Glass Walls

They said the sky was just the sky.

Endless blue by day, scattered stars by night—so it seemed. But sixteen-year-old Elira had always suspected more. From the moment she first touched the shimmering veil during a freak lightning storm at age six, she knew the heavens weren’t what they appeared to be.

Because she had touched it—the firmament. And it had *sung* to her.

No one believed her, of course. Not her mother, not the village elders, not even the wandering stargazers who passed through the mountain town of Lothenridge with silver telescopes and cracked theories. The firmament was a myth, a relic from the old world, spoken of in riddles and half-forgotten songs. A dome of crystal, they once said, separating earth from the realm of the Watchers above.

But Elira knew better.

Now, ten years later, the skies had begun to flicker.

It started subtly—a glitch in the stars, a shimmer at the horizon, as if someone had wiped a streak of fogged glass. Birds stopped flying high, and the village’s oldest telescope went blind. Then came the tremors. Not from the ground—but from *above*.

Elira sat on the roof of her house, notebook in hand, sketching. Her hands moved instinctively, drawing what she’d seen in her dreams the night before: enormous gears turning behind constellations, towering pillars of light hidden behind clouds, and eyes—dozens of eyes—watching from beyond the sky.

The villagers began whispering of omens. The harvest failed. Rain refused to fall. Children spoke in strange tongues while asleep. When the mayor's youngest vanished during a red moon, panic took hold.

But Elira had been preparing.

She’d built her glider over three winters, a fusion of scrap metal, hawk feathers, and bluefire crystals she’d mined from deep caverns. Everyone thought it was childish fantasy—until the tremors grew stronger.

And then it happened.

A *crack* opened in the sky.

Not metaphorically—a literal fracture. It started as a thin, glowing line across the north, arcing like lightning held in place. The village watched in stunned silence as the stars above warped and twitched unnaturally around it. Something was very wrong.

That night, Elira didn’t sleep.

She climbed to the old cliff that overlooked the valley and lit the ignition crystal. Her glider, lovingly named *Skybreaker*, shimmered with life. The moment the winds stilled, she launched.

Upward she soared, higher than any bird, past the familiar winds and clouds, past the air that tasted of soil and leaf. The sky grew thin, then thick again. The blue faded into a violet no human eye was meant to see.

And there it was.

The *Wall*.

A vast dome of translucent glass, miles above the earth. It stretched in all directions, curving like a divine eye, etched with runes too ancient to decipher. The crack shimmered just ahead—jagged, pulsing with golden light. Through it, Elira glimpsed… machinery. No, more than machinery—*architecture*. Spires of silver stretching into an endless void, glimmering with stars that no constellation chart had ever mapped.

She wasn’t hallucinating. The sky wasn’t the end. It was a barrier.

A *construct*.

Suddenly, a shadow passed through the crack.

A being—tall as a tower, robed in constellations, with hands that ended in points of light. One eye in its chest, swirling with galaxies. A *Watcher*. Elira’s breath caught. The creature tilted its head, sensing her. Then, to her astonishment, it spoke—not in words, but in sound and color and emotion, flooding her mind.

“You have seen the Wall. Few do. Fewer still return.”

Elira floated, weightless, near the breach. “Why is it here? What’s behind it?”

The Watcher’s thoughts touched hers, warm but alien.

“The Wall was made to protect. Your kind was not meant to awaken so soon.”

“Protect us from what?” she asked.

A pause. The stars behind the Wall flickered like candles in a storm.

“From yourselves.”

And suddenly, Elira *knew*. Knew that humanity had once built too far, reached too high. That the sky wasn’t always a limit—it had once been a consequence. The firmament had been constructed after a great collapse, sealing away not heaven, but the dangerous truth of what humanity had been, and what remained beyond.

“You are the first key,” the Watcher said.

The crack widened, and beyond it, she saw a city—no, a ruin—floating in space, its towers broken, but glowing with echoes of a past so advanced it bordered on the divine. And in its center, a mirror image of Earth. Silent. Waiting.

Elira understood. The Wall was not only a prison. It was a test. And now, it was breaking.

The Watcher touched her glider gently. “Return. Tell them. Prepare.”

As she descended, the sky began to ripple again. The world below had no idea that its greatest truth was above their heads—and breaking slowly.

Epilogue

Back in Lothenridge, Elira stood in the village square, covered in soot and star-dust, shouting of what lay beyond. Most called her mad. But a few listened. A few had dreams of their own. And in time, they would build their own wings.

Because the glass walls were cracking.

And the sky was only the beginning.