone standing outside a pharmacy looked up and said,
“What the hell…?” The line tore open.
The blue sky disappeared around it, replaced by a dark crimson glow.The opening continued to spread until it covered a large section of the sky above the city.
People pulled out their phones.
Some started recording.
Others simply stood there.
Nobody seemed to understand what they were looking at.
Then something fell through.It struck the roof of a parked car hard enough to crush the metal.The creature rolled onto the road.
For a few seconds, nobody moved.
It was small, roughly the size of a child, but it was clearly not human.
Its skin was greenish and rough, its ears were pointed, and its teeth were visible even with its mouth closed.
A woman screamed.That broke whatever hesitation remained.People started running.
Another creature dropped from the opening.
Then another.Then several more.
The things rushed into the streets without any hesitation.
A man grabbed his daughter’s hand.
“Come on!”
“Dad, what are they?”
“I don’t know.
Just run.”
Cars began crashing as drivers tried to turn around.
A bus mounted the edge of the road.Someone fell while trying to cross the street, and two strangers stopped to help him before realizing that something was running toward them.
“Leave him!”
“He can’t walk!”
“Then carry him!”
They tried.
They couldn’t.The creature was too close.They ran.More creatures came through the opening.Some were small and thin.
Others were much larger.
One had the body of a massive wolf, black fur covering its entire body.
It landed on the roof of a car, looked around, and jumped down.A man standing beside the vehicle froze.
The animal was nearly as tall as his chest.
He took one step backward.
The wolf growled.
He turned and ran.
Sirens began filling the streets.
Police arrived and tried to move people away from the worst areas, but within minutes they were struggling to keep up with the situation.Nobody had any idea how many creatures were coming.
Reports started coming in from other parts of the city.
Then from other cities.
Then from other countries.It wasn’t an attack limited to Azlif City.It was happening everywhere.
News channels showed footage from different parts of the world.
Streets filled with fleeing civilians.
Buildings damaged.
Strange creatures moving through places where they had never existed before.
Then the broadcasts began disappearing.
The power failed in some areas.Communication networks became overloaded.People called their families again and again.Some calls went through.Others didn’t.
By afternoon, large parts of Azlif City had become inaccessible.There were fires in several districts.People hid inside homes, shops, schools, hospitals, anywhere they thought they might be safe.The creatures kept coming.
Humanity had no explanation.And no effective response.Then, sometime later, people began noticing something above the city.
A man was standing in the air.
Nobody saw him arrive.
He was simply there.
He wore a dark hooded coat.
His face couldn’t be seen clearly beneath the hood, almost as if the light around him refused to reach it.A woman watching from a damaged apartment pointed toward him.
“Is that a helicopter?”
Her husband looked.
“No.”
“Then what is he standing on?”
“Nothing.”
The man remained motionless.The air around him appeared distorted, bending the buildings behind him slightly.His eyes were visible.Their colour changed.
Red.
Green.
Yellow.
Blue.
Nobody understood why.
The man looked down at the city.He didn’t speak.
After several seconds, he sighed.
People across the world heard it.
Not loudly.It was simply there, somehow, in the air.He raised one hand.
A small white light appeared above his palm.
Someone watching from a rooftop whispered,
“What is that?”
The light expanded.
There was no explosion.
No sound.
It simply spread outward.
Across the streets.
Across the buildings.
Across the land and oceans.
The creatures stopped.Then their bodies began breaking apart into glowing particles.
People watched from windows and doorways, too confused to react.Within moments, the creatures were gone.
All of them.
The crimson opening in the sky closed.The white light disappeared.
The man lowered his hand.For a while, he remained there.Then he vanished.No flash.No movement.
One moment he was standing above the city.Next, there was nothing.
Nobody knew who he was.
Nobody knew where he had gone.And nobody had time to figure it out.People began searching for their families.
Emergency workers returned to the streets.
Hospitals filled with injured civilians.
Some people hugged strangers simply because they were alive.
Others stood outside their homes, staring at the empty sky.
The attack had stopped.That was all anyone knew.Far beyond Earth, however, something else had been watching.
At first, it was difficult to distinguish from the darkness of space.
Then a shape became visible.
Something enormous.A face seemed to emerge between the stars.It remained there silently, looking toward Earth.
It had seen the creatures.
It had seen what happened to them.
Most importantly, it had seen the man.
After a while, the enormous face disappeared into the darkness.
Earth remained.
For now.
“AAARRGH!”
Ram woke with a shout.He sat upright, breathing hard.For several seconds, he didn’t recognize his own room.His blanket was twisted around his legs.
Sweat covered his forehead, and his heart was beating so fast that he could feel it in his chest.
He looked toward the window.
Darkness.
His fan was turning above him.His room.
Home.
Ram slowly rubbed his face.The clock beside his bed showed 5:17 a.m.
He stared at it.Then he looked down at his hands.They were shaking.
“Again…”
He swallowed.
“The same dream.”Ram reached for the glass of water beside his bed and drank half of it before putting it down.He had seen it before.More than once.
The same city.
The same creatures.The same strange man.And, at the end, that enormous face watching from space.He lay back down but didn’t close his eyes.
He knew it was only a dream.At least, that was what he kept telling himself.But lately, something about it had started to bother him.He was remembering more each time.And the memories weren’t fading as quickly as they used to.Ram stared at the ceiling.
“Why do I keep dreaming about this?”
Thank you so much for reading Chapter 1 of The Record of a Transmigrator: WHERE IT ALL STARTED We start our journey with a sky breaking apart, a godlike figure, and a fifteen-year-old student waking up in a cold sweat .
If you are a fan of complex, mind-bending mysteries, I highly recommend paying close attention to the details.
We are just scratching the surface of a massive, multi-world puzzle.
If you enjoyed this first step, please consider hitting Follow or adding this to your Library so you don’t miss a single update.
Who do you think the figure in the sky was?
Let me know your early theories in the comments!
— CosmicScribe