The first thing Caleb felt was cold.
It wasn't the kind of cold he knew. Not wind or rain or snow. This was the chill of absence—like heat had never belonged here at all. As if the world itself had been drained of all its warmth.
He opened his eyes.
Overhead, he was looking at a sky that wasn't a sky. Pale gray and too still, as if painted on a vast dome. Mist drifted through the air like it had a mind of its own, curling low and close. Beneath him: moss. A field of bioluminescent moss that shimmered with bruised purples and soft greens, as if moonlight had soaked into it. It stretched in every direction.
He sat up slowly, every joint aching. His clothes were the same—the jeans and hoodie he'd worn back home. His hands trembled as he checked his pockets. Phone: gone. Keys: gone. No pain. No memory of injury. Just waking.
Around him, others stirred.
Dozens. Maybe more.
Men and women. Teenagers. A few elderly. A little girl with ribbons in her hair, curled beside what looked like a middle-aged man in a uniform. An EMT crouched beside someone unconscious, checking for a pulse. Voices, hushed and uncertain, drifted through the clearing.
"Where in the hell are we?"
"Is this a dream?"
One was clutching his head and muttering, as if praying "I was just at work. I was at work..."
Caleb stood, wobbling, feeling queasy; he almost threw up, but took a deep breath and steadied himself and scanned the treeline. Trees stretched high and wide like ancient sentinels, their bark a silvery-black with veins of amber light running just beneath the surface. Their leaves shimmered like glass in a breeze he couldn't feel.
Then he saw Her, Hana.
She was sitting on her knees, looking down at her hands, whispering something. Her face was pale, eyes wide. Caleb crossed the moss and knelt beside her.
"You okay?"
She blinked. Looked at him. Recognition came slow. "You were... we go on the same train. In Boston. I see you sometimes."
He nodded. "Yeah. I remember."
"What is this? What happened?"
He didn't have an answer.
Nearby, a man with long dreadlocks helped another person stand. The man was calm, focused, assessing the group. Caleb watched him move with quiet efficiency, already gathering the shaken into clusters.
The girl with the ribbons started to cry.
A middle-aged woman bent down to comfort her, wrapping a blanket—from where? Caleb didn't know—around her shoulders. Someone had food. Another had a compass that spun aimlessly. A third had nothing but their clothes.
They were all strangers.
Or had been.
Now, they were survivors.
A tall man with tattoos across his arms began pacing the edge of the mossy field, muttering. "We need to move. This place isn't right. Look at the trees. Look at the sky. This isn't Earth."
Someone else chimed in. "It's a prank. Or a simulation. Some kind of underground thing. Maybe VR."
The EMT—her name was Alya, Caleb would later learn—stood and raised her voice. "Listen up. I don't know what happened, and I don't know where we are. But panicking won't help. We stick together. We assess. We survive."
A murmur of agreement. Some nodded. Others didn't.
Caleb turned slowly, surveying the edge of the clearing. The mist thickened as it approached the trees, curling like fingers around trunks. He took a step toward it, and his stomach turned.
Not from fear. From something deeper. Instinct.
A Predator.
He backed away.
Voices began sharing their last memories—fragments of a vanished world:
"I was at the airport," said a woman with tired eyes, clutching a small backpack. "Waiting for my flight to Chicago. The screens flickered… then nothing. Like the whole world went silent."
A teenager in a hoodie added, "I was gaming online. Then the screen glitched, like static, and I felt this… pulling. Then I woke up here."
An older man in a uniform whispered, "I was driving home. The radio cut out. Then the sky… it cracked. Like something ripped through it."
Another woman, voice trembling, said, "I was at my daughter's school. She was waving at me through the window. And then... gone. And now, this."
They all exchanged haunted looks. No answers. Only questions.
A sudden hush fell.
Everyone seemed to feel it at once—a pressure in the air, like the moment before lightning strikes. The moss seemed to dim. A birdcall echoed, strange and shrill.
Then silence.
Then the scream.
Far off, male. Guttural. Ragged. Cut short.
Everyone froze.
Eyes turned toward the sound. The tattooed man reached for a fallen branch and hefted it like a club. Alya barked, "Stay where you are! No one moves alone!"
But he went anyway.
Caleb watched him vanish into the mist.
Ten seconds passed.
Then twenty.
Then the wet sound came. A crunch. A rip. A thud.
Someone sobbed.
The edge of the clearing seemed to move. The mist crept forward, curling inward. No breeze. Just motion. Like something had brushed against it from within.
And then, silence again.
Caleb met Hana's eyes. Her voice was small. "We're not alone."
He swallowed hard.
"We need to run."