About five minutes before the clock hit zero, an air horn went off on top of the platform in the center of the room. The horn sounded continuously for about a minute, during which time the hall slowly filled up further with guests from all over the hall. Eventually, the horn quietened. A small platform lowered down from the ceiling, creating a hole in the clock. Clutching the hydraulic poles lowering the platform to the one below was Katri, bedecked in the same ceremonial fur armor he always wore to these events.

Once the platform made contact with the larger one, Katri stepped off and the platform retracted back into the ceiling. Katri walked forward and placed his arms on the railing, surveying the crowd that looked up at him.

“Evening, everyone. I hope you’ve all been having a great day so far?”

Most of the Aztecs cheered and clapped, though the attending Norse remained largely silent.

“That’s great, that’s great. It’s nice to see so many… Domain, singular… here. Yeah, it’s sad to see that so many Domains have petered out nowadays. Looks to me like it’s just the Aztecs, Indians and Chinese left. If you’re wondering where those last two are, I just didn’t invite them. Too stuck-up to be worth inviting.”

Katri nodded as several people in the crowd chuckled. “But I know the Aztecs will always have my back. But we can’t just throw these kinds of parties all willy-nilly, it doesn’t mean anything then. So I’m sure you’re all wondering what reason we have to invite everyone (fun) to this event. Well, the hint was in the name: It’s the eve of a prophecy. Sardok, get on up here.”

From among the crowd, a comparatively small Primus, wearing the armored garb of the Norse, scurried over to the pillar holding up the platform. He pushed a hidden button on the pillar, at which point a concealed door slid open. He stepped inside, closed the door, and appeared alongside Katri a few seconds later.

Katri continued once the Primus came to a stop. “Sardok here can see the future of our Domain!”

Sardok sniffled. “Actually, I am preternaturally attuned to datapoints related to the members of my Domain, as well as parts of the rest of existence, allowing me to subconsciously extrapolate-“

“Yeah, yeah, nobody cares, whatever. Sardok’s given us plenty of prophecies about stuff we’re gonna do to each other, but we found out about one in particular about two thousand years ago. Sardok, you’ve got the stage.”

Sardok stepped up to the edge of the platform, cleared his throat and began to chant.

“When three summers of winter pass,

Shall mine words surely come to pass.

Those eldest am-“

“Excuse me for a second.” Katri pulled Sardok away from the railing and out of view. When he spoke again, his voice was hushed, but everyone in the crowd could still easily hear him. “Kid, we agreed, no rhyming.”

“But it’s more dramatic that way! And we’re the same age!”

“I don’t care about dramatics, we’re on a tight schedule!”

“This is a big moment; we shouldn’t ruin it! I prepared six stanzas for this!”

“You already ruined it by rhyming ‘pass’ with ‘pass’! You know what? I’ll handle this part, you just head back down. I can’t believe you.”

Katri stepped back into view while Sardok reappeared at the bottom of the pillar. “To summarize, once there have been three straight years of winter, this ancient evil we locked up 750 years ago, give or take, will kill every first-generation Primus in our Domain. Once that’s done, she’ll turn on humanity with her- what was it, Sardok? ‘Reclaiming tides?’ What does that even mean?”

Sardok, who was back in the crowd now, shrugged. “’Reclaiming tides’ was all I got.”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Katri looked back up at everyone else. “You get the idea. Most of us die, humanity probably also gets killed by… global warming, I guess, and everyone else dies too. Bad stuff.” Before anyone in the crowd could get too riled up, he raised his hands. “But there’s a reason we’ve invited all of you here instead of fortifying our home. See, that whole winter thing? Well…”

He pulled a remote control out of his pocket and pressed a button on it. half of the walls of the room began to raise and fold up, revealing massive floor-to-ceiling wraparound windows. Nothing outside was visible through the impossibly thick clouds surrounding the hall, it looked as though the building was surrounded by endless void. While everyone was looking outside, Katri continued.

