Preface When I first imagined this story, I wasn’t trying to write fiction. I was trying to put words around a question that had burned in my heart for years: What if the veil really broke? What if heaven was no longer hidden from us? The Bible speaks of the firmament — the great expanse separating the waters above from the waters below. For generations, it was seen as myth, poetry, a relic of ancient imagination. But I wondered — what if it was more? What if the firmament wasn’t just sky, but a veil between the seen and unseen, the barrier between our small world and the greater glory of God? This book is my attempt to imagine what it would be like if that veil tore open, not someday in some distant apocalypse, but now. What if ordinary people — neighbors, children, skeptics, broken souls — suddenly found themselves standing under a sky split wide, the Light of God flooding in, and nothing could ever be the same again? The story that follows is both vision and parable. It is not meant to predict the end of the world, but to awaken us to what it might mean to live unveiled — to see ourselves, our neighbors, our nations, and our God without the shadows in between. I wrote this not just as a story, but as a prayer. A prayer that we, too, might feel the hum of the sky, hear the whisper of the Spirit, and dare to believe that heaven is closer than we think. So take a breath. Open your heart. Step into the Light. The firmament is thinner than you know. — Kristy Sasnett