When my nights were filled with softer things.
My mother’s voice, humming as she kneaded dough. The scent of turned soil clinging to my father’s clothes. The warm glow of lanterns in our home, flickering as the evening wind whispered through the cracks in the wooden walls.
That life feels like it belongs to someone else.
A girl who no longer exists.
I squeeze my eyes shut, breathing slowly, trying to release the weight in my chest. Eventually, sleep takes me.
The sun is high. Golden light spills across the fields, turning the wheat to honey.
The air is thick with the scent of sun-warmed earth, the faint sweetness of ripening grain, and the distant aroma of freshly baked bread drifting from the house.
The sky stretches endlessly, a brilliant shade of blue, streaked with wisps of white clouds that barely move in the heat. Cicadas hum lazily, a rhythmic pulse that fills the air, blending withthe distant chatter of village life beyond the fields. Birds wheel overhead, their wings catching the sunlight, their calls sharp and bright.
The soil beneath my bare feet is warm and soft, broken and rich from planting season. My hands sink into the earth as I pull weeds from between the rows of crops. The wheat sways gently, bending with the breeze, rolling like golden waves in the midday light. The leaves of the vegetable patches are broad and green, curling at the edges, the fruit heavy on the vines.
Somewhere behind me, I hear the familiar rhythm of my father’s axe splitting wood, the sharp crack echoing across the field. The steady creak of the old wheelbarrow follows, my mother pushing fresh bundles of harvested grain toward the barn.
I wipe the sweat from my brow, smearing dirt across my skin, but I don’t mind.
This is home.
The certainty of the seasons, the soil, the work, the life that grows from it.
I pause, lifting my face to the sky, feeling the breeze cool the sweat on my back.
I belong here.
I straighten, stretching the ache from my back. The sun is hot and steady, the fields swaying in the warm breeze.
Then, in the distance—movement. A dark shape against the bright summer sky. I squint, shielding my eyes with my hand.
A storm?
The black cloud billows toward the village, rolling low over the hills, moving with eerie precision. The breeze shifts, carrying something cooler. But I don’t recognize the scent of it.
Something feels off. I frown. It’s too low, too dense. And it’s moving too fast.
A prickle runs down my spine. Storms don’t move like that.Wind doesn’t carry clouds that way.
The wheat shudders around me, rustling as if whispering a warning. I take a step back, the warmth of the sun suddenly winked out. The cloud grows closer, spreading outward like fingers reaching across the sky.
And then, through the haze of shifting darkness, I see shapes moving within it.
Something is coming.
The black cloud surges forward, rolling over the distant hills like a living thing.
Then it breaks apart.
My breath falters as I see them. Hundreds of dark shapes tearing through the sky with an eerie, predatory grace.
Their wings stretch wide, vast and leathery, their long, ridged frames cutting through the air like blades. They don’t flap like birds—they glide, slicing through the wind with a silence that feels unnatural for something their size.
They are not just black—they absorb the light, their bodies wrapped in something more sinister than shadow. Their muscles are thick, their forms built for power.
I see their faces.
