The silence came first. A profound, unnatural hush that was more terrifying than any scream. For a long, frozen moment, the world was nothing but a canvas of bruised purple and thick, roiling clouds the color of soot. The ground was hard, black earth, and it glistened with a liquid that looked like oil, but smelled undeniably of blood.
The stillness shattered as the people who had been violently pulled from their homes began to stir. A man cried out for his wife. A child began to wail, a high-pitched sound of pure terror. The air, heavy with a coppery scent, filled with the chaotic symphony of a world breaking.
In the center of this burgeoning panic, a man's eyes snapped open. He was a tall, broad-shouldered figure, and his first instinct was to sit up, to take control. But a wave of nausea hit him, and he stumbled to his feet, swaying. It was Elias, Elara's father, and the last thing he remembered was the warmth of his bed and the deep sleep of a man who had worked hard all day. Now he stood on a ground that felt like a rock-hard funeral pyre, his nightshirt clinging to his skin with sweat. He looked to his side, and the figure of his wife, her name a meaningless sound in his mind, was staggering to her feet, her face a mask of pale confusion.
"What... what is this?" his wife whispered, her voice a reedy, thin thing. She clutched at his arm, her eyes wide with a terror that Elias himself felt coiling in his gut.
Then, from the crowd of newly awakened people, a boy pushed through. His face was a contortion of fear and disbelief. "Father! Mother! What's happening?" It was Lucas, the eighteen-year-old golden son. He was still in his pajamas, but the cold, hard reality of their new location seemed to strip him of his youthful innocence in a single moment.
Elias, still disoriented, found his voice. "I don't know, son," he said, his voice a low, rumbling growl. "But we'll figure it out. We always do." But even as he said the words, he didn't believe them. The scent of blood was too strong. The silence was too profound. And in the eyes of the hundreds of terrified people around them, he saw not hope, but the shocking, undeniable horror of being dropped into a world that had no place for them.