The anxiety had become a physical thing, a stone lodged beneath my sternum that grew heavier with each passing day. Three weeks—or was it three months? Time had become slippery lately—since the vision had seared itself into my consciousness. The invasion was coming. I knew it with the same certainty that I knew my own heartbeat, yet that certainty was my prison.

Every morning I woke with my jaw aching from clenching it through nightmares of silent skies suddenly filled with darkness. Every evening I made my rounds between the two factions, playing diplomat, playing mediator, playing the fool who thought he could make them see reason when all I could see was the futility of their conflict.

The irony wasn't lost on me. Here we were, humanity blessed—or cursed—with both breakthrough science and the resurgence of something we'd relegated to fairy tales. Magic. Real, quantifiable, impossible magic that defied every law we thought we understood. And what were we doing with these twin miracles? Turning them against each other while doom descended from the stars…