Waking was violence.
Not the gentle surfacing from sleep that humans were designed for. This was consciousness being forced back into a body that had existed without it for too long. Every nerve ending fired simultaneously. Every muscle contracted. Every sense overwhelmed with input that had no context, no filter, no gradual adjustment period.
Marcus Hayes gasped and found he had lungs again.
He tried to scream and discovered his throat worked.
He opened his eyes and immediately regretted it.
The light was wrong. Not dim or bright—*wrong*. It came from multiple sources simultaneously, some of which defied normal physics. Bioluminescent plants growing from what used to be concrete. Crystalline formations embedded in the ruins of buildings, glowing with internal light that pulsed like something living. The sky above—if it could still be called sky—was a bruised purple-gray that seemed to shift between states, as if it couldn't decide what color it was supposed to be.
He was lying in rubble. His rubble. The bathroom floor where he'd tried to die was gone, merged with something else. The tiles were there but wrong—part ceramic, part crystalline growth, part something organic that felt warm to the touch when he pushed himself up.
His hands were shaking. Everything was shaking. His body, the ground, the very air around him.
He managed to get to his knees before the nausea hit.
Marcus vomited bile and something else—something dark and viscous that shouldn't have been inside a human body. The act of expelling it was painful in ways he couldn't articulate. His stomach burned. His throat felt like it was tearing. Whatever Lilith had done to reconstruct him hadn't been gentle about clearing out the residue.
When the heaving stopped, he remained on his hands and knees, gasping, trying to process the simple fact that he was alive when he shouldn't be.
*You're welcome*, Lilith's voice whispered in the back of his consciousness. Not out loud. Inside. A presence that had taken up residence in the spaces where his thoughts formed.
"Fuck you," Marcus said aloud, his voice raw and unfamiliar.
*Such gratitude*, she replied, and he could feel her amusement like something physical crawling across his skin.
He tried to stand and discovered his legs weren't entirely cooperative. The muscles were working, but the signals from his brain to his limbs felt delayed, as if his nervous system was still relearning how to function. He managed it eventually—standing in the ruins of his former life, in a world that had been fundamentally altered while he watched from outside of time.
The neighborhood was unrecognizable.
Houses that had stood for decades were twisted into new shapes, their suburban uniformity destroyed by the collision of two realities. Some structures were partially intact but merged with crystalline growths that seemed to grow from the ground itself. Others had collapsed entirely, creating hills of rubble that were slowly being consumed by vegetation that definitely hadn't existed on Earth.
The street where he'd lived—where he'd walked his dog, where he'd driven to work every morning, where he'd pretended his marriage was functional—was gone. In its place was something that resembled a canyon more than a road. The ground had split open, revealing layers of rock and crystal and something else that glowed faintly in the dim light.
And everywhere, absolutely everywhere, there were signs of death.
Bodies partially visible in the rubble. Some human, some not. Some identifiable as having once been people, others transformed into something else during the collision. Marcus recognized a neighbor's car—bright red sedan that had always been parked two houses down—but it was embedded in a crystalline formation that had grown through its engine block. The windows were shattered. Something had died inside it.
He turned away before his brain could process the details.
The silence was almost worse than the destruction. Not complete silence—there were sounds. The wind moving through impossible architecture. The faint hum of crystalline formations resonating with each other. The distant sounds of things moving through the ruins. But no human sounds. No cars. No voices. No lawn mowers or dogs barking or children playing.
Just the Confluence settling into its new shape, indifferent to what it had destroyed.
Marcus took a step forward and nearly fell when the ground shifted beneath him. Not an earthquake. The ground itself was unstable, still adjusting to the new laws of physics being imposed on it. He steadied himself against what had once been a retaining wall and was now part of a larger crystalline structure.
The crystal was warm to the touch. Not quite alive, but not quite dead either. He pulled his hand away quickly.
"I need to move," he said aloud, more to hear his own voice than because anyone was listening. "Need to find... something. Anything."
*You need to survive*, Lilith whispered. *And survival in the Confluence requires adaptation. The weak died in the first hours. The inflexible died in the first days. Only those capable of change will see the first year.*
"Great advice," Marcus muttered. "Really helpful."
He started walking in what he thought might be north, though directions felt negotiable in this new geography. The sun—if that distant light source could still be called the sun—was positioned wrong in the sky. Too high for morning. Too low for afternoon. Simply existing in a place that didn't match his memories of how solar mechanics worked.
The first creature he encountered was dead.
It lay in the ruins of what used to be a park—or what Marcus's memory insisted had been a park. Now it was a clearing of twisted vegetation and crystalline growths, and in the center of that clearing was a corpse.
The thing was massive. Easily twelve feet long, quadrupedal, covered in scales that reflected the ambient light in nauseating patterns. It had too many joints in its legs. Its head was wrong—not quite reptilian, not quite mammalian, something in between that human evolution hadn't prepared him to classify. Its mouth was open, revealing rows of teeth that seemed designed for tearing rather than chewing.
Whatever had killed it had done so violently. There were wounds in its side that looked like they'd been made by something sharp and precise. Blood—if the dark fluid leaking from the wounds could be called blood—had pooled beneath it, mixing with the soil and creating a substance that was neither liquid nor solid.
Marcus approached carefully, his military training screaming at him that dead things could still be dangerous. He circled the corpse, examining it from multiple angles, trying to understand what it was and what might have killed it.
The wounds were clean. Professional. Not the work of another creature fighting for survival but something tactical. Something intelligent.
