When a group of children in a small town discovers they can see without their eyes, they begin a mysterious journey to witness a strange phenomenon in the sky.
I never imagined that the simplest thing—a scrap of cloth—could lead us to the truth. It all started on a summer afternoon, one of those sweltering days where the heat made the air shimmer like a mirage. The seven of us—myself, Lily, Ethan, Mia, Jake, and the twins, Ava and Ian—had gathered under the shade of the old oak near the park, the one where we always met after school. We were just kids, bored and restless, itching for adventure but too young to know what we were really looking for.
It was Jake who first stumbled on the idea. He had this old, tattered blindfold from one of his older brother’s sports kits, and he dared us to play this strange game: to walk across the park with our eyes covered. The challenge was simple, but something happened when I tied that cloth around my eyes.
Darkness should’ve swallowed me whole, but instead, it was like I could see even clearer than before—everything in sharp relief, though my eyes were closed. I could see the branches of the oak swaying gently in the breeze, the speckles of sunlight filtering through the leaves. I gasped, tearing off the blindfold, convinced I had imagined it. But when the others tried, they had the same reaction.
"It’s like… I can see through my mind," Mia whispered, a look of awe spreading across her face.
We couldn’t explain it, but from that day on, we started experimenting. We would cover our eyes and walk together, laughing as we found that not only could we see, but we could see things we hadn’t noticed before—subtle details, things that seemed out of place. It was as if the world opened up when our eyes were closed, and we could peer into another layer of reality.
That’s when we started noticing the sky.
At first, it was just a flicker, a distortion above the clouds, like a ripple moving against the grain. We might have dismissed it, written it off as nothing more than a trick of the light. But soon, the flicker became a swirling, growing phenomenon—a strange, pulsing glow that we could only see when we blindfolded ourselves. It was like the sky was alive with something—something hidden from the rest of the world.
“We have to find out what it is,” Ethan said one evening. He had this determined look in his eyes, like nothing could stop him. “There’s something up there.”
And so, we made a pact to meet at the field just outside of town, the one where the sky stretched wide and unobstructed. That night, we brought our blindfolds, our hearts racing with excitement and fear. What were we going to see?
The moment we tied the cloth around our eyes, the sky exploded in color—swirling bands of violet, gold, and electric blue danced across the heavens, like a cosmic performance just for us. But it wasn’t just light. I could feel something pulling at me, like a current, a tide, urging me to step forward.
A low hum began to rise, a sound that buzzed in my bones, vibrating through the earth. The others heard it too; I could tell by the way their bodies stiffened, their faces tilted up in awe and terror.
“What is it?” Ava’s voice trembled. “What’s happening?”
The hum grew louder, a wave of sound and light crashing over us. And then, I saw something—someone—moving in the sky, figures weaving in and out of the light, faceless, yet familiar. They seemed to be watching us, and in that moment, I knew this wasn’t just a phenomenon. We had been summoned.
A voice, soft as the wind, whispered in my mind. “You see now, but at what cost?”
Fear gripped me. Something wasn’t right. We had thought this was our discovery, our special ability, but it wasn’t a gift—it was a lure.
Suddenly, I felt the ground beneath me shift, as if the earth itself was rejecting us. I ripped off the blindfold, gasping for breath, my heart pounding. The others followed suit, their faces pale, eyes wide with confusion and dread.
“What did we just see?” Ethan murmured, his voice hollow.
But no one answered. We stood in silence, watching the sky return to normal, the colors fading until there was nothing left but darkness.
It wasn’t until the next day that we realized something had changed. Mia was the first to notice. She tried to close her eyes, to replicate the vision, but nothing happened. It was gone. The gift, the ability to see blindfolded—it had vanished. But there was something else, something far more terrifying.
We could no longer dream.
Night after night, we lay in bed, our minds blank, as though the sky itself had stolen our dreams in exchange for the visions it had shown us. And soon, we began to forget—forget what we had seen, forget the thrill of our discovery. Even the phenomenon in the sky, once vivid in our minds, became distant, like a story half-remembered from a lifetime ago.
But every now and then, when I walk alone at dusk, I feel it again—that pull, that hum deep in the earth. And I wonder… if I close my eyes, will I see them again? Will they take more than just my dreams?
In the end, it wasn’t the gift of sight we had been given. It was a glimpse of something we were never meant to witness.
And maybe, just maybe, that was the cost all along.
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