Ten years had passed since the skies over Zaragoza, Spain, turned to blood. The pyramids—Giza, Chichen Itza, Teotihuacan—had roared to life, their ancient stones humming as beams of light lanced upward, stitching the heavens with red stars. The lattice of crimson threads wove a canopy that smothered the blue sky, and the rivers, from the Ebro to the Nile, ran red as if the earth itself bled. Days before, the Pope had died, his final words a whispered prophecy: “The sifting comes.” Then, in a single night, millions vanished—the Rapture, they called it, though no one knew its truth. Those left behind split into two tribes: the Believers, who clung to faith and soil, and the Skeptics, who embraced the chaos with hedonistic glee.
In Zaragoza, the Believers built a sanctuary around the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar. They tilled the cracked earth, coaxing wheat and grapes from the dust, their evenings filled with hymns and the clinking of communal meals. They saw the red sky as a test, the Rapture as God’s winnowing. Forty kilometers north, in the ruins of Huesca, the Skeptics turned the old Teatro Olimpia into a palace of vice. They drank stolen wine, danced to salvaged flamenco records, and laughed at the idea of divine judgment. To them, the Rapture was a glitch in the universe, and they’d revel until the world collapsed.

Elena of the Believers walked the crumbling A-23 highway, her sandals kicking up dust under the red sky. At twenty-two, she was a keeper of stories, her satchel heavy with dried figs and a clay jar of olive oil—trade goods for a rumored cache of pre-Rapture books. Her dark hair was braided with a ribbon, a nod to her grandmother’s tales of Zaragoza’s festivals, when the city danced for the Virgen del Pilar. She hummed a fragment of Lorca’s Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías—“At five in the afternoon…”—her voice soft against the wind’s eerie moan.

A shadow flickered on the road ahead, near a rusted Fiat abandoned a decade ago. Elena froze, her hand slipping to the knife at her belt. From behind the car stepped a man, his leather jacket studded with bottle caps that glinted like makeshift armor. His hair was a wild tangle, his grin sharp as a blade. A Skeptic. She’d heard the stories—thieves, defilers, worse.

“Easy, hermana,” he called, raising empty hands. “Not here to gut you. Just scavenging.” His accent was thick, Huesca’s rough edges laced with mockery. “Name’s Mateo. You’re one of those Pillar-huggers, yeah?”

Elena’s grip tightened on her knife. “Elena. And we don’t hug pillars. We pray. What do you want?”

Mateo laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “Same as you, I bet. Answers. Truth. Or at least something to eat.” He nodded at her satchel. “Smells like figs. Trade you for a sip of this.” He pulled a dented flask from his jacket, the liquid inside sloshing amber.

“Keep your poison,” Elena snapped. “I don’t drink with heathens.”

“Heathens?” Mateo’s grin widened. “That’s rich, coming from someone who thinks the sky’s red because your God’s throwing a tantrum. Ever consider it’s just… science? Pyramids, beams, some old tech we don’t understand?”

Elena bristled but stepped closer, curiosity tugging at her. “You don’t believe in anything. That’s why you’re in Huesca, burning the world down.”

“Burning? Nah, we’re living.” Mateo leaned against the Fiat, his eyes glinting. “You Believers, you’re the ones hiding in your fields, singing psalms while the world rots. Ever think your Rapture was just aliens? Or a government trick? We’ve got a guy in Huesca, old professor, says the pyramids were some kind of global antenna. No God required.”

Elena’s jaw tightened. “And your professor explains the rivers? The vanishings? The Pope’s warning? ‘The sifting comes,’ he said. God took the faithful. We’re being tested.”

Mateo snorted, but his eyes flicked to the red sky, uneasy. “Tested? Then why’re we still here, hermana? I’m no saint, but you don’t look like a sinner. Maybe your God’s aim was off.”

They stood in tense silence, the wind carrying the faint scent of ash from Huesca’s bonfires. Elena’s mind raced. The Believers taught that the Rapture was divine, but doubts gnawed at her—why had good people vanished while others, like her skeptical father, stayed? She softened her tone. “What do you think it was, then? Really?”

Mateo hesitated, his bravado faltering. “Don’t know. But I saw it happen. My sister… she was there one second, gone the next. No light, no trumpets, just—poof. I’ve been digging through old tech, books, anything. Found a journal in Huesca, some scientist talking about ‘quantum shifts’ tied to the pyramids. Sounds crazy, but crazier than your angels?”

Elena’s heart quickened. “A journal? What else did it say?”

“Something about energy fields, global grids. Got equations I can’t read. You want it, it’s yours—for those figs.” He smirked, but his voice held an edge of hope, like he wanted her to take the bait.

She studied him. The Skeptics were liars, her elders warned, but Mateo’s eyes held a flicker of something real—grief, maybe, or desperation. “Show me the journal first,” she said. “Then we trade.”

Mateo nodded, motioning her to follow. “Deal. But we’re going to neutral ground—old gas station up the road. I’m not walking into your holy camp, and you’re not stepping into Huesca’s snake pit.”

The gas station was a skeleton of its former self, its pumps dry, the convenience store gutted. A faded poster for Cruzcampo beer hung crooked on the wall, a relic of a world that drank and laughed without fear. Elena and Mateo sat on the cracked pavement, the journal—a battered notebook—between them. Its pages were filled with frantic handwriting and diagrams of pyramids linked by lines, like a map of the red stars above.

Elena traced a sketch of the Giza pyramid. “This says the beams were… ‘phase-locked’? What’s that?”

Mateo shrugged, sipping from his flask. “Dunno. Professor says it’s like tuning a guitar string, but for the whole planet. Maybe the pyramids synced up, did something to reality. Popped people out of existence.”

“Or into heaven,” Elena countered, but her voice wavered. She thought of the Basilica’s statue of the Virgen, its serene face under the red sky. Her people prayed to it daily, but what if Mateo was right? What if the Rapture was just physics gone wrong?

Mateo leaned closer, his tone softer. “Look, Elena, I’m not saying there’s no God. But if He’s real, why’s He playing games? Why leave us with red rivers and a sky that looks like hell? You ever read Goya? ‘The sleep of reason produces monsters.’ Maybe we’re the monsters, left to figure it out.”

She met his gaze, her anger fading. “Goya was from here, you know. Zaragoza. He painted the Basilica’s frescoes. And he saw darkness, like us. But he still believed in something bigger.” She paused, weighing her words. “Maybe we’re both wrong. Maybe the truth’s in the middle—not all God, not all science.”

Mateo chuckled, but it wasn’t cruel. “A Believer with doubts. Didn’t see that coming. Alright, hermana, let’s say we team up. You’ve got stories, I’ve got scraps of tech. We hunt the truth together. Deal?”

Elena hesitated. The Believers would call her a fool; the Skeptics would mock Mateo for trusting her. But the journal’s pages burned in her mind, a puzzle that might unlock the Rapture’s secret. She handed him the figs. “Deal. But if you betray me, I’ll pray for your soul—and then I’ll gut you.”

Mateo laughed, raising his flask. “To truth, then. And to not getting gutted.”

As they stood, the red stars pulsed above, silent witnesses to a fragile alliance. Somewhere in the distance, the Ebro flowed red, and the pyramids hummed their ancient song. The truth was out there, in the crimson veil, waiting for two unlikely seekers to find it.