Over the past three years, Clay developed a feeling for the time of the day and the current seasons through his senses, rather through a watch or calendar. So while it was still autumn, he knew winter wasn’t far off. Maybe another two weeks.

Only a day passed since they found out about the origin of Mia’s poison, or should he rather say virus. She didn’t take it very well to be honest, but he was sure she would be able to get herself together eventually.

Standing in the hallway on the first floor before Mia’s room, he was about to knock but halted midway, changing his mind, he slowly retracted his hand and went back down.

The sun was slowly vanishing behind the horizon, slowly casting the world into darkness, while the moons became more apparent in the night sky. First would rise their old moon, much smaller than before and sometimes even appearing to be darker, as if to underline that it's nowhere near its former glory.

Like an old man who lived too long, who had seen one too many things. He didn’t like looking at their old moon, it depressed him and reminded him of what was – no, it remembered him of what he lost.

The old moon would slowly climb to the peak of the visible sky, followed by the smaller blue moon, which was not even half, its size, but in turn was so much brighter that it always captivated him over the other. He didn’t really know what it was, but he always felt drawn to the blue moon.

Maybe it was because it inhabited the origin of essence, in its core was after all the meteorite which brought this strange energy to their planet. It never stopped radiating more essence outwards into the atmosphere, it seemed endless, just like the sun gave them light, the blue moon gave them essence.

Like usually he spent the night training, thinking or tinkering. It was about midnight when he took a break from adjusting his armor and went out to gaze at the moon again. He did this often, simply to marvel at its beauty and calm his mind.

Eventually, he noticed how the blue moon drew ever closer to the old, before beginning to slowly vanish behind it. Oh, was it already time? About every 42 days, would the blue moon vanish behind the old one, giving it an ethereal looking blue halo around the edges.

During this time, their old moon would appear even darker like a circular void between the stars. Its surface was filled with deep craters and shadowy ridges which gave this void the illusion of being alive, as if the shadows itself were dancing along its surface and outwards to the edges of the blue halo which entrapped the darkness within.

Once the blue moon fully vanished and the void fully encompassed their sky, something unusual happened. He suddenly had a strange feeling of premonition, something was off. At first, he wasn’t quite sure where that feeling came from, as it was too faint, but eventually this feeling morphed into something tangible.

It was hard to describe, but it felt like as if a new weight laid itself over his mind, slowing his thoughts, while his breath accelerated and a deep unsettling feeling of dread slowly unfurled through his whole being.

The void was surrounded by the ethereal blue halo, which slowly started to squirm. At first only a few tendrils broke off from the normal circular halo, but soon it grew in intensity and speed before turning into a storm of moving tendrils.

It was as if lighting was dancing along the edges of the void, expanding outwards to the sky, ripping into it so intensely that a soft diffused blue light remained even after the tendrils retracted back to the void, turning the night sky into a something that reminisced the northern lights.

Is that how essence looked at its purest? Was that how the atmosphere would look if I could see essence? It’s so… beautiful.

Standing there, he watched in awe, not knowing what to do. This was on a scale so much greater than himself, that he didn’t even try to do something, to worry or even understand, he just allowed himself to be completely consumed by this spectacle.

This stalemate was abruptly broken, once the blue hue reached down the roof of their house, down its walls and to the ground, finally submerging everything, himself included. Gravity multiplied at once, and he felt as if the atmosphere itself was trying to make him bow. Like he was underwater, and the pressure pressed down from all sides.

His enhanced body fought against it, and subconsciously he took a hold of the essence released by his refinement and guided it outwards to form a shield. Once it snapped in place, the unsettling feeling vanished at once, together with the heaviness of his body and the headache which had started to grow like a tumor.

Opening and closing his fist, he looked at the sky again. What he saw there couldn’t be described as a moon, it had more similarities to a black hole than anything else. Too confused to act, he just kept watching, which was soon interrupted by a distressed voice from behind. “Clay! What the fuck happened to the sky?!”

Not responding, she ran at him and repeated herself while pointing at the void that was ripped into the night itself, “Clay! Please tell me that is something normal! We are gonna be fine, right?!”

Still not responding or even diverting his gaze, she got even more anxious and started shaking him, as if he lost consciousness. “Clay, please tell me you know what this is?!” beginning to cry, she slowed her shaking. “Please tell me that you know what to do…”

Letting her arms fall down, she fully broke into tears, looking at the ground, sniffling uncontrollably while gasping for air in an attempt to keep her tears at bay. Feeling a firm hand on her shoulder, she looked up with a blurry vision and saw Clay smiling warmly.

“I don’t know what this is, how it happened what it does, when it will end. But I promise you one thing: you’re going to life, no matter what,” Clay vowed confidently and without a hint of hesitation.

