ChapterFour'TheCall'
715 Words
The Call
No one remembered who heard it first.
History claimed it was the Gillapheria.
The Angelos insisted they felt it moments earlier.
The star people heard it.
The Uclaino heard it
The Ephraim felt it.
Entire civilizations argued over the order for thousands of years..
But then again time means different for them.
The truth was simpler.
The Call did not arrive slowly or with hesitation.
It arrived through certainty and intensity.
A teacher paused in the middle of a lesson.
A miner dropped his tools and stared into empty space.
An old woman halfway through preparing a meal quietly set down the bowl in her hands and smiled.
Across galaxies and folded dimensions, billions stopped what they were doing at precisely the same instant.
They knew.
Somewhere, a world needed saving.
No coordinates.
No explanation.
Only an invitation.
Volunteer.
---
Arianna was suspended in quiet meditation when the feeling reached her.
Her eyes opened.
The energy flowing through Gallapheria had changed.
Every current hummed with the same note.
Every frequency leaned toward the same distant point.
She didn't have to ask what it meant.
Her ancestors already knew.
Romalo found her moments later.
"You felt it."
She nodded.
"The Call."
For a long while neither spoke.
There was nothing to debate.
Every generation dreamed of such a moment.
Very few ever lived to see one.
---
Others had already begun gathering.
Some stood alone.
Some embraced their families.
Some laughed.
Some cried.
No one appeared afraid.
To answer the Call was considered the greatest gift a life could offer another.
But Arianna looked down at the tiny child sleeping peacefully against her.
Yaria.
She traced one finger across the baby's cheek.
"I can't."
Romalo stepped closer.
"You don't have to."
"I want to."
"I know."
"I don't want to leave her."
He wrapped his arms around both of them.
"Then we won't."
For the first time since they met, choosing each other felt heavier than choosing themselves.
And neither regretted it.
---
The light arrived without warning.
There was no explosion.
No opening sky.
No sound.
It simply existed.
A pillar of impossible brilliance stretching farther than vision could follow.
It did not command.
It did not persuade.
It waited.
One by one, volunteers stepped forward.
The instant they entered the radiance, their physical forms dissolved into streams of living energy.
Some would remember.
Most would not.
All would be reborn where they were needed.
Arianna held Yaria tighter.
"We stayed."
Romalo whispered.
"We chose."
Then something impossible happened.
The child smiled.
Tiny fingers loosened.
Her body drifted upward.
Slowly.
Gently.
As though gravity itself had decided she belonged elsewhere.
"No."
Arianna reached.
Yaria floated beyond her fingertips.
Romalo leapt after his daughter, catching nothing but light.
Around them thousands of other souls rose willingly into the beacon.
But Yaria had never chosen.
She was only an infant.
For the first time since the Call began, Arianna screamed.
The light did not answer.
Neither did the universe.
All it did was continue lifting the little girl higher and higher until she became one more brilliant spark among countless others.
Romalo sank to his knees.
Arianna stood perfectly still.
Then both raised their hands.
Without speaking.
Without planning.
White light poured from them.
It wrapped around Yaria like a second skin.
At its center Arianna shaped a living green sphere, woven from every mother who had come before her.
Not a shield.
A promise.
Find your way home.
---
The beacon carried its passengers across realities.
Worlds waited.
Families unknowingly prepared for children who would soon arrive.
Then an ancient relay station, abandoned beyond recorded history, awakened.
Dust lifted from forgotten machinery.
Its fractured intelligence scanned the endless procession.
Ignored one soul.
Ignored another.
Ignored millions.
Then paused.
One frequency refused classification.
Warning symbols flashed.
Protocols older than language activated.
Mechanical arms unfolded into the stream.
And with impossible precision...
removed a single child.
Yaria vanished.
The white light remained.
The green sphere remained.
But the infant herself was gone.
Far below, on a small blue world called Earth, something streaked across the night sky.
Most people called it a falling star.
One little boy watching from his backyard made a wish.
No one realized they had just witnessed the beginning of the end.
- Writer
