Daniel stood there breathing hard, one hand shaking - blood dripping from it - as he looked at the broken TV glass. His fingers wouldn't stop twitching, the room silent except for his heavy breaths mixing with distant echoes of what just happened.
The sting in his fingers felt good - like a sudden anchor when everything else fell apart
He stood by himself. Around him, the quiet from the vanished earth closed in - like pressure on his chest, making each breath feel tight.
The look on Chloe's face - fear wide in her eyes, lips parted like she wanted to shout but couldn't - stuck behind his own when he blinked. Despite everything else trying to crowd in, that moment stayed sharp, refusing to fade no matter how hard he pushed it away.
For weeks on end, that picture haunted him - yet pushed him forward. Still, a shaky kind of hope clung on, wild and stubborn.
Chloe vanished - pulled into some unknown realm. Yet his mom and dad? They were outside, living life, when everything collapsed.
They stayed tough, got things done. Perhaps - only perhaps - they'd figured out how to make it through.
This shaky hope pushed him forward across the broken pieces of their once-peaceful neighborhood.
He began at his dad's garage, called Donald's Mechanics
The large overhead door hung crooked, snapped loose on one side. Yet inside, everything felt stuck mid-breakdown.
A broken-down car, barely fixed, got smashed by part of the ceiling that fell. Stuff used for repairs lay around on the ground - left behind once the shaking started.
He looked around the tiny room, poking at junk and grime - still came up empty. Not a scrap of paper. Nobody there.
Only the thick quiet of somewhere left behind during pure panic.
He looked around until he got to the hospital in town - his mom had a job there.
The walk felt like walking into a nightmare. As he moved ahead, things got uglier fast - whole neighborhoods wiped out, while downtown looked dead from afar. Each step showed more ruin than the last, with streets torn apart and buildings turned to rubble.
Skeletons of tall buildings reached up wildly, their empty window frames staring out - much like bare eye holes. One could feel the quiet tension hanging there, where panes once stood but now just gaps remained instead.
The smell of rot hung around, always there, making you feel ill.
The hospital stood like a reminder of the slaughter. Its sign - "Mercy General Hospital" - was covered in dark burns and deep scratches that seemed made by claws.
Inside, the hallways had white tiles smeared with old brown blood.
Flipped stretchers, along with scattered supply wagons, jammed the hallways.
Daniel slipped down the empty halls, almost invisible - each step echoed under the heavy stillness.
He looked inside the staff records room - someone had already trashed it, pages tossed around, nothing useful left behind.
He didn't find anyone alive - just signs of fast, harsh killing. Days spent moving through the huge site left him feeling a deep chill inside.
He grew up alone. As his last bit of faith faded, everything around him fell apart - suddenly empty.
Time moved on - two full years gone. Life, just scraps really, slowly found a strange rhythm again - not normal, nothing close, yet somehow steady.
The sudden mess of the attack faded into harsh living conditions. Because people were nearly wiped out, only small groups stayed alive.
A fresh order showed up - raw, harsh. It wasn't fair at all but just grew out of nowhere.
Farmers - now the powerful ones - took charge of food, turning fields into strongholds. While hunger spread, they kept crops locked away, lording over others through sheer control.
But the monsters… they didn't all vanish. Some stayed behind, ruling through fear instead of force.
These weren't the rough, bug-shaped beings he'd come across before. Instead, they resembled warped copies of people - skin like faded bruising, while tiny curled horns pushed out from their foreheads.
They tottered into villages clutching odd tools, moving slow but sure like they owned the place. Their shadows alone made it clear - things had changed fast.
Daniel, once just a kid, now a lean twenty-year-old shaped by tough times, hadn't eaten in ages.
The last cans he'd found were gone - months back. Because of that, hunger never left; it gnawed at him hard, day after day. This ache softened everything else - even sorrow felt lighter now.
This raw urge cracked his resolve - so he gave in, trading freedom for survival.
He spotted it at a wide-open ranch, run by someone called Jedediah.
Jedediah was big, slovenly - his lips twisted, his gaze sharp and narrow. Back then, nobody knew him; these days, things changed fast once he put up high fences plus started hoarding crops behind armed watchmen.
Daniel got a grimy little bed in a shared shed - crowded with twelve others who looked just as broken - and started laboring at dawn, finishing only when night fell.
The sleepy kid, used to lounging around all afternoon, ended up stuck in the mud of Jedediah's farm. Yet doing things different felt nearly impossible.
He'd zone out, feel pain in his muscles, yet slow down anyway. Now it wasn't yelling from his mom that hit hard, instead it was the snap of Jedediah's whip cutting through air and skin alike.