Feeling his hand on her shoulder, she immediately calmed down, and hearing him being as calm and collected as ever gave her confidence. With one deep breath, she wiped the tears from her eyes and exhaled. “Okay, but you have to stay alive too. I won’t accept you sacrificing yourself.”

Laughing, he patted her on the head, which she surprisingly didn’t resist. “Of course I won’t die, I still want to see what became of the rest of the world and just because the sky turned all weird, doesn’t mean it will stop me.”

Having calmed down from their normal interaction, Mia asked, “So what do we do?”

Thinking for a moment, Clay replied, “Foremost, we won’t do anything but observe and try to understand what exactly is happening. Maybe it will finally pay off that I built that wall around our house. Oh, and never let your aura shield down.”

Raising a brow, Mia asked, “Why?”

Walking past her, he went to their shack, saying, “The atmosphere itself turned hostile, and your aura is the only thing between you and death.” Taking a moment to process what Clay just said, she quickly followed behind, asking, “Why the hell became the atmosphere hostile?”

Shrugging his shoulders, he said, “Dunno, ask the hole in the sky. More importantly, hold this–” Turning around, he let the wooden spears he just scooped up with his arm fall unto Mia which she struggled to catch, causing the spears to roll around in her arms before she finally got a hold of them all.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with these?!” Mia asked angrily. Looking past him, she finally noticed that the shack was filled from top to bottom with wooden spears. “Wait, don’t tell me you actually never stopped making these spears?”

Looking over his shoulder, Clay saw the collection of spears with a different eye and couldn’t keep himself from laughing. “Well it somehow stuck with me, I never quite noticed, but I did grow quite the collection didn’t I?”

“Are you kidding me, do you have a hidden army somewhere to supply?” asked Mia skeptically.

“Nah, that’s not even all of them, I just didn’t know where else to stash them,” explained Clay while grabbing another arm full of spears.

“You have more?!” Mia asked in outrage.

“Yeah, I had to do something while on patrol, but that’s not important at the moment, follow me,” ordered Clay while walking to their wooden palisade. Shaking her head to free herself of these unnecessary thoughts, she followed behind.

Clamping the spears between his left stump and armpit, he freed his right arm to lean one of the spears with the sharp end pointed upwards against the wall. “I do the right and you the left side, I want a spear between each trunk.”

Nodding, Mia moved left and placed the spears along the wall and once they were done they moved the rest of them against the side of the house, and in small barrels around their small compound. Looking at the sight, Mia exhaled. “You really think that is gonna help?”

Nodding, Clay stated, “I don’t only think it will help, I know it will. Don’t underestimate the power of a spear, besides I can’t fully rely on my erupting punch, it renders me helpless for too long if I don’t know against how many opponents I have to fight,” looking at the sky he added, “at least I hope that I can fight whatever awaits us.”

******

Time passed, minutes felt like hours, and every sound made their heart skip a beat and turn them into startled animals as they frantically looked around to see if they were under attack.

But worst of all was this subtle feeling of dread that was growing and with the void nearing its apex so too neared this feeling its peak. Refusing to blink, Clay watched on, his hand clenching the sword between his fingers until his knuckles turned white.

Eventually his hand began to tremble and once the black hole finally reached the center of the sky, his breath stopped and his eyes widened further, turning bloodshot as he expected something horrible to happen at any moment.

One, two, three, he counted the seconds, eleven, twelve, thirteen, his heart began to race, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, his breath turned rugged, forty-four, forty-five, forty-six, his shield flickered, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.

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A full minute passed when he finally realized that the void continued moving across the sky. He forced himself to break eye contact looking on the ground, blinking, a sudden burning pain shot through his dry eyes. Tearing up, he pressed his hand on his chest. He was hyperventilating, ears ringing, heart racing, each thump felt like a hammer that resonated through his skull.

Closing his eyes, he tried to take a deep breath only to feel the leather breastplate pressing against him, like a stone that weighed on his gut, pushing the air from his lungs while he sunk deeper into the abyss.

Crouching over, he fiddled with the straps of leather to the side until he eventually got them loose and ripped the whole thing away to finally take a deep breath, Calm down Clay! Breath! In and out. In and out…

With eyes closed, he just focused on breathing. Eventually was he able to calm down and stabilized the circulation of his shield. It would have been very bad if it had given in, but fortunately it stood firm.

Slowly opening his eyes, he was startled to see Mia’s face, her temple against his own and a hand on his shoulder, her eyes closed, which opened shortly after his own. He was on his knees, and too shocked with the situation to feel embarrassed.

“Are you fine?” Mia asked worried.

