Chapter 1
In a town that was just beginning to grow, five friends arrived early at the local soccer pitch. Among them were Martín, Pablo, and Mario—the most competitive of the bunch; later, Juan and Gabriel joined in. They were all around 30 to 35 years old.
Martín and Mario, great friends who were reuniting after almost a decade, began to catch up. Martín talked about his wife and daughter; Mario, for his part, told him that he had three children and was separated. While they chatted, the others prepared the facilities for the match they had organized in advance.
The day felt strange. There was a silence that seemed to freeze time; not even a breeze blew, and the sky, though clear, took on a tone between gray and orange.
They began to kick the ball around while the others lit the fire for the barbecue. It was an hour before the meeting and no one else had approached the club. Gabriel stayed in charge of the grill, while the rest entered the pitch to warm up and talk. At that moment, Mario looked up and spotted what he thought was a satellite traveling through that anomalous sky. Between laughs and anecdotes, the group enjoyed a day of relaxation after the work week.
However, Mario did not take his eyes off the heights. He alerted the others when he noticed that the “satellite” had remained static, right above them. The light increased its volume until it looked like a giant planet; it was enormous and did not flicker.
“What is that?” Gabriel asked from the grill, paralyzed.
The light, which had been white, turned a deep blue. Suddenly, a hum began to vibrate in their chests, a frequency that made the chain-link fence of the pitch rattle. The five friends stood in the center of the circle, looking up, unable to move, as if the air had become thick like water.
The object began to descend slowly. It wasn’t a satellite. It was a perfect sphere, metallic but translucent, showing internal movements like liquid fire. When it was only thirty meters above the goal, the silence returned, but it was an absolute silence, as if the world outside the club had ceased to exist.
Then, a voice—or a thought—resounded in their minds simultaneously: “The cycle begins again.”
A flash of light blinded them for a fraction of a second. When they opened their eyes, the sky was pitch black, full of stars, and the fire in the grill was nothing but cold ashes. They looked at their watches: it wasn’t 5:00 PM anymore. It was 3:00 AM.
They were still in the center of the pitch, but something had changed. They didn’t feel like the same people who had arrived that afternoon. Mario looked at his hands and noticed a faint blue glow under his skin that was slowly fading.
“Did we... did we win the match?” Pablo whispered, disoriented.
But there was no ball, no barbecue, and no town noises. Just the five of them, standing in the dark, with the certainty that the world they knew had ended the moment they looked up.