“We’re, like, 90% sure that the nuclear winter the humans caused right after the Nabbing counts. And guess what? In…” He looked up at the ceiling. “One minute and seventeen seconds, we’ll perfectly hit the third anniversary of the first human nukes hitting their targets. Crazy, huh? How the time flies. What’s more, we checked up on our prisoner about a week ago, and she’s still there. And don’t worry. With where we put her, there’s no way she’ll make it from there to here in a week’s time. It works for Deus, it works for us. So enjoy the next… exactly one minute, and celebrate the defiance of destiny with us!”

Some people in the crowd went back to what they were doing, some watched the clock count down to its final seconds. A few decided to keep an eye on the entrance to the room. But the clock hit zero, and nothing happened. Katri grinned. “Happy anniversary, everyone. And may the rest of us make it another three…“

Halfway through his sentence, he stopped when he noticed something off about the crowd. When he had last looked out at them, there was nothing worth noting. But now, dozens of ephemeral, hooded figures stood among the guests. They all seemed to be the same height and build, but no features were visible under their veiled, forest-green robes.

The people in the crowd quickly began to notice the figures as well, pulling away from the new arrivals in fear and suspicion. After standing motionless for a few seconds, the figures all lifted their gloved hands out of the folds of their robes and pointed to the exit to the room. After a split second of dead silence, the figures vanished into thin air.

The wraparound windows all shattered at once, giving way to a swarm of massive, featherless birds. As they entered the hall and the crowd of Primoi scattered and ran for the exit, dozens of alien-looking humanoids leapt from the birds’ backs and landed on the floor, weapons drawn.

The attackers appeared in all shapes and sizes with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Some were furry, others covered in scales. Some had multiple sets of arms, others had tails. All bore thick plate armour and medieval-style weaponry. Upon landing, one cried “Bring them down!” and every single one charged at the crowd of Primoi.

One bird swooped directly over Katri’s platform, and a lone figure landed in front of him. Tall, lean, and swathed in the same green hood as the figures that had appeared earlier. The figure braced itself upon landing, and turned to look directly at Katri. Their face was obscured by a dark green veil; all that was visible were two glowing green eyes.

Katri’s eyes shot open. “But… I thought… that’s impossible…”

Ligivul took a single step forwards and Katri instinctively raised his arms. Ligivul could feel her skin twist and jerk in ways it normally couldn’t as Katri worked his powers on her. She felt her bones snap as her limbs were yanked in unnatural directions.

Katri growled. “I’d hoped you’d learned your lesson and stayed in your cave. I guess that was too much to hope for a monster like you. If you’re gonna keep ruining my parties, it looks like I’ll have to make sure you never move again.”

Ligivul could still move her left arm freely. With what little focus she could muster through the pain, she reached into her cloak and drew a dagger. Before Katri could stop her, she flung the blade into Katri’s shoulder.

Katri squealed in pain and collapsed, losing his grip on Ligivul’s body. Before he could recover, Ligivul rushed forwards, twisting her broken limbs even further, and planted her second knife in Katri’s temple.

“The portal’s open! Everybody out!” Ligivul perked up when she heard someone yell the command. No. She couldn’t let her targets escape. They could find help, or hide in the far reaches of the world, where she’d never find them in time. Fortunately, she’d come prepared.

She pulled out a small bag, drew five pebbles from it, and tossed the stones into the air. Knowing what to do, the stones flashed blue and flew through the hall towards the stone keeping the portal stable.

Right before the first few guests made it through the portal, the pebbles embedded themselves in the wall around the larger stone. The sigils on the stone turned blue themselves, and the portal began to flicker and deform.

Mark and Horan were one of the people at the front of the crowd. They could have put up a fight against the pursuing creatures, but they were too surprised and afraid to do anything but run. Who knew what these things were? Who knew how dangerous they were? They were so preoccupied with these questions that they didn’t notice that anything was off about the portal as they ran through it.

When about two thirds of the guests had made it through the portal, the stone holding it together couldn’t handle the strain and detonated in a flash of blue light. The light engulfed the entire hall, drowning everything in a blue haze.