They dove like acid rain.  Abundant.  Merciless.  Painful.

The corvids swooped through the stadium, talons extended, raking at skin and hair and eye sockets. One flew straight at me, aiming for me like it had been bred to end me. It landed on my nape and pecked at my exposed jaw and cheek, breaking skin. Swearing loudly, I shoved it off and swung for it with my sword, almost dismembering Will as I did so.

The crowd rushed out of the stands in a chaotic frenzy, pushing each other out of the way, amassing at the exits.  Blood and feathers and screams.

Gritz, the screams.  I'd never heard such noises.  Human pain and horror stitched with harsh, bloodthirsty caws.  It filled me with terror.

This...this was all so wrong.

My gaze snapped back to the stage just as something leapt from the swarm above us.  The shadowy figure landed on the concrete platform, calmly rising from its crouch.  At first, I thought it was a soldier, a federate jumping to our aid. It wore a soldier's uniform. Boots. Old Ellsian army attire. A sword on its left hip and a dagger on its right.

This creature, though...this was like nothing I'd ever seen before. A lattice of black veins and blisters covered its decaying skin, and its human face bore two gray, vacant eyes and a grime-speckled grin. It resembled the mountain lions in that way—like something that had died and should have stayed dead.

The corpse sneered at me. A black tongue flicked across oily lips as it drew a long, sharpened blade from its scabbard. Two hands on the extended hilt.

I retreated backward into Will.

Breaching his state of shock, Gilmore stepped between the contestants and the devil birthed of crow feathers.  "Boys, get behind—"

He didn't get the chance to protect us.  The ghoulish soldier had already sliced his head clean off his shoulders.

The announcer I had known since I was a child—the symbol of the Tournament, the speaker of Belgate—crumpled like a sack of grain.  His head hit the platform with a sound I would never forget.

I dropped my helmet and stared at the blood gushing for my feet, my chest too tight, my breathing stilted.

The male contestants swore and quickly scrambled over the edge of the platform, desperate to escape the bloodshed. They reached sturdy ground, only to find they'd traded one slaughterhouse for another.  Around us, similar creatures poured through the entryways and crawled over the stadium walls like a clutter of spiders spilling out of an egg sac. Armed and murderous, they attacked the innocent, chasing them down andcutting them open. Others tossed glass bottles into the stands, flooding the event center with scarlet fire and toxic smoke.

I watched, sick to my stomach, as Belgate's entire populace ran for their lives from killer birds and these...these...fictional terrors.

It happened too quickly, unfolding all at once.

It was too fast to be real, the way a dream patches too many scenes and impossible scenarios into one sequence.  But as the blood began to pool around my boots, I couldn't lie to myself. 

We'd been invaded by monsters. 

Real or fiction, I wasn't going to die standing here, trying to ascertain what this was. Wallowing in the trauma of it all.  Rendered useless by the shock of death and brutal murder.

No, I wouldn't die here, trapped in my own mind.

In a burst of rage and panic, I broke free from my paralysis and lunged at the ghoulish soldier.  But the humanoid deflected my attack with the smallest degree of effort, and it smiled again—a patronizing smile that shriveled up my insides. He sprung forward, hacking at my unprotected ribcage, and I barely dodged the blade in time. I backed away, swallowing the putrid fear climbing my throat.

Shaking, I was about to attack again when Will grabbed my wrist and all but threw us off the platform, putting an abrupt end to my duel. I rolled upon landing, miffed at his manhandling but relieved to be out of the creature's striking distance.

We ran, and I spared a glance at the beasts taking lives around me, slicing entrails—trying to absorb the images and not the emotions they induced.

"What...are they?" I gasped out.

Crows plunged and swerved around us.  The anguished cries of my elders echoed through the stadium. Blood splashed the walls.

Block it out, block it out.

Seeking cover, we ducked behind the courtside seats and peered out at the mayhem.  Crows.  Blades.  Deranged soldiers at war with their own civilians.

"They're spirits," Will answered, his eyes narrowing on the ghouls chasing attendees out the door.

My gaze snapped to his face.  "What?"

"Spirits.  Like ghosts...demons."

"Demons?" I stood up to get a better look, but he yanked me back down again, shaking his head, exasperated.

"They've taken over human forms, eaten their souls. That's what we're fighting."

I wanted to smack him.  Did he fall on his head?

Souls? Demons? He was speaking in folklore.

"Patrons.  You mean the war—this whole time—we've been up against this?" Chinger hissed, hunched behind another row of bleachers a few yards away. His red hair dripped with sweat, and his dimpled chin quivered between words. 

Grim, Will nodded, and my doubt wavered at the threatened and foreboding look in his eyes. 

Spirits? That wasn't possible.  We couldn't be fighting the dead, even if they looked like they'd crawled out of hell. That just didn't happen outside worn pages.

Besides. How would Will know anything?  Every other citizen was running for his life, unaware and unprepared. 

"Who told you that?" I asked, searching his unreadable profile. 

Dark eyes locked on the exit.  "Get out of Belgate, Kingsley.  And try not to die."

And with that, he left me in the bleachers, his mission as unclear as his explanation. Chinger darted after him a few seconds later, and before I could think to follow them, the two contestants vanished into a sea of chaos.

I cursed, all alone with the monsters.

Monsters, spirits, demons...who could be sure? All I knew was they wanted us dead, and I was not on board with that plan. I had too many unanswered questions. Too many goals at stake. 

