They ran.
The world around them crumbled into ruin. Crimson fire bled through the horizon, devouring rooftops and trees alike. Screams tore through the air—raw, panicked, human—mingling with the sharp, rhythmic crack of stone collapsing beneath its own weight. Smoke smothered the sky in rolling curtains of gray, swallowing the sun until only an amber glow lingered above like the dying eye of some slumbering god.
Tovan stumbled forward, heart hammering so loudly it drowned out thought. His legs moved with clumsy defiance, but it wasn't enough. Not when the image still burned behind his eyes: a lightless figure hanging in the sky.
Moments earlier, Saev had seized his mother's hand and yanked her toward the east road, the path that led to the old church. Her voice rang out, distant, calling his name—but the sound came as if from under water, muffled and strange. His limbs had turned to stone. His lungs, frozen. The world moved on without him.
He had witnessed something his mind could not explain.
A figure hovered just above the earth, unmoving yet impossibly alive. Cloaked in a long, flowing coat stitched with symbols too intricate for human tongues to name, the being exuded an aura of sovereignty. The glyphs that adorned his garment writhed like living veins, pulsing to a rhythm older than time, each line humming in resonance with truths mortals were not meant to glimpse.
His face was hidden beneath the folds of his hood. No eyes. No expression. And yet, the shadows where his features should be seemed to see everything.
Tovan's knees nearly buckled. There was no doubt in his soul—he was beholding something ancient. Something divine, or perhaps worse: something beyond divinity. The air around the figure rippled as if reality itself rejected his presence. The sky bent. The ground trembled. Language failed. His presence wasn't merely felt—it commanded.
He didn't walk. He descended.
Saev had turned back only once. Just once. Long enough to see the man cloaked in shifting symbols, the one spoken of only in dying breath and forbidden scripture. Her breath hitched. A single tear slipped down her cheek. Then she pulled their mother tighter and fled into the smoke.
Tovan, stunned into stillness, remained until the heat of a nearby explosion snapped him back to life. A fractured wall shattered near his feet, scattering dust and brick across the earth. Something within him screamed.
Move!
He ran.
Behind him, the heavens roared as more of the village succumbed to ruin. They reached the old church—a structure of thick stone walls and black iron doors, aged by time and soot. Beneath it lay an underground sanctuary, meant for prayer, but now it had become a last shelter. Saev and her mother, along with dozens of villagers, crowded into its belly, their breaths tight and shallow in the dim light of the sanctuary's lamps.
But the safety was a lie.
In the silence that followed, someone counted the survivors. Voices whispered. Faces were searched. That's when it was noticed—Tovan's mother was gone.
Tovan's heart fell.
"No," he whispered at first, then louder. "No—she's not here!"
The words echoed like a crack in the room's fragile stillness. A panic lit in his chest. He lunged for the exit. "We have to find her!"
His father joined him, desperation driving his movements. But hands shot out from the crowd, pulling them back with fearful strength.
"You'll lead them here!" a woman shrieked, her face pale with dread. "If they see you, we'll all die!"
Tovan's father thrashed in their grasp. "That's my wife! Let me go!"
Shouts erupted, fear tearing through what little order remained. The room trembled not just from the distant chaos outside, but from the chaos brewing within. Saev, in another chamber, sat beside the trembling form of an old villager who clutched a carved wooden relic. He held his knees to his chest, the image of him still vivid in his mind—the man in the coat. The One cloaked in symbols. The Unknown One. A name she hadn't learned, but somehow knew.
He wasn't just terrifying.
He was sacred.
Then—
POP.
A wet explosion sounded from the other room. Screams followed instantly. Blood splattered across the stone walls like ink across parchment.
Another POP.
Another scream. Another life extinguished.
Then another.
The sanctuary erupted into chaos. Panic became tangible—a beast with claws and fangs. People rushed blindly toward doors and tunnels, trampling one another in their desperation to escape.
In the center aisle stood a man—silent, unmoving. His eyes hollow.
"It's no use," he muttered, as if speaking to the void. "They always find us…"
He did not run. He only waited.
That broke the final dam.
Tovan, his father, and Saev fled through the back, through a narrow passage that led into the open fields. Around them, villagers scattered, some barefoot, some clutching crying children. Behind them, screams turned to gurgles. Then silence.
Tovan's lungs burned as they sprinted through dew-wet grass. As they crossed the field behind the village, the ruins smoldered behind them like a corpse set alight. And then—he saw him.
The elder of their village, slumped beside the old well, blood pooling beneath him. Tovan reached out, instinct overriding reason—but the movement cost him.
The moment's hesitation separated him from the others.
A blast roared from behind, sending a shockwave of fire and splinters. Tovan flew sideways, crashing into a half-buried stone. Dust and pain engulfed him. He coughed, eyes stinging, ears ringing with the phantom screams of the dying.
Somewhere else—Saev clutched his mother's hand, sprinting with the stampede. Feet pounded mud and gravel. People screamed, shoved, fell. In the chaos—
She lost her.
One moment, his mother was there. The next—gone.
Saev turned, screamed her name, again and again. But the crowd pushed him onward. A child stumbled. Someone fell on top of him. He lost his footing, slid down a steep slope carved into the side of the mountain. His body scraped rock and root. Bloodied and bruised, he finally crashed into a thicket.
Then—
Blackness.
Elsewhere, his mother ran, eyes wild, heart fraying. She called for her son, but her voice was drowned beneath the cries of dozens. She stumbled forward—but then the world… changed.
Black feathers fell from the sky.
Thousands of them.
Silent.
Ethereal.
Weightless, yet heavy with meaning.
One brushed against her cheek.
And everything stopped.
Time shattered like glass.
The wind halted. Villagers froze—some mid-scream, others mid-step. The world became a painting, motionless and horrifying. A woman's hand hovered above her child's shoulder, never touching. A man's mouth remained open in a silent cry. Even the birds in the sky hung motionless, wings suspended like forgotten notes in a broken symphony.
Only she remained aware.
Her chest heaved. Her heart pounded louder than thunder. Sweat trickled down her brow. Her pupils darted, but her body refused to move. Her muscles screamed, but obeyed nothing.
And then—
A voice.
Low, unyielding, inhuman. It did not speak—it declared.
"How dare the sheep run from their fate."
It came from the heavens—or perhaps from within.
He descended.
The man in the long coat. The Unknown One. The one who had watched, unmoving, as the village crumbled. Now, he lowered himself to the ground as if gravity were an obedient servant. His feet touched the grass, and the world wilted.
Around him, the frozen villagers began to decay.
Skin cracked and peeled away like old paint. Eyes turned to ash. Mouths opened in unheard agony. Muscles withered. Bones splintered. They crumbled, one by one, into dust.
No sound escaped them.
Only the wind returned, carrying the remains into the air like burnt leaves.
The man in the coat stood alone.
The symbols on his garment pulsed—faintly, rhythmically—like the last heartbeat of a dying star. The coat itself fluttered in a wind that came from nowhere, a breeze that existed only for him. His hood still shadowed his face, but even unseen, he radiated presence.
A silence settled over the field, sacred and suffocating.
And all that remained… was him.