"You think these potatoes are gonna pick themselves, you worthless pig?" Jedediah would roar, his spit flying.
"You eat my food, you live on my land, you work! Or you starve! It's that simple."
That day, once he got whipped real bad 'cause he dropped some corn, Daniel dragged himself to the barn, his skin burning like crazy.
A grizzled old worker, thin as a rail, stood nearby - his name was Silas. One hand had only two fingers left. He saw the man drop hard onto his bedroll.
Silas sucked hard on a leafy roll-up, then laughed - dry, like he'd forgotten how joy works.
"Don't take it personally, kid. He's an equal opportunity bastard." He blew out a puff of foul-smelling smoke.
"At least the beatings are regular. Adds a bit of structure to the day."
Daniel only sighed - his sore back wasn't eased by the grim joke. Though it was funny, pain still clung tight.
This was his life today - aches, emptiness, yet constant grueling work.
The memories - his family, that vow to Chloe - sank beneath waves of tiredness, weighed down by hopelessness.
Right after the invasion's second year passed, the horned rulers chose to send a message.
A crowd gathered after word spread. One by one, five people - charged with things like hiding rations or refusing orders - were led out into the open space near the closest town.
All people worldwide had to show up, so lots of them headed abroad just to make it there.
Daniel got shoved toward the square, like the rest of the workers. Everyone around him felt scared - tight, heavy vibes in the air.
The crowd stretched far - pale faces, empty stares - while horned beasts loomed above, perched on roofs with strange guns gripped tight.
A wooden stage was set up right in the middle of the plaza.
Daniel stayed still among people, just hoping the awful scene would end soon - his body frozen, his mind elsewhere.
The captives got yanked outside, shackled while wearing torn cloth. Then they had to kneel down - right there on the wooden stage.
A massive figure stood out - the one with twisted horns curling wider and wilder than the rest - and it started listing offenses, speaking in a low but sharp tone that made Daniel freeze inside.
He wasn't paying attention, eyes wandering across the row of captives. Yet when a prisoner raised his chin, brushing tangled hair aside, everything froze. That's when Daniel felt his breath vanish.
The guy looked skinny, with a beaten-up, sunken face - still, you'd recognize him right away. His once-tidy mustache had grown messy.
The unique spot of white - now stained dull - in his beard. Yet the stubborn way he held his chin.
Dad?" It came out shaky, barely heard over the noise around us.
It was Donald.
A surge of feelings - shock, fear, then sharp anger - swept through Daniel.
He pushed ahead, thoughts fading except for the guy standing there. Yet focus stayed sharp despite the haze around him. Though crowds blurred past, one face held firm in view. As steps quickened, nothing else seemed real anymore.
Dad!" he yelled, voice breaking.
"DAD!"
He shoved forward, yet the mob stood frozen - packed close. A solid mass of folks, scared stiff, wouldn't budge.
Stuck - over a football field's distance - he couldn't move at all.
The creature ended its rant, then pulled out a sharply bent blade. As it happened, Daniel stood there hurting inside while his dad had to place his neck on an old wood stump.
For a sec, Donald looked around - his gaze shaky, kinda lost. Yet he didn't spot his kid anywhere.
The blade lifted, flashing under the sharp afternoon glare. Then it dropped, fast, without pity. All at once, everyone there sucked in their breath.
Daniel's reality spun into chaos as a loud noise screamed through him, tearing everything apart.
He dropped onto his knees when his legs buckled, letting loose a guttural yell that ripped through the air.
When his sight blurred from crying, he quickly looked around the mess. Then - there she was.
Over on the opposite end of the platform stood a woman, her arm gripped tight by a guard with horns.
She got shoved backward from the spot - yet twisted her head around, staring with terrified eyes.
Her face had grown thin, marked by fear and grief - looked different than he remembered - but still clearly hers. That was Linda. The woman who raised him.
Their gazes met from opposite sides of the plaza.
Five endless seconds, time froze. One look passed between them, carrying two years of hurt, no words needed.
He noticed the flash of recognition in her gaze, then the pain of watching her husband die - right after came that aching love when she spotted her boy, now stuck in this nightmare.
She whispered his name, just a soft, broken "Daniel."
The link broke when the beastly guard shoved her hard, making her spin around while joining others who were trapped.
She tripped, slipped through the people, then vanished.
Daniel stayed crouched there, monster howls mixing with shaky murmurs from the people - both sounds slipping away like wind through cracks.
His dad had died. That last harsh scene of the killing stuck in his head.
Yet it got buried under a different picture - something that sparked life in the icy emptiness inside him.
His mom was still living - yet stuck as a slave.
The sadness he'd carried for twenty-four months vanished, melted off - now swapped with a sharp, scary focus that wouldn't waver.