Chapter 1

The first sound Lilly James heard after the end of the world was the wind and nothing more.

It hissed through the empty streets like a living creature, carrying with it the scent of smoke, rust, and decay. When she opened her eyes, the sky was the color of bruised flesh purple and red bleeding together, clouds swirling around a sun that no longer burned normally.

She lay on the floor of what used to be a grocery store, surrounded by shattered glass and overturned carts. Her head throbbed and something sticky clung to her hairline, she touched it and her fingers came away red.

"Okay," she whispered hoarsely. "Okay, Lilly. You're not dead."

Not yet at least.

She sat up slowly, listening, no sirens or voices, also no hum of traffic or distant city noises. Just wind, and somewhere far off, the faint, wet sound of something dragging itself across asphalt.

Her stomach clenched.

She didn't remember much only peices, the sky splitting open, people screaming, a light so bright you couldn't see anything. She remembered grabbing her phone, calling her sister, and then nothing at all just darkness and now this silence.

She pushed herself to her feet and staggered toward the front of the store. Through the cracked glass, the world outside was wrong. Cars sat abandoned at odd angles and streetlights flickered in a rhythm that didn't make sense. A dog barked somewhere, loud and desperate, then went quiet mid yelp.

Lilly swallowed, "Hello?" she called. "Is anyone here?"

Only the wind answered.

She scavenged what she could, a backpack from behind the counter, a few bottles of water that hadn't burst from the heat, and a half-smashed granola bar. Every instinct screamed that she needed to move, but her legs felt heavy as if the world itself was pressing down on her.

The air outside shimmered not heatwaves but something else. It was like the light bent wrong, and when it did, shadows seemed to move where none should be. Once, she thought she saw a figure standing at the end of the street and when she blinked, it was gone.

She started walking anyway knowing she needed to get out of there.

The city she'd known, Chicago, loud and alive was a disaster now, windows stared blankly and billboards burned, and a plane had crashed into an apartment building across the river, its wings jutting out like broken bones. There were bodies everywhere hundreds of them, some slumped in cars and some sprawled in the street, all dried, shriveled, as if the life had been sucked out in an instant. But a few… a few looked fresh.

Too fresh.

She tried not to look and tried to focus on the sound of her boots against the pavement, one step, breathe, another step.

When the noise came, she froze, there was a dragging sound that was wet and loud. Lilly's heart hammered as she ducked behind a wrecked bus, peering through a broken window.

At first, she thought it was a person a man stumbling down the street but then she saw the way he moved and knew something was wrong. His head hung too low, his joints bending wrong, his skin was gray and cracked, veins pulsing with black sludge and his eyes were gone replaced by something milky and shimmering.

He wasn't breathing either, but she saw him sniff the air, and a low, hungry growl escaped his throat.

Lilly's breath caught, don’t move and don’t make a sound, repeated in her head several times.

The creature no, the Hollowed, turned its head slowly and for a heartbeat, its gaze locked on the bus.

Then it screamed. The sound wasn't human at all it was metal tearing and wind shrieking, and it made her bones vibrate.

She ran as fast as her feet would take her.

Her boots pounded on the pavement as the Hollowed gave chase, its guttural snarls echoing off the ruins then more screams answered from distant streets. Dozens, maybe hundreds were out there.

Oh God, she thought, they heard it.

She darted down an alley, breath burning in her chest and she could hear them now feet slapping, claws scraping against concrete.

She spotted a fire escape and jumped, fingers catching the lowest step it wobbled but held so she climbed fast, heart slamming in her ears. The creatures poured into the alley below, thrashing and snapping at the air, they were a nightmare half rotten, half shadow, and their skin glowing faintly where the veins pulsed black.

One reached for her ankle, she kicked, heel connecting with its skull and the creature screeched, but she kept climbing, higher and higher, until she reached the roof.

Then silence again.

Lilly collapsed to her knees, gasping. Her hands shook violently, "They're not real," she whispered. "They're not real, they're not…"

But she could still hear them below, smelling her and waiting. From up here, the world stretched in every direction, ruined and glowing under the fractured sky. Fires burned in the distance and beyond the city, she could see where the land itself had cracked open, massive spaces glowing with crimson light and above it all… a tear.

A rift, wide as the horizon. Something peaked through it, light or maybe darkness, she couldn't tell and the air shimmered where it touched, as if the laws of nature couldn't decide what they were anymore.

And for just a moment, she saw something move behind it. Massive wings, a shape like a human but too large to exist just watching her.

Lilly stumbled back from the edge, "No. No, no, no."

The Hollowed howled below, clawing at the brick.

She needed shelter, food and a plan. She glanced at a neighboring rooftop a smaller building with an intact stairwell access. She could jump it if she was careful.

She didn't hesitate one, two, three she jumped.

Her foot hit the edge, and slipped but she caught it, scrambling over just as the first Hollowed clambered onto the roof she'd jumped from. It stared at her with eyeless hunger and shrieked.

Lilly slammed the metal door behind her, inside it was dark and smelled like dust and copper. She found herself in an old apartment building the hallways were littered with overturned furniture and dried blood. She listened but nothing moved.

Room by room, she cleared the floor most of the doors were locked, some barricaded. Behind one she heard faint crying, a recording, she realized playing on loop from a dying phone the message was only a few seconds long,

"Please. If anyone's alive… don't go downtown. They're not people anymore…"

Then static and it was over.

She switched it off and sank against the wall the numbness began to fade, replaced by something else, grief so raw it made her chest ache. Everyone she knew was gone, every street she'd walked, every coffee shop, every life was ashes.

And yet she was still here.

"Why me?" she whispered.

The lights above her flickered.

For a heartbeat she swore she saw something in the reflection of the window, her own face, but her eyes glowing faintly gold.

She blinked and it was gone.

"Must've been a light reflecting from outside."

She finally decided it was best that she got some rest before exhaustion got the best of her.

That night, she dreamed of fire,

"The world burned, the sky split wide, and from the opening poured creatures of light and shadow, angels with wide wings, demons wrapped in flame. They tore through the heavens, their war spilling into cities, oceans, mountains and in the center of it all stood a woman, her. Lilly was holding something between her hands, a thread of light, thin and trembling, binding two worlds together.

When she let go, everything fell apart."

She woke up screaming, sweating, and breathless.

Morning came, or what passed for it the sky hadn't changed color, but the fires had moved and the Hollowed were gone for now. Lilly found a knife in one of the kitchens, still sharp so she tied it to her belt, filled a bottle from a rain barrel, and climbed back to the roof to scout.

In the distance, the rift still pulsed like a heartbeat and beneath it, the city smoldered. There were shapes moving down there, figures in tattered armor, walking through the fire like ghosts, too tall and graceful to be human.

She ducked low, watching.

One of them turned, as if it could feel her gaze even from here, she felt the weight of its attention. Then it seemed to vanish into the smoke. Her pulse raced, she didn't know what was real anymore the monsters, the light, her own reflection. All she knew was that she was alive, and everything else wanted her not to be.

That night, as she sat by the faint glow of a found lantern, she started a list in a torn notebook she'd found in a child's backpack.

Rules for Staying Alive.

Don't make noise.

Don't go out after dark.

Don't trust what looks human.

Keep moving. Always.

Don't look at the sky for too long.

She hesitated, then added a sixth.

Find out why you're still here.

Outside, something screamed again long, low, and inhuman.

Lilly tightened her grip on the knife and whispered to the dark, "Come and try to get me."

And above the broken city, the rift pulsed once more brighter this time, as if answering her challenge.