The Blue Fleet
On the outskirts of Seoul, nestled between weathered buildings and quiet
streets, a small, pristine structure had emerged—almost as if it had
materialized overnight. As twilight draped the city in its slow descent, a
subtle hush spread over the skyline. In the heart of the city, countless lights
flickered with their own whispered stories. But on that corner, one sign alone
cut through the dusk with clarity:
"Sia Obstetrics and Gynecology."
Tomorrow, it would open its doors.
A dream realized—etched not just in concrete and glass, but in years of study,
sacrifice, and resolve.
It was the embodiment of Yucia’s vision.
Earlier that day, the building had been alive with motion: voices, clipboards,
final checks, laughter tinged with nerves. But now, it had fallen still. The
staff had long since gone home, the commotion had faded, and the air had
settled into a near-sacred silence.
Only one figure remained.
At just twenty-two years old, Yucia, the hospital’s director, moved quietly
through the empty halls, her white coat swaying gently with each step. Every
corner she passed, every detail she adjusted—it was hers. The press had hailed
her as a prodigy, a phenomenon. "Medical genius" was the headline on more than
one article.
But for her, medicine was never about prestige.
It was like breathing. Like drinking water.
Effortless. Natural. Joyful.
She had entered university early, graduated faster than her peers, and now
stood where few her age had even dreamed of reaching. Her name on the building
wasn’t just a title—it was a quiet triumph against every doubt she'd ever heard.
Tonight, her heart pulsed with a peculiar mix of elation and unease.
Excitement for the lives she would help bring into the world.
Dread for the unknowns she could not yet name.
She paused at a window and looked out over the city, now glittering like a sea
of stars. Beneath those lights lived countless people, each caught in their own
dramas—births, breakups, heartaches, recoveries, hope.
One by one, someday, many of them would pass through these walls.
And in this very ward, new lives would begin.
The miracle of birth—life’s greatest secret—would unfold again and again.
The thought sent a ripple through her chest.
But so did the weight. The realization that she would be standing alone in the
center of those moments.
No one else. Just her.
Then—
a sound.
Soft, wet.
Like something heavy dragging across a concrete floor.
She froze. The silence had been total. But this... this was real. Not imagined.
And there—beneath that dragging, a faint sobbing.
Not quite human.
Not quite... anything.
The sound returned.
Low, guttural. Like something wet and heavy scraping its way across rough
linoleum.
And under it—an unmistakable sob.
Human, yet… not.
Yucia’s eyes widened.
That sound—it wasn’t new.
It had been invading her dreams for the past week.
Each night, just before she awoke, she’d hear it. At first, she’d written it
off as stress. Her nerves, overworked and stretched thin before the grand
opening.
But the sound had grown sharper, more persistent.
Even after waking, the aftertaste of it would linger in her ears, leaving a
residue of dread.
And now… it wasn’t in her head.
It was here.
In the maternity ward.
In the real world.
She tried to rationalize, to tell herself it was fatigue, an echo of a dream.
But the sound grew louder.
And closer.
Not from within her mind—
but from the hallway.
From somewhere in the dark.
It moved with an eerie purpose, cold and deliberate, slithering through the
empty corridors.
Closer.
Heavier.
Breathing.
Crying.
“No way... I heard that. In my dream. Not here... Not really...”
Her voice cracked in the stillness, a whisper barely above a breath.
She straightened her back, slow and cautious, and turned toward the hallway’s
end—
toward the dark.
And there it was.
A silhouette.
Something standing.
A figure.
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Impossible.
Wrong.
Something that should never move was standing.
An old woman.
Ancient. Perhaps five hundred years old.
But no—she wasn’t alive.
Her face was pale, the color of ash, lined deep like cracked stone left in the
dark for centuries.
Her lips were dry, colorless, split like winter twigs.
Her eyes—lifeless hollows. Not blind, but empty, like looking into a well with
no bottom.
Her clothes clung to her in torn strips, worn thin by time and air.
Her feet—bare, brittle, wrong.
The room chilled.
The air thickened.
The aura of death froze the walls.
Yucia’s lungs seized.
And then—
she saw it.
Not just the corpse.
But the contradiction.
The old woman’s belly—
round, swollen, full.
A body unmistakably dead, yet grotesquely pregnant.
It defied logic.
Life and death, tangled together in a single form.
Vitality bulging from rot.
Movement inside stillness.
It shattered every law of nature Yucia had ever known.
The corpse stood motionless.
Its eyes—those empty wells—stared straight at her.
No emotion. No thought. Just presence.
A visitor from a boundary that should never be crossed.
“Who... Who is she?
Why here?
How?”
The questions pounded through her, but there were no answers.
Just a scream stuck in her throat.
Then—
The body collapsed.
It fell like a puppet cut from its strings, a sack of ancient bones and skin
crashing to the ground.
No movement.
No life.
