Episode 10 – After the Twelve
After the Twelve appeared in the sky and their voice faded, the world did not move again right away.
For several seconds—perhaps minutes—no one knew what to do. The air seemed suspended, heavy, as if the atmosphere itself refused to resume its rhythm.
People stood frozen in the middle of the streets, phones still in their hands, staring upward as if waiting for someone else to react first.
You could hear fast breathing, short sobs, the distant hum of an electrical transformer coming back to life after the blackout.
Nothing else.
No engines. No horns. No human voices trying to reason through what was beyond reason.
Then came fear.
It began somewhere indistinct, maybe with a single scream, a woman calling her child, a dog running aimlessly.
And the sound spread, as though fear itself were contagious.
People began to run without any clear direction. Some ran back to their homes without knowing why. Others sought refuge in buildings, parking lots, tunnels—anywhere that offered a roof or a shadow.
A primal, animal impulse.
More accidents followed. Cars already damaged by the hail collided again as their drivers, panicked, tried to flee.
The metallic smell of gasoline mixed with smoke, with the vapor rising from asphalt still glistening after the storm.
Sirens clashed with screams. Building alarms wailed endlessly, casting red flashes over faces soaked in fear.
The hailstorm had left the world wounded.
Broken windows. Flooded streets. Trees snapped in half.
Hospitals in every city were completely saturated. Halls overflowing. Improvised stretchers in courtyards and reception areas.
Medical staff worked without rest, hands cracked, eyes heavy, gloves stained with dried blood.
Ambulances couldn't keep up; some were stuck in traffic, others surrounded by crowds begging for help.
In some places, the wounded were treated in parking lots, schools, gyms, churches.
No one asked where you were from anymore—only whether you were still breathing.
Emergency services began to collapse. The lines were clogged, swamped with calls from neighbors, families, trembling voices on the other end.
In many countries, authorities begged the population not to call unless it was truly urgent.
But everything felt urgent.
At the police station, Officer Díaz watched as priorities completely shifted.
No one had time for minor arrests.
The vagrant and the Priest were released without much explanation.
There were no charges, no paperwork, no resources or authority left to sustain routine.
Only a brief warning:
"Go somewhere safe."
The Priest left in silence—no shouts, no sermons. The arrogant gleam from previous days had gone from his eyes.
He walked slowly, as though stepping into another world.
The vagrant looked up at the sky one last time before leaving, mumbling something no one understood—a prayer, or a farewell.
Blue stayed close to Díaz, restless. He made low, uneasy sounds, as if he sensed that something immense had just changed the nature of order itself.
Díaz stroked his back with a trembling hand, not taking her eyes off the window, where the sky still showed faint scars of light.
Outside, the city tried to breathe.
Smoke rose over the older neighborhoods, mingling with vapor from broken pipes.
The air smelled of wet earth, of ozone, and of something that did not belong to this planet.
Nico walked quickly, head down, dodging chunks of ice and shards of glass.
The streetlights flickered in erratic rhythms, casting shadows that seemed to move on their own.
His mind was set on one thing: his cousin.
It was all he had there.
The only link that still reminded him of something familiar amidst the chaos.
Communication was nearly impossible. Calls didn't go through. Messages took minutes to send—if they sent at all.
Online, the last stream of news had frozen on the same images: the Twelve in the sky, captured from different countries yet always in the same formation.
Only a few official notifications appeared on phones—brief messages from governments asking for calm, asking people to find shelter, asking them to wait for instructions.
Nico didn't wait.
He walked to the apartment building.
The streets were covered in puddles reflecting the uneven glow of the sky.
He climbed the stairs because the elevators didn't work.
The smell of dampness and burnt metal followed him up every floor.
He knocked hard on the door.
When his cousin opened it, they looked at each other for a moment without speaking.
Then they embraced.
No questions.
No explanations.
Only the relief of knowing they were alive in a world that no longer entirely was.
From the apartment window, they could still see the sky.
The figures were no longer visible, but the air retained a strange hue, a reddish shimmer that seemed to come from nowhere.
Nico wondered if they would return, if all of this had been a warning or only the beginning of something far worse.
His cousin didn't speak.
He simply lit a candle instead of turning on the light, and its warm flicker contrasted with the uneasy glow outside.
In different corners of the planet, governments reacted too late.
The United Nations convened an emergency session.
Leaders connected through unstable video calls, interpreters overwhelmed, pale faces staring at screens filled with maps and incomplete reports.
Each nation did the same in its own way: security councils, declarations of emergency, stay-at-home orders.
In every language, the same words repeated: remain calm.
But there were no protocols for this.
No manuals for responding to beings who claimed to have created humanity.
Defense advisors argued contradictory theories: an atmospheric phenomenon, a psychological attack, a mass hypnosis.
No one knew anything.
No one dared pronounce the word divine, yet everyone thought it.
Armies began to mobilize, without clear purpose.
Military bases went on high alert.
Planes waited on runways with engines idling in case they needed to launch.
Satellites reoriented toward the upper atmosphere, scanning for traces of energy or motion.
But there was nothing.
Only silence.
A silence weighted with expectation, slow menace, and held breath.
In the streets, panic began to change shape.
People finally stopped running.
Pure terror gave way to a strange blend of confusion, fatigue, and resignation.
