Chapter 15 The Thing That Waited

• The clouds didn’t just part—they tore.
• It was like some invisible hand ripped a wound in the sky, peeling back the storm to reveal something that had no right to exist above the world. A vertical slit of blinding light cut through the black clouds, its edges jagged and shifting like it was alive.
• Through it, shapes moved. Not clouds. Not aircraft. Things with too many limbs, their silhouettes twisting in ways my brain didn’t want to understand.