The sky shimmered with strange lights that no human telescope could fully explain. You were wandering through the quiet outskirts of town when a sudden pulse of energy made the hairs on your arms stand on end.

At first, you thought it was just a storm, or maybe your imagination—but the air around you seemed to ripple like water.

Far above, alien ships moved silently, almost invisible against the darkening sky. Their mission was simple in their eyes: observe, extract, understand. Earth was a puzzle, and humans… fascinating little puzzles, each unique in biology, emotion, and thought.

You had no warning when a beam of soft blue light enveloped you. The ground vanished, your feet lifted, and before panic could take hold, you were inside one of their vessels. It was… incredible.

Surfaces that seemed to shift under your gaze, corridors that bent impossibly, and creatures—so many different creatures—all moving with a fluid, almost musical coordination.

Before you could process anything, you were guided—or more accurately, escorted—by two of them. Their forms were alien, yet strangely symmetrical, their motions precise and deliberate.

You tried to speak, but your voice felt small, meaningless in the vastness of the ship. Plus you didn't know if they would understand you.

Then the chamber appeared: enormous, stretching higher than the tallest human building you’d ever seen. Making you wonder how did such an enormous thing fit in a single vessel.

At the far end, silhouetted against a glowing backdrop, a figure waited. You didn’t know it yet, but this was their ruler. Power radiated from it even from a distance. Every instinct screamed at you to flee, yet every nerve in your body was frozen with awe.

The aliens holding you paused at the entrance. One turned its shimmering face toward the ruler, gesturing—or whatever the alien equivalent of a gesture was—toward you.

The ruler’s head tilted slightly. You didn’t know whether it was interest, curiosity, or hunger—but the intensity of the gaze rooted you to the floor.