An explosion went off right next to Yann Dilnao’s head. A spray of rock shards blasted him in the face and ear on that side.

He ducked under his arm, but he couldn’t protect himself from flying debris and granite slabs hurtling at him from all directions.

A blast of seismic force ruptured to the soil to his left. It ejected tons of rock and dry mud into the air from somewhere underground.

A towering spire of jagged stone stabbed through the hole and kept rising into the air. Its size fractured more of the mudflats underfoot.

Yann dodged to the right to get away from the earthquake, but more tremors jolted the earth under him. He stumbled and almost fell.

His father lunged for him, seized Yann by his uniform jacket, and yanked him closer to the Black Watch. All the Watchmen ran for their lives across the mudflats as the landscape erupted in mayhem all around them.

The mountains ringing this valley erupted out of position, shot to massive heights, and then collapsed on themselves.

The rock didn’t bounce and roll when it landed on the ground—not the way it should have. Blocks and boulders hit the ground once and levitated into the air. Gravity didn’t work the same way.

The blocks smashed together, reformed into shapes of creatures, monsters, and animals, and shattered apart.

Other piles of rubble on the ground jointed together to form new mountains or gouged deep into the mudflats to carve fissures, riverbeds, and valleys that weren’t there before.

The Watchmen swerved right and left trying to avoid these obstacles. Niyazi Trahan ran in front and sprang over a river getting wider by the second, but he got trapped on the other side when it spread too wide for the rest of the Watch to cross.

Yvan Dilnao, the Commander of the Watch, rushed down the bank and thrust out his hand. “Niyazi!” Yvan yelled, but it was too late.

A massive torrent of water rushed down the riverbed, but the flood didn’t overflow the bank. It scored a deeper channel that plummeted into a gorge.

Niyazi’s side of the river sprouted into a high plateau with him still on top. The Watchmen couldn’t get him back.

At the same time, the mountains behind the Watch’s position stretched too high, flattened themselves into a cliff wall, and the wall curved over on itself to loom over the mudflats.

The wall kept curling until it crashed down in a breaking wave of granite. All the slabs and boulders washed over the mudflats rumbling closer to the party.

The Barbarian Servant Anríq sprang between the wave and the Watchmen, unhooked his club, and planted himself there.

Yann shot out his arm to call his friend back. “Anríq—no!” Anríq wouldn’t be able to stop that tide without his magic.

Yvan grabbed his son by the jacket again. “This way!” Yvan took off running down the river dragging Yann with him.

The wave of stone coming closer didn’t cross the flats quickly enough. Anríq waited for the Watchmen to go first before he spun away and followed them.

Yvan ran down the river. In a few seconds, the massive expanse of water changed again. Grass sprouted out of it and then giant trees thrust their crowns through the surface.

“Now!” Yvan yelled and dodged into the trees.

Yann didn’t know what to expect, but the river changed into a forest with a solid floor and leaf litter covering the ground.

Yvan hurdled fallen tree trunks, veered around rock outcroppings that sprang up in his path, and burst out the other side of the forest.

The landscape over here looked like the plateau where Niyazi got trapped. He ran along the top, and as soon as the Watchmen came out of the forest, a shriek of pelting wind hit the plateau from farther down the valley where the river had been flowing.

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The wind scoured the plateau and started to erode it. Niyazi bent his head against the wind and ran straight into the hurricane. He ran down the slope just in time to meet up with the other Watchmen.

“This way!” Yvan called and kept running in that direction—away from where the river had been.

Yann didn’t see anything over there that his father might be running toward, but that hardly mattered. Everywhere in this landscape would be equally unsafe.

The plateau shrank under the endless driving wind. The plateau retreated up the valley and left the flats clear.

The landscape kept rupturing all around the fleeing party. Parts of the terrain grew into new mountains while others imploded and vanished into bottomless pits.

Yann got lost in the mayhem. His father kept yelling at everyone to keep going.

Eliska wound up on the outside of the group. Another blast of exploding mud went off right next to her. She screamed when a million projectiles hit her in the face.

Yann grabbed her, pivoted her inward to the center of the Watchmen’s cluster, and he rotated to the outside to keep her between himself and the other Watchmen.

