Myles’ life hadn’t always been steeped in darkness and power. Just a year ago, he was a 24-year-old man with nothing but time on his hands and a deep sense of failure hanging over him like a storm cloud. His days were monotonous and bleak. He just doing each day that blending into the next. With no purpose or excitement.
He had a good job a week ago. He was working at a small office where the pay was meager but it was enough to keep him surviving the days in this city. But then everything came crashing down. A mistake was made, and though it was a mistake he didn’t commit, the blame fell on him. His colleague, the real culprit, was quick to shift the responsibility to him. The man was slick and manipulative, and he was close with his superior, a connection Myles didn’t have.
Without a moment’s hesitation his superior sided with his favorite. Myles was ridiculed and humiliated in front of everyone. Nobody heard his pleas, and before he knew it he was standing outside the office, a pink slip in hand and a hollow feeling in his chest. He feels the weight of injustice that makes his heart burned with fury.
But there was nothing he could do. He was powerless like a pawn that easily discarded.
The days that followed were full of despair and bitterness. Without much money Myles was left with few options. He isolated himself in his small and cluttered apartment, the only place where he didn’t feel judged or looked down upon.
His routine became depressingly monotonous. He would lie in bed for hours, staring blankly at the ceiling.
When the weight of his thoughts became too much he would reach for his phone or his laptop, seeking an escape in the digital world. Video games or porn became his solace. In the virtual worlds of MMO’s he was a hero, a warrior, a leader—everything he wasn’t in real life. He could lose himself for hours, days even, in those fantasies where power was at his fingertips.
When he wasn’t gaming he was devouring online novels, immersing himself in stories of protagonists who started with nothing but rose to unimaginable heights. Those stories resonated with him. He saw himself in those characters — ordinary people who were thrust into extraordinary circumstances and then gained power and respect after facing insurmountable odds.
It was a dream, a fantasy he clung to, though deep down, he knew it was just that—a fantasy.
The days passed in a blur of monotony. Myles rarely left his apartment, his interactions with the outside world dwindling to almost nothing. His family didn’t bother checking in anymore and the few friends he had stopped reaching out. He was a ghost, existing in a liminal space between the life he once had and the life he wished he could escape to.
But as he lay in bed his fingers idly scrolling through yet another novel on his phone, he had no idea that his life was about to change in ways he couldn’t have imagined. The Etherfall was coming.
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It was about 12 o’clock when the sky began to change. Myles was lying on his bed, the dull glow of his laptop screen the only light in his darkened room because he was closing his curtain. He was engrossed in yet another online novel. But then, something strange caught his attention, the light outside suddenly dimming.
At first, he thought nothing of it, thinking that is was just a passing cloud or something. But when the room grew unnervingly dark, he finally get his eyes away from the screen and pushed himself up from the bed then crossed the room to the window.
He drew back the curtain slightly and peered outside. What he saw made his breath catch in his throat. The sky was now a swirling mass of colors—deep purples, fiery oranges, and sickly greens, all twisting together in chaotic manner.
Myles’ heart began to race. This was no ordinary storm. He could feel it in his bones, a deep, primal fear that something was terribly wrong. He glanced down at the street below.
People were pouring out of buildings. They stood in clusters on the sidewalks, pointing at the sky and murmuring anxiously to one another. Some had their phones out, trying to capture the bizarre phenomenon while others simply stared in stunned silence. Car alarms blared sporadically, adding to the sense of chaos.
Myles could see his neighbors from the apartment across the street leaning out of their windows, their expressions mirroring his own. No one seemed to know what was happening.
Then, without warning, the first scream pierced the eerie silence.
Myles jerked his head in the direction of the sound and his eyes widening in disbelief. A man in the street had fallen to the ground and something monstrous loomed over him.
It took Myles a moment to register what he was seeing—a creature with a horrible form. It had too many limbs, each ending in razor-sharp claws and its skin was gray, covered in pulsating veins.
The creature moved with terrifying speed, lunging at another person before they had a chance to react. The street descended into chaos as more of the monsters appeared, emerging from the shadows and alleyways as if they had always been there, waiting for this moment.
Myles’ blood ran cold. He backed away from the window, his mind struggling to comprehend what was happening. This couldn’t be real. Monsters didn’t exist—they were the stuff of horror stories and video games, not something that appeared in broad daylight on a busy city street. But the screams, the sounds of people being torn apart, were all too real.
He stumbled back to his bed, his hands shaking as he fumbled for his phone. He needed to call someone, anyone—but who? And what could he even say? That the world was suddenly ending? That monsters were roaming the streets? He glanced back at the window, hoping that somehow the scene outside would have changed, that the nightmare would have ended as suddenly as it began.
But the chaos only grew worse. The sky continued to churn with unnatural colors, and more creatures poured into the streets. People were running in all directions, their panic feeding the frenzy. Cars were overturned, storefronts shattered, and everywhere, there were those monstrous beings, hunting, devouring, destroying.
"This... This was something that usually happening in the novels I’ve read..." Myles murmured to himself in shock.
Then, he heard the scrapping sounds from his door. He whipped his head to the door, and seeing it beginning to bend inward.
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