When people ask how the FOB fell, I always tell them the
same truth:
It died like a cornered animal — loud, furious, and too
proud to show fear.
But I remember the fear.
I remember every heartbeat of that night.
It began at dusk.
The sun sank behind the treetops, bleeding orange light
across the sky, and the forest responded with an unnatural stillness. Even the
glowing vines dimmed, as if something larger cast a shadow over the world.
Zara sensed it first.
She stood at the perimeter, jaw tight, eyes scanning the
treeline. I'd seen her calm in gunfights, calm under pressure, calm when
creatures howled in the night. But this was different.
"Zara?" I said, approaching with Orion and Lyra.
She didn't look at me.She simply said:
"They're positioning."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"The creatures. They're not circling tonight. They're…
forming lines."
A chill shivered through me. "Lines?"
She turned toward me then, and the fear in her eyes made my blood run cold. "This isn't
a hunt," she whispered. "This is a coordinated assault."
Before I could speak, a horn blared—sharp, metallic, urgent.
Soldiers scrambled across the FOB. Floodlights snapped to full brightness.
Children were ushered into central bunkers. Weapons were distributed.
Then the forest roared.
Not one roar. Hundreds. Layered. Overlapping. As if the
earth itself was growling.
Creatures poured from the treeline like a black tide:
Six-legged wolves with bone plates shielding their skulls.
Spiderlike beasts the size of cattle.
Slithering shadows with humanoid silhouettes.
Winged things that screeched like broken radios.
And leading them—
Something tall, pale, and wrong, with joints bending the
wrong way and eyes like burning voids.
The first volley of bullets lit the night.
The FOB answered with everything it had—rifles, grenade
launchers, electrified barricades—but the tide didn't slow. I grabbed Lyra's
hand, pulling her toward a trench while Orion clung to my coat, shaking
violently.
"Dad," he whispered, "they're talking. They're talking to
each other."
"How?" I shouted over the gunfire.
"I can hear them in my head."
His voice broke.
"They're not animals. They're following something. Someone."
Zara sprinted past us, barking orders at soldiers already
overwhelmed.
"Fall back to sector B! Move! Move!"
But the creatures crashed into the barricades with
impossible strength. Steel buckled. Sandbags exploded. A spider-beast leapt
over the wall, tearing into the first soldier it reached. Screams filled the
air.
The FOB broke in less than ten minutes.
I don't remember how we broke through the south gate.
I only remember fire and blood and the sound of Zara
shooting until her rifle clicked empty.
We fled into the forest along with maybe thirty
survivors—soldiers, civilians, and a few teenagers who'd lost their parents in
seconds.
Orion stumbled beside me, one hand clutching his head.
Lyra's hands glowed dangerously hot, her breath coming in frantic bursts.
And then she appeared.
A girl no older than sixteen, dark-skinned, barefoot, eyes glowing with the same psychic sheen Orion's had earlier that night. Her name, I learned later, was Amu.
She grabbed Orion's arm. "Do you feel it?" she whispered. He
nodded through gritted teeth. "Yes. The path. The pull."
Amu pointed deeper into the forest.
"That way. There's refuge. Something calling us."
The soldiers hesitated. Zara didn't.
"If the kids feel something, we follow," she said. "They're
tuned to whatever Earth has become."
So we ran. The forest swallowed us whole.
Behind us, the FOB burned—a pillar of orange flame lighting
the sky like a funeral pyre.
We didn't stop to mourn.
We didn't dare.
For five days we traveled through a world that no longer
obeyed the rules of biology.
Trees taller than skyscrapers loomed above us, their
branches whispering in voices too quiet to understand. Rivers glowed with
bioluminescent algae. Fruit grew in spirals that bent toward our hands when we
reached for them. The air itself shimmered with unseen currents.
Orion and Amu walked ahead, psychic beacons guiding us along
paths free of predators. Their faces were pale and strained, as if every step
was a negotiation with the forest.
Zara and I kept the middle, watching the group—roughly
twenty-five by the fourth day. The elderly walked with new strength. The sick
barely tired. Children found strange animals gentle enough to pet.
But beauty doesn't erase danger. Not in Eden. Not anymore.
We learned that the hard way at dusk on the fifth day.
We had stopped near a cluster of silver-barked trees that
hummed faintly when the wind touched them. The air grew colder. A fog rolled
in, soft and pale. At first, we thought it was natural, until the shapes formed.
Tall, thin figures stepped from the mist.
Skin stretched too tight.
Eyes hollow and glowing soft blue.
Their bodies flickered like bad projections—half here, half somewhere else.
The Harrowed! Ghostlike victims of the first Eden storm.
Neither dead nor alive. Stuck between worlds.
I had heard whispers about them back at the FOB… but rumors didn't do justice to the horror.
They moved without sound. They glided more than walked. And
when they reached toward us, their touch drew heat from the air, leaving frost
where their fingers passed.
A young man named Biko screamed as one brushed his arm.
Frost spread across his skin. His eyes glazed. His body sagged, drained of
life!
Panic erupted.
We ran, stumbling over roots that shifted beneath our feet.
Soldiers fired, but the bullets passed through the Harrowed like smoke.
"Dad!" Orion shouted. "They're drawn to fear!"
Another civilian fell. Then another. The Harwood multiplied, mist forming more silhouettes. Our group splintered. Voices screamed in every direction.
Amu stumbled to her knees. "I—I can't hold them back. Their minds… they're broken. Fractured." One Harrowed lunged at her- and Lyra exploded.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
A pillar of flame roared around her, spiraling upward like a tornado of light. Her hair became fire. Her eyes blazed white. Heat rippled through the clearing, forcing the Harwood to recoil, their forms flickering
violently.
"LYRA!" I shouted, shielding my eyes.
She stepped forward, a walking inferno.
"Stay away from my family!" she roared.
Flames surged outward in a burst that lit the forest canopy.
The Harwood shrieked—an awful, metallic sound—and dissolved into drifting
light, disappearing into the mist as if burned out of existence.
But the blast drained her. The fire sputtered. Her knees buckled. I barely caught her before she hit the ground. "Dad…" she whispered weakly. "Did I… did I kill them?"
"No," Orion murmured, placing a shaking hand on her forehead. "You freed them. They were trapped."
I didn't know if he was right.
But I wanted to believe him.
After the Harwood attack, our numbers had fallen to nineteen. Emotion weighed heavy on us, but the forest pushed us onward—roots curling aside, paths lighting faintly as though guiding us toward something. Orion
and Amu walked hand in hand, their psychic connection forming a beacon that the
rest of us followed.
Hours later—just as exhaustion threatened to overwhelm us—we
saw it, a wall.
Tall. Reinforced. Covered in vines that glowed soft gold instead of blue. Torches burned on the ramparts.
A figure in a long hooded robe approached the gate. "Mara Tesh," Zara breathed in relief. "She's real."
The woman lifted her hands, her voice gentle and powerful at once. "Welcome, children of the Fractured Dawn," she said. "You survived the calling."
She touched Lyra's forehead, then Orion's. "And now… your true journey begins."
Behind her, the settlement gates creaked open, bathed in warm light. For the first time since the Rebirth, I felt something close to
hope.
We stepped inside. And Eden breathed around us like a living, watching god.