Chapter 1: The Sky Ran Red
The screech didn’t sound like anything born of this earth. Animals possessed a throat, lungs, a biological rhythm to their terror. This sound was jagged and metallic, a violent tear through the atmosphere that set the fillings in my teeth vibrating.
In the center of our dusty, dirt-road market, the negotiation between our town Mayor and the Pillar General died instantly.
“Silver, hold onto me.”
My mother’s hand snapped around my wrist. Her grip was white-knuckled, completely fracturing her usual gentle demeanor. I was barely old enough to understand the politics of the world, but I knew enough to clutch tightly at the heavy, frayed fabric of her maternity dress. I looked up, my small face twisting in confusion as a sudden, suffocating shadow fell over our village.
We lived in a shanty town—a sprawling, chaotic cluster of wooden shacks, patched iron roofs, and muddy pathways huddled together in the dirt. It was a miserable, rustic place, built from the literal scraps of the old world after the sky fell at Heaven’s Crater. But it was home. And right now, the shadow stretching over it felt like a burial shroud.
Then came the rain.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Far off on the horizon, the colossal, dark walls of the Pillar of Hope loomed like a mocking god, untouched by the squalor out here. The sky above us was a blinding, clear blue. Yet, heavy droplets began to patter against the wooden crates and the dry earth.
“It’s red,” I whispered, staring at a thick splatter that had landed on the back of my small hand. I wiped it against my shirt, but it only left a smeared, crimson streak. “Mom, the rain is red.”
My mother looked up. Her eyes dilated with an ancient, primal horror. “Run,” she gasped, her voice cracking as she grabbed my hand. “Silver, we have to run right now.”
She pulled me forward, but her pace was heavy, anchored by the swollen curve of her belly where my unborn brother rested. Around us, the market dissolved into absolute madness. The quiet, rural village became a meat grinder of panic. Screaming families collided in the mud, trampling over dropped livestock and overturned wooden carts as they tried to flee.
Beside a rotting hitching post, an elderly woman from up the road collapsed, panting heavily and clutching her chest. I stopped, trying to pull my mother toward her.
“Ma’am, you need to get up!” I yelled over the din.
The woman didn’t answer. Her back suddenly arched at an impossible, sickening angle. With a wet, violent crunch, the fabric of her worn woolen coat tore open as her spine violently elongated. Her chest expanded, ballooning outward until her skin split like ripe fruit, revealing a glistening, dark tissue beneath that was entirely monstrous.
She let out a final, mangled scream before her body literally fractured in two, a geyser of thick blood and splintered bone raining down into the dirt.
From the ruins of the woman’s flesh, a creature rose. Its face was a shifting, faceless mass of sensory organs, its eyes glowing with a toxic, predatory light. A Metasapien. And its gaze locked directly onto me.
The creature lunged, its maw opening to reveal rows of needle-thin teeth. I squeezed my eyes shut, paralyzed by fear, bracing for the impact of a death I knew I couldn’t escape.
BOOM.
A massive shockwave knocked me flat into the mud. I scrambled backward, opening my eyes to find my dad. His face was twisted in a snarl, his muscles straining as he threw his entire weight against the thrashing monster, pinning its snapping jaws back with a heavy iron pipe.
“Silver! Grab your mother and get to the gates!” my dad roared, his boots skidding in the dirt against the creature’s unnatural, terrifying strength. “Don’t look back!”
Before the creature could overpower him, a blur of dark fabric intercepted the beast.
“Mana Boost!”
A voice rang out, crisp and precise. A heavy, dark-forged blade cleaved through the air, humming with an invisible, vibrating pressure. In three fluid, blinding strokes, the Metasapien was dissected, its black blood dissolving into ash before it even touched the ground.
Standing over the dissolving corpse was a man clad in the dark, armored uniform of the Pillars—a Blood Sword.
“We have to move. The perimeter is entirely compromised,” the soldier said, his voice flat but urgent.
My dad didn’t waste a second. He scooped my mother into his arms, while the soldier hoisted me onto his heavy, armored back. We ran. We tore through the narrow, chaotic alleys of our burning shanty town, leaving the rustic wood and iron behind, sprinting toward the colossal, monolithic wall that marked the boundary of safety.
As we neared the massive, shimmering energy curtain of the Great Barrier, I looked over the soldier’s shoulder at my dad.
“How...” I swallowed hard, the wind whipping dust into my eyes. “How did you do that? The sword... the light?”
The soldier glanced back at me, his expression grim beneath his visor. “The Pillars teach you to command the energy inside you, kid. It’s the only thing that keeps the monsters back.” He shifted his gaze to my dad, his grip tightening on the hilt of his core-smelted blade. “We’re near the safe zone. You’re a vanguard asset. You know you can’t cross over yet.”
My dad slowed his pace, gently setting my mother on her feet just fifty yards from the humming, electric blue threshold of the barrier. He stooped down in front of me, his hands resting heavily on my shoulders. He didn’t look like a warrior; he just looked like a tired man trying to smile through the end of the world.
“Take good care of your mother, Silver,” he said softly, ruffling my hair with his calloused hand. “And look after your brother when he gets here. Be the anchor.”
“Dad? Aren’t you coming with us?” My voice trembled, tears finally spilling over.
“Not yet,” he said, stepping backward into the dust and turning his back to the barrier. “Go.”
My mom grabbed my hand, her face wet with silent tears, and pulled me through the humming, electric veil of the Great Barrier. I looked back one last time. My dad and the Blood Sword were already sprinting back into the smoke, drawing their weapons as the screeches echoed through the ruins of our town.
That was the last time I ever saw my father.
