The city of New York, usually a symphony of honking taxis and distant sirens, had fallen into an unnerving hush. It was 07:47 AM on Day 3, and a collective breath seemed to be held across the globe. The "Black Files" leaks, the frantic 72-hour countdown – it had all led to this. Sarah, clutching her worn coffee mug on her tiny Brooklyn fire escape, watched the eastern sky. Her knuckles were white. Her phone, clutched in her other hand, displayed a dead signal.
Then, it happened.
Not a rumble, not a flash, but a deepening of the blue. A vast, impossible shadow began to creep across the sky, swallowing the nascent morning light. It wasn't the soft grey of storm clouds; this was a hungry, unnatural blackness, spreading with an terrifying speed that defied meteorology. It started as a smudge on the horizon, then bloomed into an immense, continental-sized eclipse, blotting out the sun. The air grew cold, a sudden, inexplicable chill that sank into Sarah's bones.
