Andrea Zurita

De: Wendell Watson

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Andrea, back in her humble dwelling, noticed it too. The birds, usually a raucous chorus at dawn, were unnaturally silent. The insects, a constant hum of life in the humid air, seemed to have retreated. The vibrant colors of her small herb garden appeared to have dulled, as if a fine layer of dust had settled upon them, a dust that wasn’t visible but could be felt, a muffling of the world’s sensory output. She found herself looking over her shoulder, a habit she had never possessed before, an instinctual awareness of being observed, even in the solitude of her own small space.

The hushed conversations, the abrupt silences, were becoming a common phenomenon throughout the estate. A gardener, discussing the irrigation system with a colleague, would stop mid-sentence as a distant, unidentifiable sound echoed from the dense foliage bordering the property, only for the sound to cease as quickly as it had begun, leaving them both straining to hear, to understand, to explain. The groundskeepers, who knew every rustle of leaf and snap of twig on the vast property, found themselves bewildered by a growing sense of the unknown. They spoke of fleeting shadows at the edge of their vision, of feeling a sudden, inexplicable chill in the air, even under the oppressive Ecuadorian sun.

At the military base, Lieutenant Colonel Ramirez, a man whose career was built on the foundation of meticulous planning and unwavering logic, found himself poring over satellite imagery. For the past week, a particular stretch of uncharted jungle, miles from any known settlement, had been exhibiting peculiar atmospheric distortions. They were not weather-related; they were too localized, too transient. It was as if the very fabric of the air above that specific patch of land was shimmering, rippling, a visual anomaly that defied explanation. He ordered aerial reconnaissance, but the choppers reported nothing unusual, just dense, impenetrable jungle. Yet, the satellite data persisted, a silent, digital scream of anomaly.

These were the first tremors, subtle shifts in the established order, hairline fractures in the bedrock of reality. They were the whispers before the storm, the faint premonitions of a darkness gathering. For most, they were minor inconveniences, easily dismissed, easily forgotten in the face of routine. But for those few whose senses were more attuned, whose lives were intrinsically linked to the systems and structures that were beginning to falter, they were harbingers of a profound and terrifying change. The serpent was stirring in its coil, and its first movements, though subtle, promised a world-altering upheaval. The pristine veneer of control, both in the halls of power and the gilded cages of wealth, was beginning to crack, revealing the unsettling truths that lay beneath. The unease was no longer just a feeling; it was an encroaching reality, a quiet invasion of the uncanny, a prelude to the unraveling.