When he opened his eyes, all Soren could see was a gray sky. Quite unlike the blue he was used to. There weren’t clouds, no sun or anything — just a blank gray. It was a bit disconcerting and very concerning. If there was a new monster who could change the color of the sky, they were probably all going to die soon.

He turned his head to panic at the unfamiliarity with his friend, Ceres, but she was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t the first time he woke up without her, as there were times she went gathering early, but usually they discussed it the night before. Not only that, but there was absolutely nobody with him. Suddenly alert and fearful, he rose to his feet in a protective stance while gathering his bearings.

“A dream?” he asked himself, marveling at how tall the buildings surrounding him were. They were all monotone. Quite unlike the cities he was familiar with, all these buildings were still intact, devoid of any vines or other life dragging them down. The windows were unbroken and clean. The roads between the buildings were gray cobblestone, not gravel, and had no debris. There were tall, gray lamps shining a faint orange light, perhaps the only source of color. Most odd was the lack of life — monster or human or some other creature. Never had Soren seen such empty, lifeless, pristine streets. It was chilling, in a way.

No, it couldn’t be dream. In his dreams, his thoughts were far more muffled. A hallucination? They haven’t ever encountered monsters capable of forming illusions, but they also hadn’t documented every living creature.

But it was unlikely to be an monster–made illusion, as they would probably have killed him already. They hunted for food, not to make dreamscapes. Did they have to run at night or something? But why didn’t they wake him?

“Ceres?” he tried to shout at a quiet volume. He didn’t want to alert any monsters of his presence — not that he could see any — but where had everyone gone? The group he was in had seven people, and none of them were the type to abandon him like this. They would have told him if they had to leave early, and would have woken him before they had gone. And even if the others ran, Ceres would never leave him like that. They were inseparable, close in age and skill. He knew she wouldn’t condone leaving him behind.

He checked his weapons — a bow and three arrows, and a small knife. Where he lived, weaponry was limited, as people could not work on producing them while simultaneously dealing with the abundance of monsters around. They had run out of bullets long ago, and Soren only kept the bow and arrows because he was very skilled in using them and it was relatively simply to make functional arrows. Knives were more common weapons. He only kept one small knife because of his alternate weapon, but his comrades kept at least fifteen among the six of them.

“Ceres!” he shouted, a bit louder. His skin prickled and his arms shook. He began to sprint along the cobblestone roads, trying to reach a larger opening.

“Ceres!” he yelled as he ran, “Luz! Sig!”

He slowed his sprint, breathing heavily as he tried to calm down. Luz was their leader. She was a calm person and willing to sacrifice people if absolutely necessary, but given Soren was still alive it probably wasn’t. And Sigfried was also a close friend of his — unlike Ceres, who might have abandoned any from their group other than Soren if absolutely necessary, Sig was more likely to sacrifice himself. It was completely off the table that he would have been left behind by those three.

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Lexi, Esther, and Eva — the other three in their group — tended to be scouting while he was on watch or sleeping, and vice versa. They didn’t talk very often, as their only real relationship was that they fought together. But based on what he knew about them, they didn’t seem like the type to sacrifice others either. And they would have trusted him enough to come out after hearing him shout Ceres, Luz, or Sig’s names. If they hadn’t responded, then they weren’t there either.

“Where are they?” he whispered, backing away onto a building. He was on an intersection of to cobblestone roads, but all he could see was gray skyscrapers and faint orange lamps. “Where am I?”

Soren abandoned his hopes of finding his friends specifically. It was too quiet, in an eerie way, and he wanted to just see another person. Even a monster would be a bit nice — he would settle for just about anything living right now. He began knocking on the windows of the buildings. In each one, an opaque, light gray curtain was drawn. He couldn’t hear anything from inside the buildings and began to knock a bit more frantically, moving down and across the cobblestone roads. He knocked harder and harder, finally choosing to crack one so anyone inside could hear him.

“Hello? Anyone there?” he said. When there was no response, he kicked the window more, repeatedly until it shattered. He then scraped the edges of the window frame clean with his knife before pushing past the curtains and into the building.

Contrary to the surroundings, the interior of the building was very colorful. A grand, mahogany dining table covered in a square green cloth, a deep mauve couch with plush, unjostled cushions. The room was spotless, tidy, and undisturbed. There were no signs of people having lived there at all. The room did seem to have been cleaned though — there was no dust or any sign of aging on the furniture. It was probably the cleanest room he’d ever been in.

Soren moved further into the room, coming across a staircase that spiraled around. The top was dark — he moved slowly, listening closely to see if there were any sounds. At the top, there lied a relatively short hallway. There we three doors on one side, leading to a bedroom, a bathroom, and another spiral staircase, respectively. The other wall in the hall had shelves which held various objects, including electric lamps and empty picture frames.

He moved into the bedroom and opened a window next to the bed. The sky was clear, starless and dark. There was no wind. The air itself seemed to have frozen.

“Ceres?” he whispered hopelessly. An ear-piercing scream rang out as if replying.

Soren jumped in surprise, then leaping out of the second-floor window to chase the noise. It went quiet suspiciously quickly, but there were small noises he could still hear — low-pitched giggling, shuffling noises, indecipherable words. He ran down the street and turned a corner, slowing at the edge of the cobblestone intersection. Soren turned his head around the edge of the building, peeking to see — something quite odd.

There were three men and one woman. Two of the men stood, giggling and talking to the third, who was crouched above the woman. She wore no clothes — at the very least, that’s what it looked like from a distance. They moved back and forth, almost rhythmically, and —

“What the f—” Soren started, but silenced himself when the men turned. He hid behind the building, reeling still from what he had just seen. “She was … dead?”