I thought I had a dream once. There was a field of golden wheat and a sky that seemed intentional in its darkness.

I thought I had a dream once. There was a field of golden wheat and a sky that seemed intentional in its darkness. Somehow the sun illuminated the endless lengths of crop without touching the firmament above. A great battle unfolded there, I remember that much. Two kings had chosen that field, at that moment, to send countless young men to tear into one another. A rhythmic symphony of steel meeting steel and the cries of the fallen echoed throughout the valley.

I sat beneath an oak, watching the spectacle from a distance.

“Such terrible music that mankind creates,” someone said.

I turned my head slightly. A robed figure, tall and unnaturally thin, had appeared beside me. Though its shape suggested human form, I couldn’t quite make out its face. Not because shadows concealed it, but because there seemed to be no face at all. Just an emptiness with strange, spiraling patterns that stretched inward forever. My eyes locked onto it, unable to look away.

“Does it frighten you?” it asked.

“What are you?” I managed to say.

“A priest. A warrior. A landless farmer. Speaker for the Divine. A wound that never heals or the bandage that covers it. The Walker Between. I’ve worn many names,” it replied.

“And what are you now?”

“I am merely a small part of something vast beyond comprehension, the moist tongue of Creation itself sampling the valleys and rivers it formed in the ancient past,” the Priest said, barely moving as it spoke.

It turned toward the battlefield, and together we watched the slaughter unfold in silence. Horses charging. Lances piercing gleaming armor. Men—different only in the colors they carried—cutting each other down.

“Something curious occurs to me,” the Priest said after what felt like hours.

“What’s that?” I asked, looking up at it.

“The blood soaking into this soil will feed the roots of trees that will still stand when these kingdoms are long forgotten.”

And then I woke up.

The wind screamed against the RV’s metal frame, making it shudder as though the storm was trying to dismantle it piece by piece. The radio sputtered with static, words coming through broken and distorted.

“Confirmed rotation!” someone yelled over the comms. “Dropping now—less than two miles out!”

I shook myself, still disoriented from the dream—if it was truly just a dream—and tried to focus. My hands shook as I zipped my jacket, the air thick with the sharp smell of ozone, as though the sky itself was wounded.

Outside, the plains extended endlessly, grass bent flat under the weight of something massive approaching. The storm hung before us, black and churning, its center pushing downward, a twisting funnel reaching for the ground. I couldn’t breathe properly. I’d tracked dozens of storms before this one. But this was different. This one moved with purpose, with ancient intent.

The team worked with practiced precision—setting up equipment, cameras, tracking systems. They called excitedly into the howling wind, riding their adrenaline high as they found the perfect observation point.

Then everything changed.

Lightning crossed the sky, not in sharp zigzags, but in curves that twisted like living things. The tornado touched down completely now, a black pillar carving its way toward us. But within it—beneath the surface—I saw movement. Not debris or dust, but something enormous shifting against reality itself. The lightning wasn’t electrical—it was eyes opening after centuries of sleep. Limbs. Openings that weren’t quite mouths. A form too vast to comprehend.

My teammates shouted instructions, but their voices seemed distant, as if I were submerged in water. One of them—Oscar, I think—grabbed my shoulder. “You okay? We need to move now!”

I turned to him, eyes wide. “Can’t you see it?”

Oscar had no chance to answer before the wind claimed him. One second he was there, holding my shoulder. The next, his body was yanked backward, limbs flailing wildly, his scream lost instantly. The others—Anna, Luis, Harper—tried to escape, but the sky reached down for them. Where they saw only wind and rain, I saw hands. Fingers longer than highways wrapping around them, folding them into the storm.

Anna reached toward me as she came undone, her body unraveling like yarn pulled by unseen claws. Luis was lifted screaming, his mouth stretching impossibly wide as something not-quite-visible consumed him.

The wind roared. No—not wind. Laughter. A voice too enormous for sound.

The sky tore open like skin. And behind it—

Something was watching.

I collapsed, the weight of what I was seeing crushing my mind. A veil had been lifted, and I had glimpsed what lay beyond. The storm wasn’t weather. It was a feeding appendage. A casual movement of something too immense to comprehend.

And then, standing silently beside me, was the Priest.

The storm continued its rage. The Priest simply observed.

“You can see it too, can’t you?” I whispered, barely audible above the chaos surrounding us.

The Priest tilted its head slightly. Its hood shifted, revealing not a face but that same spiraling emptiness, a void shaped like a person.

“Always,” it said. “I always see.”

My insides twisted as thunder cracked overhead. For just a moment, I thought I glimpsed it—the thing behind the thing, the presence beyond the storm. The true horror. But my mind couldn’t hold its shape; it was like trying to capture smoke with bare hands.

Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the storm began to recede. The wind weakened, the black funnel dissolving, scattering debris as it retreated. The pressure in my head eased, though the memory remained vivid. The land was torn, the sky wounded, but the storm had passed.

My friends were gone. The RV was gone. The sky still moved restlessly, but the gaping tear had closed.

I turned to the Priest, my throat raw. “Why did you show me this?”

The Priest was quiet for a long time. Then, slowly, it knelt beside me.

“Because you asked,” it whispered. “Because you looked when others turned away.”

I stared at the clearing sky, trembling. Understanding settled into me, heavier than anything I’d ever known.

Every storm. Every earthquake. Every shooting star.

All of them were something else entirely.

And they had been watching us all along.