Embers danced in the air as the great hall was engulfed in flames and a strange red hue; the stone beams holding up the once-beautiful rotunda slowly losing their sturdiness. The rotunda itself had a large gash bisecting it, having been blown in during the surprise attack. Through the recently-formed crevice, a blood-red moon could be glimpsed, obscured by the smoke. At the center, once a round table filled with delicacies, was now nothing more than a mound of dirt, with a crater surrounding it. The grandiose staircases still stood strong, encircling the main chamber. All of the stained glass had been shattered by the explosion that rumbled the entire United Global Coalition headquarters, leaving behind only bare frames, like the skeletal remains of a thoroughly picked-through carcass.

  What had been meant to be a celebration between the nations of Everstar had turned into a traumatizing night within the span of ten minutes - corpses littered every corner of the room, some in more than one piece.

  Lying amongst the carnage were the children of the royals, and amongst those children was Alaric Draco, the crown prince of Dragonheart City. He had only just regained consciousness after the initial explosion and saw the heads of his mother and father only a few meters from him. He stumbled over in a daze, only to realize their bodies were mangled, intertwined with twisted pieces of metal. Looking around, he saw his siblings in a similar state.

  “GHAKH!”

  At the edge of the room stood the silhouette of a person plunging their blade through the chest of the prince of the Stormcrest Kingdom, the prince’s parents’ corpses filled with holes at their feet.

  The silhouette stepped out of the shadows, the fire that was slowly devouring the newly-made tomb lighting up the edges of the darkness, allowing Alaric to make out its features. The figure looked like one of royalty, though Alaric could not recall any nations that contained the colors of the figure’s armor, which consisted of black, purple, and gold. Wearing black armored plates, a purple hue emanated from the crevices where the armor would break to allow for flexibility. A purple cape flowed down the royal’s back, and its beautiful golden crown was seemingly moulded onto its helmet. Golden patterns crept along the entirety of its armor, with the shoulder guards arching over where the cape was attached to the armor..

  “SCREEE!”

  Alaric’s neck snapped up to the ceiling, only for his mind to grind to a halt as he attempted to process what he was looking at. Strange creatures crawled across the walls; their bodies were hard to describe; they looked as though they had no eyes, and the skin on their bodies seemed loose from the armpits to the elbows. They had elongated arms that bent at unnatural angles, as if they were stretched using the rack, but rather than the limbs being torn off, their bones simply expanded.

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  Suddenly, one leapt down, causing Alaric to almost vomit. Its skin was loose, because it served as wings; it used its loose, fleshy appendages to glide from the ceiling to a pillar, and Alaric noted that it had almost no internal organs. Its entire front was open, with only an exposed ribcage containing its beating heart. All along the “interior” were sharp hook-like features.

  Moving slowly, Alaric crawled to the nearest entrance, which was behind the left stairwell. However, right before he could reach it, a boot landed right in front of his face. Looking up, he saw a woman wearing a uniform resembling that of something a soldier would wear. Her uniform had a sleek black design, a leather belt lined with gold, and gold epaulettes. On her belt’s buckle was a crest of an unknown nation, with a cracked six-pronged star.

  She began to reach down for Alaric when suddenly a loud BANG! Rang out. The woman collapsed as the hall roared to life. Dragonspear, Gearspring, Dustgrave, and Iceridge soldiers rushed into the halls, firing at the creatures on the ceilings. A Dragonspear soldier helped Alaric to his feet, seemingly the one who had shot the soldier, as his musket still had smoke emerging from the barrel. Alaric looked around and saw the princess of Gearspring, Nyx Emberstone, and the prince of Dustgrave, Carter Tremblay, running alongside him. The royal families of Iceridge and Stormcrest had been completely wiped out, which would no doubt cause a power vacuum and lead to the collapse of both kingdoms.

  As the trio of surviving royals emerged from the United Global Coalition’s newly destroyed headquarters, they were met with the hellish sight of the festival ground erupting into a battlefield, as Unity City burned to ashes. All throughout the city, soldiers were engaging in firefights, arrows and bullets whizzing through the air at high speeds. Alaric watched as one of the unknown nation’s soldiers was riddled with arrows from a mechanical crossbow, their screams piercing through the firefights. The booms of cannons echoed throughout the streets as the three royals were swiftly escorted to the town’s Continental United Mainline station. The tracks rattled as the train approached, but suddenly, the train was attacked by those flying creatures from before. One of them wrapped itself around a soldier, as though it were hugging him, but this was a hug of death.

  His screams were loud as the creature began to vibrate, blood sploshing from underneath its wings to the ground. The surrounding soldiers were stunned, horrified at what they were witnessing, until one of them finally fired her musket into the head of the hook-winged creature, blasting its head clean off. The creature unraveled its wings and revealed the horrific sight underneath. The man had lost almost all of his skin, with a few patches remaining. Chunks of his flesh were missing, with bones showing in some areas, yet somehow, he was still alive. That didn’t last long, however, and as the man cried, his tears becoming streams of blood as they slid down was were once his cheeks, he fell forward to the ground with a wet PLOP!

  The three teenagers were rushed onto the train, which took off almost immediately. At least two dozen soldiers accompanied what was left of the royalty of Everstar. Alaric, Nyx, and Carter watched as the headquarters quickly became a distant blur, the train’s chugging filling the silence.

  The United Global Coalition, along with the Iceridge and Stormcrest kingdoms, which had all stood strong for close to five hundred years, had fallen. The surviving kingdoms’ futures stood murky, unclear in the fog that abstracted the future.