What was this place?
Everything seemed wrong—shrouded in darkness that wasn't quite night, filled with dust and smoke that moved like living things, choking the air with particles that caught nonexistent light and refracted it into sickly colors I had no names for.
No, it wasn't just dark. It was a battlefield. But not any battlefield I'd ever seen in history books or war documentaries. This was something else entirely—something that made World War trenches and modern combat zones look like schoolyard scuffles by comparison.
Screams echoed from every direction. No—not screams. Shrieks. The kind of sounds that came from throats not built for human vocal ranges, pitched too high and too low simultaneously, vibrating through my bones in ways that made my teeth ache and my skull feel like it might crack from internal pressure.
I spun around, trying to locate sources, trying to make sense of what I was witnessing.
