Chapter 1: The night the walls fell

Raina's pov

The night everything changed started like any other night in Millbrook, it was quiet, unremarkable, the kind of night you'd forget by morning if you weren't paying attention.

But I was always paying attention. It was a habit born from growing up in a house where attention was survival, where a loose floorboard or a forgotten curfew could mean the difference between another day and a day you wouldn't see.

My name is Raina, and I was seventeen when the world decided to end.

I remember standing at my bedroom window, staring out at the vast fields beyond our town. The moon hung low and bloated over the distant mountains, casting everything in shades of silver and shadow.

The autumn air crisped against my face, which carried that peculiar smell of decay and new growth that only comes at the changing of seasons.

From somewhere in the town below, I could hear the faint sound of the night watch making their rounds, their torch flames dancing like dying fireflies.

My stepfather was downstairs, drunk as usual. I could hear him bellowing at my mother, his words slurring into something barely comprehensible.

They have been fighting more lately, ever since the harvest came up short. There's no money , resources are tight, and somehow everything always comes back to disappointment in our household, but I have learned to escape to my room, to exist in the margins of my own life where his anger couldn't quite reach me.

That was before the screaming started.

It began as a distant sound, almost like wind rushing through the streets. But the wind doesn't have a rhythm, and it doesn't have purpose. This sound grew louder, closer, and with it came a heat that made the hair on my arms stand on end. I leaned further out the window, trying to see what was happening.

That's when I saw it.

The wall.

The great stone wall that had protected Millbrook for three hundred years, the barrier that stood between our civilized town and the Wildlands beyond, was crumbling. It wasn't gradually or carefully—it was exploding, massive chunks of stone flying through the air like paper in a storm. I watched in frozen horror as the destruction spread, moving along the perimeter in a wave of devastation.

And then I saw them.

The creatures pouring through the gaps were unlike anything I'd ever imagined. Later, after everything had fallen apart, the survivors tried to describe them—demons, they called them, or the Scourge. But "demon" is a word that demands some kind of comprehension, and I don't think any human mind was meant to comprehend what I saw that night.

They were tall, impossibly so, with bodies that seemed to shift and writhe even as they moved toward the town. Some had what I could only describe as wings, though they weren't like any bird's wings I'd ever seen—more like torn fabric or diseased leather stretched across impossible angles. Others seemed to be made of shadow itself, their forms barely solid, constantly on the verge of dissolving into the darkness.

"Raina!" My mother's voice cut through my shock like a blade. "Raina, come down here now!"

I didn't move, I couldn't move. I was watching the end of the world in real-time, and my feet had apparently decided they had no further use for the rest of my body.

The screaming intensified. I could hear it now, coming from all directions—the sound of thousands of people dying, of civilization crumbling.

Fire erupted in multiple locations across the town, smoke rising up to choke out the stars. The creatures weren't just destroying the walls; they were destroying everything, and they moved with purpose, with coordination, as if they weren't mindless beasts but something far more sinister.

"Raina!" My mother again, more frantic now. And beneath it, I heard footsteps—my stepfather's heavy boots thundering up the stairs.

The spell broke. I spuned away from the window and ran for the door, my mind suddenly flooding with survival instinct.

The house lurched beneath my feet—an actual physical lurch, as if the ground itself was trembling. Dust rained down from the ceiling, and I heard the crack of wood splitting as the structure groaned under stress.

I hit the corridor running and nearly collided with my mother coming up the stairs. She grabbed my arm, her fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks.

"We have to go, we have to go now Raina. To the back way. Your stepfather is gathering what he can carry". She gasped.

"We can't outrun them," I said, the words falling out before I could stop them. I'd seen how fast those creatures moved. I'd seen a group of them cover the distance from the wall to the first buildings in what felt like seconds.

"Then we can hide, there are caves in the hills" she said grimly, pulling me toward the stairs.

The ceiling above us exploded inward.

I don't have a clearer memory of what happened next. There was light, horrible, searing light that burned my eyes even as I tried to shield them. Then, there was noise, a sound so loud and so terrible that I felt like my eardrums might burst.

There was movement, something large and terrible descending through the hole in our roof, and my mother's hand tore away from mine as she was lifted up and away from me.

I fell backward down the stairs, my body tumbling end over end, connecting with wood and stone in a chaos of pain. When I finally stopped moving, I was sprawled on the ground floor, gasping for breath, every part of me screaming in agony.

Above me, I could hear my mother screaming. I could hear my stepfather's voice, shouting something that might have been a curse or a prayer. And beneath it all, I could hear the sound of the creatures—not their voices, but something worse. A kind of psychic pressure, as if their very presence was pushing against my mind, trying to break through my skull and find the thoughts inside.

I forced myself to move despite the pain. My left arm didn't seem to be working properly. I suspected it might be broken, but I could move it enough to pull myself across the floor toward the kitchen.

There was a door there, one that led to the small cellar beneath our house. If I could reach it, if I could get down there and pull the wooden hatch closed above me, maybe I could hide long enough for them to lose interest.

Maybe.

The cellar was dark and damp, filled with the smell of earth and old vegetables. I collapsed at the bottom of the wooden stairs, my breath coming in ragged gasps.

Above me, the sounds of destruction continued. I could hear wood splintering, stone cracking, my mother's screams finally cutting off into a silence that was somehow more terrible than the noise.

I huddled in the darkness, my good arm wrapped around my body, and I waited for death to find me.