Lying his hand on her arm, he straightened his head and smiled. “Yes, thank you. I just got a little overwhelmed.”

Nodding, she raised from her squat and looked at the sky again. “It’s still moving. So maybe it will pass soon, right?”

Following suite, Clay rose to his feet, and stood beside Mia watching the moving void. “I’m sure it will pass, let’s just… enjoy the view, okay?”

Nodding absently her head, Clay soon lost himself in his own thoughts, If my shield broke just now I could have died… it would all have been over. Just like that. Why did it suddenly affect me so heavily? He looked over his shoulder at Mia, with a frown. Mia seems to be doing just fine. What in the heavens is happening?

Completely lost in finding answers, time passed, until the void finally vanished behind the horizon and the golden light of the dawning sun blinded their eyes, and they finally allowed themselves to relax. During the night, the atmosphere never stopped suppressing them. Luckily, their natural refinement was enough to supply their shields with enough energy.

As longs as they didn’t have to fight during this time, it really wasn’t that bad. The question was how long this anomaly was going to last. Also, how are the beasts going to react to it? Clay knew that most beast didn’t have a noteworthy aura shield, they had an aura, yes, but rarely one dense enough to be considered a shield.

Putting his sword at an angle, the rays of light reflected his own face on the blade, as he pondered about their next course of actions. Since the void vanished, he could feel that the effect that ate at his shield was slowly decreasing. Should he get out and see what was going on in the forest, or stay and wait what happens?

Going through a lot of potential scenarios in his head, he eventually settled on staying. He was of course curious what was going on in the forest, but he shouldn’t unnecessarily risk his life and potentially invoke the wrath of some beasts. If the effect of suppression didn’t get any worse, they should be able to just wait until this anomaly hopefully passed by.

Just like when you stay put in your house during a hefty storm, they will stay put and wait until the worst of this “magic storm” has passed.

******

Nervously and filled with angst, the day eventually passed without anything of note happening. The effect of suppression lessened substantially once the void had fully vanished, but Clay wasn’t dreading the day, but what followed it.

And as if to spite him once the sun set, and he looked upon the horizon the golden strings of light merged with the rising ethereal blue halo that surrounded the void, submerging the sky into an otherworldly soft green hue with tints of aquamarine.

With the rise of the void, he could feel the suppression rising, while the green hue spread through the whole sky. It really looked like the northern lights, yet it felt nothing like it. The sense of awe was the same, but he couldn’t appreciate the sight if he constantly felt like the air itself was trying to crush him to death.

This time, he had far better control over his emotions and watched in high alarm as the void yet again climbed to it’s peak. Once there his heart still made a jump, but he was able to quickly regain his composure, while the moons moved on.

They waited all night, but the second night passed just like the first, with nothing happening apart from the suppression growing in intensity. The violent atmosphere made it harder to refine essence, and if this continued they would soon need to burn their heart blood just to withstand this strange suppression.

How long is this anomaly going to last? What even is happening?

******

All day, Clay tried to make sense of the situation, but came to no plausible explanation. Something in the blue moon must have changed, and he just hoped that, whatever that was, would soon stabilize.

They still had quite the stash of supplies, so he wasn’t worried about running out of food, water or heart blood in the case of Mia, but if the crushing atmosphere around them kept growing at this pace they would not survive another week.

This wasn’t a situation where they had to save on supplies, so Clay did the exact opposite, eating and drinking as much as he wanted. If there really happened something, he didn’t want to face it with an empty stomach nor dry lips.

He tried to be as casual about the situation as he could for Mia’s sake, but they both knew it was just a pretty lie. Nothing was fine and Clay was sure their life was more than a little endangered, but sometimes a small lie was all it needed to keep you going, so he wouldn’t shove his usual honesty in her face.

In truth, he wanted to believe in this lie himself. There just happened too much shit over the past three years for him to take whatever… this thing in the sky was.

Time eventually passed, no matter how much they wished for it to stand still. Once again, the sun vanished behind the horizon, causing the same play of pale green and aquamarine light to decorate the atmosphere.

Closing his eyes and feeling along the edges of his shield, he concentrated on the pressure and gauged how bad it was… Shit, it rose in power again.

That really wasn’t good, especially if he considered… Trailing off with his thoughts, he took a glance at Mia. He didn’t want to think about it, but if this didn’t stop soon he would be the first to give in, after all was Mia’s shield several times stronger than his own.

He couldn’t allow her to see him die like this, not after she just barely recovered from the loss of her brother. Fuck, he was lying to himself, she didn’t recover from her parents nor her brother, he didn’t mention it because he didn’t know how to help. He wasn’t really good at the whole feelings compartment of being human.

