A searing blue sky, too vivid to be Earth’s, filled Kevin’s vision. He gasped, the air thick and heavy in his lungs, tasting of dust and strange minerals. Pain lanced through his back and shoulder, a brutal reminder of the collapsing world he had just escaped.

  Escaped?

  The memory returned in a crushing wave: the red sky, the running, the falling building.

  He sat up abruptly, a new panic seizing him. His right hand was still clenched tight. He looked down. There, her fingers intertwined with his, was Olivia.

  “Liv,” he croaked, his voice raw. He shook her gently. “Liv, are you okay?”

  Olivia’s eyes fluttered open, squinting against the alien sun. Disorientation gave way to terror, then to a fragile, desperate relief as she saw her father. She threw her arms around his neck, clinging to him.

  “Dad? What… where are we?”

  Kevin helped her up, and together they stared at their new reality. They stood in a vast, desolate plain under an unforgiving sun. The ground was cracked ochre earth, stretching to a shimmering horizon. And they were not alone.

  As far as they could see, people were scattered across the wastes—a million souls in various states of shock, rising from the dirt like a resurrected army. The silence was broken by a rising tide of confusion and fear.

  ---

  A man in a torn business suit stumbled to his feet, patting his pockets frantically. “My phone! Where’s my phone? I was just on a call with Tokyo!”

  A few feet away, a mother clutched a wailing toddler to her chest, her eyes wide with animal panic. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay, Mommy’s here,” she chanted, a mantra meant to soothe herself as much as her child. She spun in a slow circle, looking for a threat, for an answer, for anything that made sense.

  “Is this a dream?” a teenager muttered, pinching his own arm hard. “Did I get knocked out?”

  An elderly woman simply sat on the ground, rocking back and forth. “The light… the red light…” she whispered to no one. “It took Margaret. Just pulled her right out of the car next to me.”

  A booming voice cut through the cacophony, a large man with a thick beard shouting at the sky, his fists clenched. “What is this? Some kind of military experiment? You can’t do this! I have rights!”

  “Everyone, calm down!” yelled a woman who carried herself with an air of authority, perhaps a former teacher or manager. “Panicking won’t help! We need to find water, we need to get organized!”

  Her words were swallowed by the scale of the chaos. A young couple held each other, the girl sobbing into her boyfriend’s shoulder. “I’m scared, Mark. I want to go home.”

  From somewhere in the massive crowd, a single, clear voice of scientific disbelief rang out: “The atmospheric pressure is different. The solar radiation… this isn’t Earth. This is… this is impossible.”

  Olivia gripped her father’s arm tighter, her knuckles white. The sheer immensity of their situation settled upon them, a weight more crushing than any debris. They were no longer in England. They were nowhere anyone had ever known.

  The initial shock of displacement began to curdle into a deeper, more profound horror. The cries for phones and family were now punctuated by a new, more terrifying question, whispered at first, then spoken aloud, until it rippled through the crowd like a virus.

  “The sky… it was red,” a man murmured, his face ashen. “Just like on the news. Twelve years ago.”

  The words landed in the dry air and took root.

  A woman in a nurse’s scrubs, who had been quietly assessing a cut on a stranger’s forehead, froze. Her hands stilled as she looked up, her eyes widening with a devastating clarity. “Oh, my God,” she breathed. “The Vanishing. The First Catastrophe. This… this is where they went.”

  The theory spread, a wildfire of collective dread.

  “My uncle!” a young man shouted, spinning around to face the sea of faces. “He disappeared 12 years ago! From his own living room! Are you telling me he was… here? All this time?”

  An older man, his face a roadmap of grief, sank to his knees. “My boy,” he choked out, the confession torn from him. “We buried an empty casket. We always wondered… we always hoped… is he in this godforsaken place too?”

  The reality of their situation began to rewrite the past for every single person on that plain. The global tragedy they had only ever seen on documentaries and memorial specials was no longer history. It was their present. They were not the first; they were the next.

  “All those people,” Olivia whispered, her voice trembling as she clung to Kevin’s arm. “The million people… Dad, they weren’t vaporized. They were… relocated.”

  Kevin could only nod, his own mind reeling. The two graves he visited, the years of mourning—it had all been based on a lie of omission. Isaac and Beatrice hadn't simply ceased to exist. They had been taken to a place like this. A hellscape. The thought was simultaneously a shred of hope and a plunge into deeper despair. If they were here, what had they endured?

  The large, bearded man who had been yelling about his rights now stood silent, the fight gone out of him, replaced by a numb understanding. “So this is it,” he said to no one in particular. “This is the answer. We’re the new batch.”