Groups gathered around radios, small portable televisions, giant screens in public squares.
They listened to reports, testimonies, theories.
No one argued whether it had been real.
Everyone had seen it.
Everyone had heard it.
Some cried quietly.
Others recorded videos without knowing why, as if documenting the present might help control it.
In certain cities, groups of people knelt together in the middle of the streets.
Others looked up at the sky and shouted curses.
Some laughed hysterically, repeating one phrase over and over: "They'll erase us, they'll erase us…"
And the most unsettling thing was not what the Creators had said.
It was how they said it.
Not as furious gods.
Not as ancient monsters hungry for devotion.
But with the cold calm of someone executing a necessary command.
With the neutral voice of someone correcting an error in an equation.
You could feel, even in memory, that they had not spoken from emotion, or sorrow, or pride—but from a kind of detached logic, an objectivity utterly foreign to humanity.
It was the voice of something that no longer sought to be understood.
And that was what frightened the most.
As night fell, the city lights flickered in waves.
Some came back. Others died forever.
The wind carried a low murmur, something that sounded like a lingering echo.
Someone said it was the trumpets again, but no one confirmed it.
The sky was covered in a reddish haze that seemed to glow from within.
In the neighborhoods, people locked their doors.
You could hear slamming, bolts, whispered prayers.
But also nervous laughter, the clinking of glasses, the sound of an old radio playing soft music—as if normality could be rebuilt from a melody.
Blue stayed by Díaz's side.
She fed him cold leftovers while the television repeated the same footage: images of the sky, scientific statements, the tired faces of officials.
The dog raised his head, sniffed the air, and gave a low growl, eyes fixed on the open window.
Díaz turned off the screen.
The silence that followed weighed more than sound.
Somewhere, the Twelve were still there, though invisible to human eyes.
And the world, exhausted, was slowly coming to understand the same thing—
though no one yet dared to say it aloud:
This was not over.
It had only just begun.
Episode 11 – THE NOISE AFTER THE SIGNAL
Civilizations don't fall all at once.
There is always an order—
a sequence that repeats itself,
though no one wants to recognize it while it happens.
First, the environment turns hostile.
The weather fractures, the resources fail,
and nature stops answering to mankind.
Then the economy begins to break.
Money loses meaning when there is no food,
when there is no movement,
when there are no certainties left to believe in.
After that comes conflict.
Not formal wars yet—
just scattered confrontations,
stored anger,
fear mutating into violence.
Later, power begins to lose legitimacy.
No one believes the authorities anymore.
No one waits for orders that never arrive.
And finally, human connections collapse—
not only technology, but trust itself,
the very idea of society.
The world had just crossed the second threshold.
And was speeding toward the third with no brakes.
After the appearance of the Twelve and the silence that followed,
people didn't return home to think.
They returned to hide, to barricade, to survive.
The cities began to boil.
For the first hours, fear was a numb tremor—contained, waiting.
But when the second night fell,
that tremor turned into motion.
Flashing lights.
Sirens.
Dry bursts echoing between buildings.
Footsteps running without direction.
And the planet began to produce a single, endless sound:
Human noise.
I remember standing at my window,
listening to that noise stretch across the night.
It was like listening to the inside of a mind breaking.
Everyone's mind.
Mine included.
In the United States, fear took a familiar shape.
At first it tried to be civic: spontaneous protests,
crowds gathered in front of government buildings,
demanding answers,
screaming questions that no one could answer.
Then came the riots.
Glass shattering.
Alarms howling without rhythm or pause.
Supermarkets emptied in minutes—
not from greed,
but from panic.
Food.
Water.
Medicine.
The basic priorities of the species rose back to the surface
with violent clarity.
Cameras captured the same scenes everywhere—
people fighting over a cart of rice,
a gallon of fuel,
a single pill.
Humanity shedding its skin of civility like it had never been real.
The police were overwhelmed.
Not unwilling—just unable.
I heard officers on the scanner channels begging for contact,
for coordination that no longer existed.
Many left their stations to find their families.
Others stayed,
but with no reinforcements,
no chain of command,
no faith that anyone was still above them.
Stations turned into shells.
Patrol cars left with doors open, engines off, radios still hissing.
Fragments filled the frequency bands:
"We have crossfire in—"
"Lost connection with unit—"
"Fall back—"
And then only static.
The army moved too late.
Convoys stood motionless on clogged highways,
soldiers leaning against armored trucks that would never reach their destinations.
Bases protected their fuel and data—not the people.
Commanders argued theories on calls that kept cutting out:
invasion, mass hysteria, alien interference.
It no longer mattered.
Cities were burning.
In Europe, collapse had a different accent.
It started politely—
press conferences, controlled language, diplomacy.
Situation under observation.
No evidence of direct threat.
That calm lasted less than a day.
When banks froze withdrawals
and digital systems went dark,
the façade cracked like thin glass.
Paris. Berlin. Madrid. London.
Different capitals, identical echo.
Supermarkets barricaded.
Hospitals operating in parking lots.
Pharmacies raided.
Churches open twenty‑four hours a day—
not for prayer,
for refuge from the noise.
In less than two days,
Europe was almost completely dark.
I saw footage from Latin America before the feeds vanished.
The chaos there was older,
more human and instinctive—
barricades made of tin,
pans clanging,