Chapter 3 -Here you are

  Dusk settled over the city.

  A convoy more than half a kilometer long advanced through streets lined with devastated buildings.

  The wheels of sturdy, modified vehicles rumbled over the asphalt, or rather, over what remained of it. Cracks split the road open like old scars, and loose gravel popped beneath the tires. The smell of burned fuel and dust lingered in the air, mixed with the metallic tang of rust and concrete powder.

  Inside the tightly packed vehicles, survivors sat shoulder to shoulder. Their clothes were worn, faces hollow, eyes dull with exhaustion. No one spoke loudly. Panic didn’t need words anymore, it pressed down on them like a weight.

  At the front of the convoy moved several mismatched armored vehicles. Some were military transports stripped down and reinforced. Others were civilian trucks retrofitted with steel plates welded over windows and improvised turrets bolted to their roofs. Their engines growled low and steady, vibrations passing through the metal like a pulse.

  The leaders rode together in the foremost vehicle, speaking in hushed voices over the constant hum of engines.

  “We were really unlucky to encounter a Darkness Tide yesterday,” one of them said.

  He was a burly, bald man with a thick neck and scarred knuckles resting on his knee.

  “Who would’ve thought the abyssal zone near the equatorial green forest would surge again?”

  “Thankfully we were warned in advance,” he continued after a pause.

  “We changed course in time.”

  His tone wasn’t relaxed, but there was relief there.

  “That doesn’t mean we’re safe,” a woman replied from his side. Her eyes stayed fixed on the road ahead.

  “When abyss zones shift, those things start moving.”

  The bald man snorted and glanced at her.

  “Not even daring to say their name? You’re more timid than usual.”

  “Enough.”

  A tall, middle-aged man sitting across from them spoke calmly, but the moment his voice cut in, the others quieted. Authority clung to him naturally.

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  “Lea is right,” he said.

  “We will face resistance. That’s why we merged our groups. If things turn dire, we accelerate."

  His gaze hardened.

  “Even if that means leaving people behind. We’re not doing this just for ourselves. We’re doing it for humanity.”

  There was something about the way he spoke—his steady tone, the controlled cadence—that stirred people.

  “For humanity,” the others echoed.

  At the rear of the convoy, parents held their children tighter, unaware that the leaders ahead had already considered strategies that involved cutting off the tail to save the head.

  Above them, unseen, a shadow began to coalesce.

  It didn’t blot out the sky all at once. At first, it was just a distortion, like heat shimmer bending the air. Some people frowned and looked up.

  Too late.

  “How is this possible?” one leader shouted into the comms.

  “We weren’t marked! No one joined us recently!”

  The woman’s face drained of color.

  “It can’t be…” she whispered.

  “Target the air!” the tall man ordered.

  “All weapons, open fire!”

  Mounted machine guns barked to life, their recoil rattling the armored frames. Tracer rounds stitched the sky, red streaks vanishing into the growing darkness.

  Then came the missiles. Two ground-to-air launchers mounted on escort trucks rotated upward. With sharp mechanical whines, four missiles launched in sequence, two from each platform, leaving white smoke trails that cut violently through the dusk.

  The explosions hit nothing solid.

  The blasts tore through the shadow, dispersing it for a fraction of a second before it reformed, thicker, heavier.

  The woman screamed.

  “It’s him! The Sandman—the Death Merchant—the Night itself!”

  Her voice broke, hysterical, like a survivor dragged back into an old massacre.

  Fear spread faster than fire.

  The shadow descended.

  A storm of sand erupted out of nowhere, swallowing the convoy. Winds screamed. Vehicles swerved. Screams rose and vanished in the noise.

  A mother watched her child convulse in her arms, bones twisting, skin blackening as she refused to let go.

  A man raised a gun at his lover as her eyes clouded over, pulling the trigger with shaking hands,only to be dragged screaming from the vehicle moments later.

  Carnage unfolded beneath the hovering presence.

  And within the storm, a pair of eyes slowly opened.

  “This dream again…”

  Bell’s voice was quiet.

  He focused.

  The screams cut off. The storm froze. The nightmare unraveled like smoke.

  “A bad way to remember,” he muttered.

  The city reappeared beneath him—the same desolate streets where he had left things the day before.

  “These nightmares drain me,” he noted.

  A dull headache throbbed behind his eyes, familiar now. Too familiar.

  “I don’t have much time.”

  Something bothered him.

  There was no light here. No sun. No moon. The street lamps were dead.

  And yet, the buildings cast shadows, long, warped shadows, all pointing in the same direction.

  Bell turned and walked the opposite way.

  He preferred a direction over wandering.

  After an unknown amount of time, the pressure in his head intensified. He was close to stopping when he noticed a building ahead.

  It wasn’t larger than the others. It wasn’t intact.

  But it cast no shadow at all. The entrance was sealed. Bell braced himself and slammed his shoulder into the door. Rotten metal gave way with a shriek, collapsing inward.

  The moment he stepped inside, the sensation returned, stronger. Watched, surrounded.

  Paintings lined the walls, shifting images of twisted shadows that never quite held the same shape.

  At the center of the room stood a table.

  On it rested a glowing purple object.

  Bell approached slowly.

  "Here you are!"

  Recognition crossed his face.

  His hand passed through a translucent, egg-like shell of light. When he clenched his fist and pulled back, a single grain of glowing purple sand lay in his palm. The Dream Dust.

  Its original form, before evolution. Tier one.

  “This building has five floors,” Bell murmured.

  “Does that mean… one on each level?”

  The grain pulsed.

  His perception exploded outward.

  The city unfolded beneath him as if he were flying. Every street. Every structure. Everything, except the floors above, which remained sealed in darkness.

  Bell glanced once toward the stairwell.

  Then withdrew.

  The world snapped back.

  He lay on his bed, gasping.

  The Dream Dust still glimmered in his hand.

  His perception spread,ants crawling under the bed, mosquitoes buzzing near the ceiling, his neighbor tossing restlessly in her sleep, another couple nearby lost in breathless activity.

  With effort, he closed it off.

  The grain vanished.

  Bell collapsed back against the mattress, soaked in sweat, his head pounding like it might split.

  This was far too familiar to Bell as in his past life, things started to go wrong from the moment when he first held on that object.