But he wasn’t oblivious to the fact that Mia still woke up at night, bathed in sweat and with haggard breath, awakened by another nightmare. He was superhuman, he could hear her sobs from the cellar as if she was beside him if he enhanced his ears.

To be honest, he didn’t really understand what kept her going, but a small part of himself told him that he was the reason – or at least a large part of it. If he were to die, it would… break her.

For him to fulfill his promise to Jim he had to stay alive at least until she was able to move on and life her own life. Hopefully in an environment with others friends her age and more normal stuff than a lesson on butchering mutated wolves or how to control the strange magic that turned their whole lives upside down and shattered everything they considered to be common sense.

Something like a normal, boring school would be nice… Damn, I think I’m actually missing school myself. Took only the end of the world, snickered Clay in his mind.

Heaving a sigh, he concentrated back on his task of observing the village. He was currently sitting on their rooftop, where he was able to see most of the crumbling and overgrowing houses. He swore that plants grew faster. It was impossible for ivy to grow that quickly.

Most of his essence was directed into keeping his shield up, but a substantial amount was also used to singularly enhance his left eye while he covered his right one with his hand. Normally he had enough essence to enhance whatever sense he needed to the fullest, but with this suppression he had to dedicate most of what he refined to keeping his shield up.

The fact that he refined essence slower didn’t help in that matter at all. Even that one eye together with the shield was pushing it for what he refined. The next night, he would be forced to increase the intensity of his inner flame and begin to lose heart blood.

Maybe he should have built some sort of watchtower or at least some sort of battlement, but he didn’t deem it necessary to be honest. Once he encountered the dire wolves, he figured the wooden palisade would be useless anyway, so he didn’t bother.

And their rooftop fulfilled the job of the watchtower just as well, if not better. There was no reason to got out and build something if you could just causally climb the roof.

Surveying the surroundings, the night fully rose, and he half expected nothing to show up. Nothing did the first two days, so he didn’t think now of all days something would, if anything he thought it was less likely. With the pressure from the atmosphere increasing, there wouldn’t be a lot of animals that could be bothered with anything else but trying to stay alive themselves.

That was until he saw a shadow dragging its body around a corner of a house in the distance. He immediately recognized it as a dire wolf, but upon a closer look he froze. Its veins were bulging, even twitching from time to time like they had a life on their own.

It’s left hint leg was twisted all wrong, and it was just dragging it along the ground. It missed a hand on its right arm with only bits and pieces of flesh hanging along, and its body had claw marks all over, even on the face which seemed to have blinded one of its eyes.

Feeling his heart begin to accelerate caused Clay to slowly increase the intensity of his inner flame. Something was wrong about this dire wolf. He knew it should have died from such wounds, and it was way too silent, almost as if it were a puppet on strings.

Each of its movement was far from natural, too mechanical and clumsy for it to be anything close to the agile and evasive hunters he remembered fighting. He rose from his crouch and straightened his back.

Soon the dire wolf stopped pulling it’s battered body along the concrete and snapped its head in his direction. It watched for a moment before an unsettling canine grin settled on its snout as a low growl started to rise from the depth of its throat.

Suddenly there was an unsettling sound of squashing flesh as the leg of the wolf turned violently and pushed itself back into its normal position with a loud crack. The claw marks all over its body knitted itself shut and the pieces of flesh around its hand formed a stump, showing capabilities of healing only matched by himself.

Oh, so they regenerate now… That’s all just fucking great, lamented Clay to himself. Moving his neck around, he moved his sword in lazy circles before pushing his essence into his legs and jumped from the roof over the palisade and safely on to the road.

Almost at the same time, the wolf sprinted at him with an unusual aggressiveness, compared to the usual calm he was used to from the hunter. It definitely was faster than usual. He watched as the beast raced towards him, using all of his limbs – even the stump – to reach him as quickly as possible.

Having strengthened his whole body by now, Clay gripped the handle of his sword firmly, as he waited for his opportunity. Holding his essence, he observed every movement of the beast, until he finally saw it.

At once, he erupted the essence inside his legs and shot off at impossible speed for the dire wolf to react to and with an iron grip sliced through the neck of the thing in one slice and beheaded it smoothly, as a trail of blood followed behind his blade.

Taking a few steps to slow his dash, he felt the burning pain on his legs. He overshot it a bit, but he wanted to make sure he was faster. Turning around, he saw the body of the beast falling down with a heavy thud, which prompted him to quickly stifle his inner flame.

So it couldn’t regenerate, being beheaded. It lets me wonder if I would survive being beheaded?

Shaking his head, he pushed the absurdity of that question out of his mind and concentrated on the dead body. This didn’t seem like a normal mutation, and he guessed that the whole anomaly with the moons was behind it. The only question was: “How many of this new beast are there?”