  The woman who had called for organization now looked out at the desolation, her confident facade crumbling. “And if this is where the others came… then where are they now?” Her question hung in the air, more frightening than any before it. The wasteland was empty of everything but the newly arrived. The silence that had greeted them was no longer just empty; it was ominous. It was the silence of a world that had already consumed one million souls, and was now ready for its next meal.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  ---

  Elsewhere, in a chamber of shadows and cold, polished stone, Kaelan stood before a throne that was more a jagged obsidian monolith than a seat. The air hummed with latent power, thick and heavy.

  Upon the throne sat one of the Kottors. He was a giant of a man, thirteen feet of corded muscle clad in dark, ceremonial armor. His entire head was encased in a green-and-black lacquered mask, carved into the snarling visage of a fanged beast. Its emerald eyes glowed with a faint, malevolent light, the only living thing in the still, cold metal.

  "They are here," the masked figure intoned, his voice a low reverberation that seemed to emanate from the mask itself.

  Kaelan, head slightly bowed, replied, "Who?"

  "The Earthers. A new wave. I felt the dimensional distortion."

  Kaelan looked up, a flicker of confusion in his eyes. "Earthers? Why would you want them?"

  The Kottor leaned forward slightly, the emerald eyes narrowing. "Rampofo has been collecting them like trinkets. I don't know why, but I will not sit back and let him get ahead of me." He tapped a clawed gauntlet on the arm of his throne. "I am sure it has something to do with V2. It is no coincidence he developed it after they arrived last time." He leaned back, the gesture dripping with finality. "Go to Qatary. Get them for me."

  "All of them?" Kaelan asked, skepticism clear in his voice. "How am I supposed to bring them here? It's not like I can just carry them."

  "Take Rodney with you. He will handle the transport." The Kottor's masked head tilted. "So, have you adjusted to your new power?"

  Kaelan clenched his fist, and a faint crackle of white energy sparked around his knuckles. A slow, predatory smile spread across his face. "Yes. And I like it."

  The Kottor's laugh was a dry, rasping sound, like stones grinding together. "Of course you would. That is not just any Seed; it is Epic-tier. You cannot possibly repay me for such a gift." The glowing eyes fixed on him, pinning him in place. "Which means your life is mine... forever." He uncrossed his legs, the movement a clear dismissal. "Now, go get me my Earthers."

  ---

  A short while later, Kaelan pushed open the door to a lavishly appointed room, a stark contrast to the throne room's grim austerity. The air smelled of synth-spices and cheap energy drinks. Sprawled on a plush couch, an Aurellian young man with messy brown hair was engrossed in a video game, his eyes glued to the floating screen of a Seer. He was ten feet three inches, but currently looked like an overgrown child.

  "Hey, Rodney. We gotta go. We have a mission," Kaelan announced.

  Rodney didn't look away from the screen, his fingers flying across the controller. "Just wait a minute! Let me beat this dude! He's talking so much trash!"

  In a blur of motion, Kaelan crossed the room, grabbed Rodney by the collar of his expensive tunic, and lifted him off the couch with effortless strength.

  "Let's go," Kaelan said, his voice leaving no room for argument.

  "Hey! Wait, damn it! My rank!" Rodney shouted, his legs flailing for a moment before he found his footing.

  ---

  Soon after, they stood on a windswept helipad atop a high tower, the world stretching out below them. Rodney, now in functional tactical gear that he wore with an air of petulance, grumbled as he approached.

  "Where are we going again?"

  "Qatary."

  Rodney's jaw dropped. "Damn, man! That's far as hell! It's gonna take days for the waver to get there."

  Kaelan's lips curled into a sharp, exhilarated smile. "We're not taking a waver."

  "Then what are we using?"

  Instead of answering, Kaelan stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Rodney from behind in a firm, unbreakable grip.

  "Hey! Dude, I am not into guuuuu—" Rodney's protest was cut short, transforming into a scream that was ripped away by the wind.

  Kaelan's body erupted in a storm of raw power. A blinding, brilliant white light enveloped them both. There was a sound like the sky tearing in half—a single, catastrophic CRACK of thunder that shook the very tower.

  In that instant, they were no longer flesh and blood. They became pure, concentrated lightning.

  Kaelan, having fully incorporated the Epic-tier Lightning Seed, had transformed himself and everything he touched into living energy. They shot into the sky, not as two beings flying, but as a single, coherent bolt of lightning. A searing, jagged line of incandescent power burned across the heavens, leaving a temporary afterimage on the retina and a trail of rolling thunder in its wake.

  Inside the current of energy, Rodney's consciousness was a whirlwind of terror and awe. The world was a streaking blur of color and light, clouds vaporizing around them as they moved at the speed of lightning itself. He could feel the immense, terrifying power of Kaelan's will guiding them, a relentless force cutting through the atmosphere.

  Rodney screamed. "What the hell, man?"

  Kaelan's voice echoed not in Rodney's ears, but directly in his mind, calm and utterly controlled amidst the chaos.

  "Relax."

  To Be Continued...