"You shouldn't be here."
The voice came from behind him. Female. Calm. With an edge that suggested the speaker was armed and ready to use whatever weapon she carried.
Marcus turned slowly, hands visible, body language non-threatening. The last thing he needed was to survive a year in limbo only to get killed by a trigger-happy survivor.
The woman standing at the edge of the clearing was not human.
Elven, his brain supplied after a moment of processing features that were almost but not quite like a human woman's. Pointed ears. Skin that was darker than his but with an earth-toned quality that seemed natural rather than tanned. Eyes that were too green, too bright, too focused. She held a blade—not a sword exactly, but something between a long knife and a short sword—and her stance suggested she knew exactly how to use it.
She was also, Marcus realized, the first living thing he'd encountered that wasn't actively trying to kill him. That was something.
"I wasn't aware there were rules about where I could be," Marcus said carefully, keeping his hands visible.
The woman's eyes narrowed. "You're human."
"Last I checked."
"You shouldn't have survived this long." She gestured at him with the blade—not threatening exactly, but making it clear she could threaten if necessary. "Humans who wander the Wilds alone don't last more than a few hours. Either the creatures kill them, or the environment does. You look like you've been out here for days."
"It's... complicated."
She studied him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she seemed to come to some decision. "Can you fight?"
"I was military. Combat engineer. Did three deployments before..." He trailed off. Before what? Before his life fell apart? Before his wife betrayed him? Before he tried to end it all? "Before the Stitching."
The woman's expression shifted slightly. Not quite sympathy, but acknowledgment. "Then you understand how to follow orders and stay quiet when it matters."
"Why does that matter?"
"Because there's a pack of Rivenmaws half a mile from here, and they're going to be drawn to the smell of this corpse within the next ten minutes. If we're still here when they arrive, we're both going to die. And I don't particularly feel like dying today."
Marcus glanced at the dead creature, then back at the woman. "What killed it?"
"I did. It was scouting ahead of its pack. I got lucky." She sheathed the blade in a motion so smooth it barely registered. "But luck doesn't last, and standing around explaining things to confused humans is how luck runs out. So. Are you coming with me, or are you planning to stay here and become part of their feeding cycle?"
It wasn't really a question.
Marcus followed her.
The woman moved through the ruins with the kind of ease that suggested she'd been doing this for a while. She didn't waste motion. Didn't hesitate at corners. Knew exactly where to step to avoid making noise on the unstable terrain. Marcus followed as quietly as he could, his military training coming back in fragments.
Stay low. Watch your footing. Keep distance but don't lose sight. Standard patrol mechanics, just in an environment that violated every standard he'd been trained for.
They moved through what had been a residential neighborhood and was now something between a canyon and a forest. The buildings were merged with vegetation that grew at impossible angles. Crystalline formations jutted from the ground like teeth. The air smelled wrong—ozone and copper and something organic that made his stomach turn.
Behind them, Marcus heard sounds. Multiple sounds. Movement through the rubble. The clicking and chittering of things communicating in a language that wasn't language but pure predatory instinct.
The Rivenmaws had found the corpse.
The woman picked up her pace without looking back. Marcus followed, his heart rate increasing, his body remembering what it felt like to be hunted. He'd felt this before—in Fallujah, in Kandahar, in a dozen places where being slow meant being dead. This wasn't different. The environment was alien, but the threat was universal.
They reached a structure that might have been a parking garage in its previous life. Now it was a defensible position with multiple exits. The woman led him inside, moving through the darkness with certainty that suggested she'd been here before. They climbed stairs that were partially collapsed, navigated corridors that had been twisted into new configurations, and finally emerged onto what used to be the roof.
From this vantage point, Marcus could see the extent of the transformation.
Denver was gone. In its place was something that resembled a city in the same way a corpse resembles a person—technically accurate but fundamentally wrong. Buildings stood but were merged with alien architecture. Streets existed but followed impossible geometries. And everywhere, absolutely everywhere, there were creatures moving through the ruins. Some large, some small, all of them adapted to this new reality in ways humans clearly hadn't been.
"Welcome to the Confluence," the woman said, her voice dry. "Try not to die in the first week. It's embarrassing for everyone involved."
Marcus stared at the transformed landscape, processing the full scope of what a year of observation from the void hadn't quite prepared him for. Seeing it from the outside had been one thing. Being *in* it was something else entirely.
"What's your name?" he asked finally.
The woman glanced at him, and for the first time, something like amusement flickered across her face. "Lysera. Lysera Thorne. And you're going to need to work on your survival instincts if you plan to make it to Haven in one piece."
"Haven?"
"The only safe settlement within three days' travel. Assuming we don't get eaten on the way." She turned away from the edge of the roof. "Rest for ten minutes. Drink if you have water. We leave when the Rivenmaws finish feeding and move on."
Marcus wanted to ask a dozen questions. Where was Haven? What were Rivenmaws? How had she survived? How long had the world been like this?
But Lysera had already moved to the other side of the roof, settling into a position that allowed her to watch multiple approach angles simultaneously. The conversation, it seemed, was over.
Marcus sat down with his back against a partially collapsed wall and tried to process the simple fact that he was alive in a world that had ended.
And somewhere in the back of his consciousness, Lilith whispered: *You see now, little soldier? This is what becomes of the world when the old gives way to the new. And you... you will be instrumental in shaping what comes next.*
Marcus closed his eyes and wished, not for the first time, that he'd actually managed to die.