They all closed the circle with her at the center….and then, somehow or other, Marine wound up in there, too.

Yann didn’t see her running with the others, but she migrated farther forward as the landscape disintegrated. Neils Surette, Vidal Rom, and Omer Veco parted and slowed down. Then they closed their formation behind Marine to bring her into the center with Eliska.

Debris and falling missiles kept pelting down from the sky….and then all those bits of cracked mud and gravel turned to stinging rain.

It fell harder than it should have. Every droplet stabbed Yann’s skin and burned his scalp. He yelled out in pain, but the rain only got stronger.

Eliska screamed again and so did Marine. Yann yanked his jacket off and threw it over his head for protection. Instinct made him move inward to cover Eliska with the jacket, too.

“Take off your cloak!” he yelled. “Spread it over you and Marine!”

He used his jacket to protect her while she tore off her cloak. All the Watchmen copied him, ripped their off jackets, and connected their corners together to make a tent over their heads.

“Keep moving!” Ivan roared. “This way.”

He veered farther in the direction he had been going. Yann almost stopped running when he saw his father heading for mountains in the distance.

They kept detonating in more transformations. Rock jetted out of the skyline and morphed into towering Darklings that collapsed in on itself just as fast. Yann didn’t want to go over there.

Long training kept the other Watchmen moving forward no matter what. Yvan didn’t slow down or even check over his shoulder to make sure his men followed him.

That left them no choice but to keep up with him. He took off his jacket to protect him from the rain, but he didn’t drop back to join the rest of the group.

Anríq ran behind everyone else. He took off his vest to cover his head, but it wasn’t big enough to protect the rest of him.

He didn’t try to join the rest of the group, either. He could have overtaken them in seconds, but he always stayed the same distance behind the others.

The mountains got closer—or maybe their constant growth made them look like they were getting closer. They crumbled at the center while the two outer ranges rose higher and higher without stopping.

Yvan just kept running straight into the heart of the worst mayhem. He headed for the gap between the two ranges, but that only brought him closer to the two sides exploding apart.

Avalanches of rock pounded down on the ground right in the group’s path. Yann considered calling out to his father to stop.

None of the other Watchmen said a word, but they all slowed when they saw the danger. Giant boulders smashed down in the middle of the gap. No way could anyone survive going in there.

Yvan dove straight into it. “FATHER!!” Yann yelled out and started to draw back.

That was the moment when he saw a flash of something green on the other side. A beautiful landscape of grass, trees, and even tall buildings crowded with people spread beyond the gap.

Yvan vanished into the avalanche. The other Watchmen saw the other landscape at the same time, charged forward, ran into the mayhem to follow him.

They tightened their cluster. Their arms holding their jackets together formed a lattice over the two girls. Anríq ran closer behind and closed the space between him and the others.

Huge boulders smashed down on either side, in front of, and behind the party. By some miracle, those boulders never hit anyone in the group.

Yann didn’t dare to check where he was. His father was on the other side of this mess.

Yann didn’t ask himself how Yvan knew about this other landscape. That didn’t matter. The party had to get through to safety.

Without warning, they ran under another torrent of falling granite and the whole mass of stone smashed into the gap behind the Watch.

Everyone stopped dead in their tracks as the rock fall closed the gap behind them. All the men of the Watch turned their eyes to the landscape in front of them.

Yvan stood there staring at everything. He didn’t venture deeper into this new Island.

Grass, fields, trees, and tall buildings crowded with people did not spread out before him. Whatever he saw or Yvan saw from the other side of those mountains—it wasn’t here anymore. Maybe it never had been here to begin with. Maybe it was all an illusion.

The group emerged in another massive expanse with not a single sign of human habitation anywhere.

Yann couldn’t even see what kind of landscape it was. His feet crunched on a carpet of bones covering the ground.

A cold iron-grey ceiling of cloud cast the Island in shadow. A foul wind blew over everything. The bones shattered and resettled themselves every time one of the Watchmen took a step.

The bones stretched to the farthest horizon—which was as flat and barren as everything else in this place.

End of Chapter 1.