Dr. Elias Carter sat in the dim glow of his monitor, staring at the waveform pattern looping endlessly on the screen. It had arrived a week ago—an impossible transmission from deep space, beyond the reach of any known civilization. The signal pulsed at irregular intervals, whispering something just beneath human perception.
At first, Carter assumed it was a malfunction. But when he ran it through the decryption software, words began to form.
"WE SEE YOU."
His stomach knotted. He hadn't told anyone about the signal yet. Not even his colleagues at the observatory. Who—or what—was sending it? And how did they know he was listening?
Each night, the message grew longer. Strange symbols interwove with fragments of English, twisting and shifting like living things. He dreamed of vast, writhing shapes in a sky too black to be real. He awoke gasping, the signal still humming in his ears.
Then, last night, something changed.
The waveform distorted violently, stretching into unnatural peaks and valleys. The audio feed crackled, and for the first time, he heard something beyond static.
A voice.
Not human. Not machine. Something… wrong.
"OPEN THE DOOR."
The lights flickered. The air turned thick, heavy, electric. Carter turned toward the window of his observatory. Outside, the sky rippled, as if something massive pressed against the fabric of reality, trying to force its way through.
His breath caught in his throat. The stars—billions of them—were vanishing. One by one.
And then, something knocked on the door.