But—
the belly moved.
Yucia gasped.
She stepped back, heart in her throat.
The corpse lay still, eyes shut.
But the belly writhed.
Subtle.
Sinister.
Alive.
A ripple passed beneath the skin.
Then again.
Like something trying to swim its way out.
“God… what is this…?”
She could barely breathe.
It wasn’t possible.
Not medically. Not spiritually. Not in any world she knew.
But she felt it—
the life inside.
And the danger it was in.
Not with logic.
With instinct.
The deep, buried part of her that had saved lives before her mind had time to
think—
that part screamed:
It’s alive.
And it’s in danger.
Now.
No time to hesitate.
Fear still clung to her, but training took over.
Something deeper than reason.
Deeper than fear.
Her body moved.
She ran—through sterile halls, down the corridor—to the surgical wing.
Hands trembling and sure at once, she pulled on gloves, reached for a scalpel.
The sharpest one.
The cleanest edge.
Her heart thundered, but her grip was steady.
She had never practiced for this.
But something inside her had always been preparing.
She knelt beside the fallen body.
Closed her eyes.
And whispered:
“I’m sorry… whoever you were… rest in peace…”
Then she cut.
With practiced hands, Yucia made the incision—
flesh parted like paper under the scalpel’s edge.
But what she found inside was not human.
There was no blood, no tissue, no organs.
Instead, a strange membrane pulsed faintly beneath the cut.
Pale blue.
Almost luminous.
Thick, opaque—like the skin of some deep-sea creature from a world untouched by
sunlight.
It shimmered as she peeled it back.
And then—
light.
A soft, greenish glow filled the room.
From within that unearthly cocoon,
four tiny figures emerged.
Slowly. Calmly.
As if this moment had always been planned.
They did not cry.
They did not squirm.
They simply… stood.
Yucia froze.
They weren’t human.
They weren’t anything she could name.
Their bodies were small, barely the size of toddlers.
Their heads—disproportionately large,
their black, glistening eyes wide and endless,
like twin galaxies that had learned to stare.
Their skin shimmered like wet moss,
a living surface shifting subtly with movement,
neither solid nor liquid,
but something in between.
They stepped out of the corpse’s belly like guests arriving at a station.
And then they turned—
all four of them, in perfect unison—
and stared directly at Yucia.
There was no fear in their eyes.
No curiosity.
No malice.
Only presence.
A deep, ancient presence.
Something older than fear.
Yucia couldn’t move.
The scalpel shook in her hand.
Her mind, trained for emergency, for trauma, for birth and blood and surgery—
was blank.
What... what are you...?
And then—
one of them looked at her.
Truly looked.
And though its mouth didn’t move,
and no sound passed the air—
Yucia heard it.
Not with her ears.
With her mind.
A voice.
A wave.
A pure burst of meaning delivered not in words,
but in thought itself.
— Yucia —
She gasped.
“You… You know my name…?”
Panic rose in her chest like wildfire.
Her name.
This being knew her name.
The thoughts continued, flowing into her mind like static on a perfect
frequency:
— We are not from your world.
We come from far beyond what you call time.
From before your beginning.
Before the Big Bang. —
What...?
The Big Bang...?
Her breath caught in her throat.
The words echoed in her skull.
“Before the Big Bang?”
Was there even a before?
What did that mean?
The voice pulsed again, cool and deliberate:
“You call it the Big Bang.
We call it Calmeon’s Egg.”
“But it wasn’t born—it was broken.
The universe did not begin in peace or light.
It began in violence.
Calmeon, a mind beyond gods,
tore open the shell that sealed all of existence.
And what followed was irreversible—
time, space, matter—
everything spilled out in a single, final rupture.”
Calmeon...?
What is that? A being? A god?
“What… what is Calmeon?”
The room felt suddenly smaller.
The walls pulsed.
Reality shifted like liquid.
The reply came:
— Calmeon was the greatest mind of our star.
A brilliance unmatched by gods or time.
A genius who broke the silence of existence.
Who defied the rules of life and death.
Calmeon cracked the Egg.
And this... universe... was born. —
Yucia’s knees weakened.
“A mind beyond the gods…? That’s… that’s absurd…”
She stared at the four beings.
They stood still, glowing softly,
their eyes like twin abysses filled with starlight.
And in those eyes,
she saw no lies.
She breathed in slowly.
But something had changed.
The corpse was gone.
She looked down.
The body—
the ancient woman, the impossible womb—
vanished.
“Where is she...? She was just here... right here...”
The green beings responded without delay, their voices like chords in her mind:
— She was Ani Reisa’s mother.
She came only to deliver us.
Now her task is complete.
She has returned to our world. —
Ani Reisa...?
That name. It meant nothing—
and everything.
Reisa. Calmeon.
Were they names? Titles? Concepts?
Her thoughts spun.
But deep inside,
something whispered:
