Ragna's eyelids fluttered open to a world that felt wrong, like a dream stitched together from fragments of nightmare.
The air was thick, heavy with the scent of incense and sweat, mingled with something sharper—ozone, perhaps, or the faint metallic tang of blood carried on a draft. His body ached as if it had been pummeled by invisible fists, every muscle protesting the simple act of existence.
He lay there for a moment, staring at the vaulted ceiling of the Temple nave, its ancient stone arches dimly lit by flickering candles that cast long, dancing shadows like whispers from the past.
Beside him, Mimi slept. Her small chest rose and fell in shallow rhythms, but her face told a story of torment. Her eyes were swollen, red-rimmed from hours of crying, and trails of dried tears streaked her cheeks like cracks in porcelain. Strands of her dark hair clung to her damp skin, and her tiny fists were clenched even in sleep, as if holding onto some fragile remnant of safety.
Ragna's heart twisted at the sight. She was only nine—too young for this hell, too innocent to bear the weight of a shattered world. He reached out a trembling hand to brush a lock from her forehead, but stopped short, afraid his touch might wake her into this reality.
He sat up slowly, the world tilting for a dizzying second. The church's stone floor was cold beneath him, seeping through his thin clothes like a reminder of mortality. Around them, the vast space felt eerily empty.
When they had burst in—how long ago?—it had been a crush of bodies, a cacophony of desperate shouts and pleas. Now, only a handful of figures dotted the pews and alcoves.
Their side of the nave was deserted, save for a crumpled blanket someone had left behind and a forgotten water bottle rolling lazily in the draft.
Where had everyone gone? Evacuated? Dead? The thought sent a chill down his spine, colder than the stone.
Fragments of memory surfaced like debris in a storm-tossed sea. The run to the Temple—veins bulging, foam at his lips, Mimi's weight on his shoulder like a lifeline. The shimmering force field, alive with an otherworldly hum, parting only at the doors. The press of bodies, his elbows shoving, voices cursing him as he forced his way through. Then... nothing. Blackness. He must have collapsed right there, just inside the threshold.
A sudden headache lanced through his skull, sharp as a blade.
He winced, pressing a palm to his temple, and tried to stand. His legs wobbled, joints screaming in protest, but he forced himself upright, leaning against a nearby pillar carved with faded saints and angels—ironic guardians in a world where the heavens themselves seemed to have turned against them. The pain was a fire, spreading from his head down his spine, but he pushed through it, driven by a gnawing curiosity. Why so few people? The Temple had been stuffed to bursting, a sanctuary turned sardine can of humanity.
Gripping the pillar for support, Ragna shuffled toward the inner door that separated the nave from the vestibule—still within the church's sacred premises, but closer to the outside world. His footsteps echoed softly, unnaturally loud in the hush. The air grew cooler here, laced with a faint breeze slipping through cracks in the ancient wood. He paused at the threshold, steadying himself against the wall, its rough stone biting into his palm. Then, he looked up.
What he saw stole the breath from his lungs.
The sky was no longer blue, no longer the indifferent canvas of everyday life. It was crimson—a deep, throbbing red, like the underbelly of a wound that refused to heal. Swirls of scarlet and burgundy churned slowly, as if the atmosphere itself were alive, breathing with a malevolent rhythm. No sun pierced the veil; no golden rays heralded the dawn. It was an illusion, surely—a trick of his battered mind. But no, the color pressed down on him, heavy and oppressive, turning the world below into a shadowed realm where colors muted to shades of rust and ash.
"The force field... it's gone," he murmured to himself, his voice a rasp.
The shimmering barrier that had enveloped the church like a protective bubble was absent.
Had it been deactivated? Overloaded? Or had it served its purpose and vanished like a miracle withdrawn? He scanned the grounds visible through the open door—empty flagstones, a toppled statue of some forgotten saint. No scorch marks, no craters. But the meteorites... where were they?
Those blood-red flames streaking from the heavens—people had called them meteors, a cosmic shower gone wrong. But Ragna remembered their unnatural glow, pulsing like hearts torn from divine chests. They hadn't just impacted; they burrowed. Deep into the earth, with groans that vibrated through the soil, as if seeking something hidden below.
He strained his eyes toward the horizon, but the crimson sky swallowed details. No fiery trails now, no plummeting giants. The Temple stood unscathed, a lone bastion amid what must be ruin. There was no way those things could have missed it entirely—dozens, hundreds falling like judgment rain. Yet here it was, intact. A mystic reprieve? Or something more sinister, as if the earth had drunk them in, sated for now.
His gaze drifted to a pair of figures huddled in a nearby alcove—a man and a woman, perhaps a couple. The man had his arm around her shoulders, murmuring soft words as she sobbed quietly into his chest. Their clothes were torn, faces smudged with ash and grief. Ragna felt a pang of something—envy? Pity?—but he didn't linger. Their sorrow was their own; he had enough of his own to carry.
Thankful, though—that much he allowed himself. Alive. Breathing. Mimi safe, for now. It was more than he could have hoped for in the chaos. But curiosity gnawed deeper, pulling him forward. He stepped through the inner door, into the vestibule, and then pushed open the heavy outer doors to the church premises proper—the courtyard beyond, open to the crimson sky.
The world outside hit him like a physical blow.
Death lay everywhere, a tapestry of horror woven in blood and bone. Bodies—dozens, perhaps hundreds—scattered across the grounds like discarded puppets. None intact. Limbs twisted at unnatural angles, torsos rent open as if by claws from below. Rivers of blood snaked through the dirt, pooling in craters that pocked the earth like fresh wounds. The ground itself was shattered, burrowed in places where those "meteors" had plunged deep, leaving behind fissures that exhaled faint wisps of crimson vapor, like breath from subterranean lungs. The air reeked of charred flesh and sulfur, a choking miasma that clawed at his throat.
Ragna staggered back a step, bile rising. Could he... had he caused someone to die? Memory flashed: his desperate charge through the crowd at the gates. Pushing, shoving, dragging people aside in his frenzy to get inside. Elbows connecting with ribs, feet trampling over fallen forms.
He remembered the creak and crash of the outer gates giving way under the press—had they buckled because of him? Faces blurred in his mind: an old woman tumbling, a child yanked from a parent's grasp. Guilt bloomed in his chest, hot and sharp, twisting like a knife. But regret? No. He couldn't afford it. Mimi's life hung in the balance; survival demanded sacrifice. Still, the weight settled on him, a shadow that matched the crimson sky.
He hadn't even known if this church—the one nearest his ruined home, a mere ten-fifteen minutes' run in normal times—had any defense. Gensu's words had been a half-remembered whisper, a tale of priests building "measures" for the end times. Superstition, Ragna had thought then. But seeing the throngs clawing at the doors, the shimmering field holding back the apocalypse... it had confirmed something. Mystic or mechanical, it had worked. For some.
His wristwatch caught his eye—a simple analog piece, scuffed but ticking. He glanced down, the face glowing faintly in the red light: 9:00 AM.
"What?" The word escaped as a whisper. Morning? He had slept through the entire night? The run, the collapse—it felt like moments ago. But the crimson veil above mocked him: morning, yet no sun. No warmth, no light to banish the shadows. The world was destroyed—homes reduced to rubble, streets rivers of blood, the earth scarred and burrowing with secrets. What now? Scavenge? Hide? Pray to gods who seemed to have abandoned them, or worse, turned wrathful?
Ragna turned back inside, the horror outside too much to bear alone. Mimi still slept, her face a fragile mask of exhaustion. He knelt beside her, gently shaking her shoulder.
"Mimi... wake up. We need to—"
Her eyes opened, wide and haunted. For a moment, she stared blankly, then recognition flooded in, and she threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. No words, just quiet sobs that shook them both. He held her, murmuring nonsense comforts—"It's okay, we're safe, shh"—but his mind raced.
The few survivors in the Temple stirred now, eyes flicking toward them with mixtures of pity and wariness. A priest in tattered robes moved among them, offering water from a communal jug, his face etched with lines that spoke of sleepless vigil. He was older than Ragna had first thought, with a beard streaked gray and eyes that held the depth of ancient wells—eyes that had seen too much, perhaps even before this cataclysm.
"Why so few?" Ragna asked the priest as he approached, voice low to not alarm Mimi further.
The old man paused, his eyes shadowed under bushy brows. He handed Ragna a cup of water, cool and faintly metallic, before settling onto a nearby pew with a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of centuries.
"Many left at dawn—or what passes for it now. Some to search for family, others... drawn by whispers."
He glanced toward the crimson sky visible through a high stained-glass window, where the red light filtered in like blood through veins.
The barrier held through the night, but it drained. Deactivated at first light to conserve... whatever powers it.
His voice dropped to a mystic murmur, laced with a reverence that bordered on fear. "The elders say it's tied to the old rites, fueled by faith or something deeper.
But now, with the sky like this..." He trailed off, shaking his head, his fingers tracing the edge of a worn crucifix around his neck.
"Whispers?" Ragna pressed, a chill prickling his skin despite the oppressive warmth seeping in from outside.
The priest hesitated, his gaze drifting to the floor as if the stone itself held secrets.
From the burrows. Some heard voices last night—calling names, promising salvation or damnation. A few wandered out... didn't return." His gaze flicked to the outer doors, where the crimson light painted the threshold in ominous hues. "The crimson... it's not natural. Like the veil between worlds has torn.
Ragna swallowed hard, the mystic weight of the words settling like fog. Voices from the burrows? The "meteors" hadn't just impacted; they had invaded, seeding something beneath the earth. He thought of the pulsing crimson flames, the way the ground had groaned as they vanished below. Not destruction from above, but infestation from within. But he needed more—facts, not just ethereal warnings.
The force field," he said, leaning closer. "What is it, really? How does it work?"
The priest—Father Paul, as he introduced himself with a weary nod—leaned back, his eyes taking on a faraway gleam, as if recounting a legend passed down through shadowed cloisters.
"Ah, the shield. It's no miracle of faith alone, though we'd like to believe it so. Powered by a machine, a generator buried deep underground, in the catacombs beneath this very church. Built years ago—decades, even—long before Father Mike's prophecy shook the faithful, before the other churches across the land began constructing their own defensive mechanisms in imitation. It was the work of visionaries, engineers cloaked in clerical robes, who foresaw... something. Not this, perhaps, but a reckoning. They drew from old blueprints, fused science with sacrament, creating a web of energy that repels the unnatural. Electromagnetic pulses, harmonic resonances—terms that sound like heresy in these walls, but they saved us last night."
The words hung in the air, heavy with implication. Ragna glanced at his wristwatch, still ticking defiantly at 9:15 AM now, but he wondered how long it would last. The priest's tale wove science and mysticism into a tapestry that explained the emptiness: perhaps the shield's failure had driven people out, or the whispers had lured them to their doom.
"So we're on our own now? No more shield?"
Father Paul shook his head slowly. "Not entirely. The generator hums faintly still, recharging from... sources we don't fully understand. Geothermal veins, perhaps, or something the rites invoke. But it's weakened. We can't rely on it forever. The burrows stir, and with them, the crimson deepens. After the Fall—these crimson harbingers crashing down—everything changed. The generator, the machine... they refuse to work as they should. Flickers, surges, like the very laws of the world have bent. And not just here. Every automated device, every humming gadget from the old world—cars, phones, even simple clocks— they've gone silent, erratic. As if the Fall drained the spark from them, or something deeper rejects our tinkering now. The earth pulses with a new rhythm, boy. Machines falter where faith endures."
Mimi tugged at Ragna's sleeve, her voice small and trembling. "Ragna... I'm hungry. And scared."
He forced a smile, though it felt like a crack in stone.
"Me too, little one. But we'll find food. And answers."
They shared a meager meal from the priest's stores—stale bread and water that tasted of sanctity, perhaps blessed in haste. As they ate, Ragna's mind wandered to the before. The dojo, Kira's haughty gaze, Billy's bullying fists—childish concerns now, dwarfed by this cataclysm. What of Kira? Had she survived? The rich girl with her privileges—perhaps her family's wealth had bought her a better bunker. Or perhaps not. The apocalypse didn't discriminate, as Father Paul's words implied.