Sculpting alarm into adrenaline, I fled for the exit, left elbow shielding my eyes from the sadistic birds.  Should have kept your damn helmet, Kingsley. 

Frantic bodies pushed and shoved at one another as hundreds of people funneled through the archways, and for a moment, I was more terrified of being trampled to death than beheaded.  I could taste the fear, smell it.  The mob reeked of it.

As soon as I crossed the threshold of the arena and escaped the mass of bloody, shrieking attendees, sturdy hands fell on my shoulders and spun me around.

My father held me at arm's length, wild-eyed. My breath whooshed out of me.

"Dad?" I clutched at his wrists. Desperate to anchor myself to something real and concrete and factual.  "What's happening?"

"Alex, listen to me."  His haunted eyes burrowed into my own.  "I need you to warn the Interior of this incursion."

I blinked at him, shaking my head slightly.  His words made absolutely no sense.  "...What?"

"Eastward, Alex.  Holly first. They're the head of military operations.  They can help us. And you'll be safe there.  It's one of the strongest cities in Ells."  His grip tightened on my shoulders.  "You know your geography. You know where Holly is."

It was a question, not an affirmation.

"I...I can get there," I promised, my throat closing in on itself.  Was he really tasking me with this?  Venturing into the Range on my own?  Finding the Command?  "But...I can't just...what about you?  You're not coming with me?"

His throat bobbed, and he glanced over my head at the flood of Ellsians pouring out of the stadium, bloody and broken and wailing in pain. "I'll meet up with you as soon as I can.  For now, I need to help the others, secure safe passage out of Belgate.  And you...I need you to do this for me.  For all of us."  He gazed down at me, too many words on his tongue, too little time.  "I know now—I know what you're capable of.  You can save us, Al.  You've had it in you all along."

The admission pinched the corners of my eyes, and I felt tears spring to the surface where they didn't belong. All I'd ever wanted was to hear those words from him, to know he believed in me.  He was gifting me a chance to prove myself.  Now I just had to find the courage to do it.   "Dad, I—"

"The last thing I want is to separate right now.  But the sentinels will stay to defend Belgate, along with any vets and non-deployed soldiers. Everyone else will be looking to escape to the South, and they need someone who knows his wild crops, his water sources." He shook his head, and his hand dropped to my own, peeling it away from his forearm.  "You need to deliver the message to the Interior that the borders have fallen.  Before it's too late."

I wanted to argue, but I knew he was right. If these evil soldiers had come from the West, then they'd continue North and Northeast, where our population was most concentrated. "...Okay," I managed, biting my lip. Nodding to myself. "Okay."

Time drew a breath, and the screams died as we stared at one another, the dry wind tossing the hair around our faces. There was an intensity I'd never seen before in those hazel eyes.  A bravery I'd never noticed.

"Go on." He pushed me away, his face pained, his eyes wet.  "Go."

I took a step back, hesitating.  This felt wrong, leaving him, parting ways so suddenly.  "I..."

"For once, Alex, do as I say." He turned to face a courtyard full of demons, and I watched his spine uncurl, his shoulders straighten. "Run."

Conflicted, I looked him over one more time—his tanned nape, his fall sweater and field trousers, his worn and cracking hands—and then I took off in the other direction, blinking away tears. 

My father trusted me enough for this task.  I wouldn't let him down.  Not again.

I ran past burning buildings: the festival booths, Nova's storefront, the library. Places I'd memorized to the smallest and most mundane detail. All of it was ravaged and smoking, drowning in strange red flames. They were almost dark, like bloodstains.  Devoid of yellows, oranges, or blues.  

Just lightless, raging red.

Men with moon-colored eyes burned everything in their wake. They threw bottles and torches through windows and reveled in their destruction.  Horses lay dead in the street—a barbaric strategy to slow our escape.

Several sentinels attempted to fight back, Frost included, but they were falling quickly from what I could tell. Bodies littered the streets, and I wasn't keen onjoining this mass burial.

Panting heavily, I burst through the front door of my house.  

There was no time to deliberate. 

I shot upstairs and flung a few spare clothes into my school pack, distant screams bouncing off the window pane. I slid everything from my desk into the sack with one motion: my old flashlight, a few of my most treasured books, my knife.  Then I rushed back down to the kitchen and tossed in a loaf of bread. 

After frantically filling a waterskin, I barreled on for the barn to see what camping gear I could find.

The chickens scurried around my feet, terrified, while Guinevere and Ophelia huddled together at the far end of the ranch, seeking sanctuary. Richard was nowhere to be found, and I could only hope he'd run far away from this place.

I retrieved some cord and a box of matches from the shed, and I'd nearly made it to the fruit trees when a burst of heat and wood chips launched me into the air.

Fire, some primal piece of me recognized, even as my mind failed to process what was happening. Fire everywhere and all-consuming.

Sprawled on the dirt, I sat up, my vision shifting back and forth, and when the blurry image sharpened, I dug my nails into the earth.

My house withered in crimson flame.

A permanent structure, now kindling to destruction. Now fuel for the conqueror. 

I stared at the death of a space I had called home my entire life.  The old shingles on the roof coiled black, the wooden foundation splintering under the ferocious heat. And as it burned to ash before my eyes, I knew this pyre would have to forego a funeral if I had any intention of escaping Belgate. 

So I slowly, numbly, rose to my feet and willed myself to turn away.

To run away.