Chapter 1: Change Falls

Sitting on the yellowed grass below a large Linden tree in a park was a young man. The man’s name was James Wall and currently he was taking a break in the shade while walking to work. James wiped sweat off of his brow, then took out his phone from his pocket. His phone showed the time ‘3:52 PM’ and he sighed.

‘Well money is not going to make itself,’ he said, halfheartedly trying to motivate himself, then sighed once again.

James used his hands to push himself off the ground, then wiped off his hands on his pants. He squinted at the sun and groaned ‘it really should not be this hot at this time of the year,’ he thought.

Finally, James left the relieving shade of the Linden and walked into the sweltering heat of the Cidmont sun. However as James just started walking, a flash of red took over his vision. James paused, and put a hand to his forehead and mumbled “shit am I having a heat stroke?” Right after he finished saying that, another flash painted James’ vision red.

Then a third flash of red happened, accompanied by a resounding “Crack!” And with that James’ vision faded to black and he fell on to the yellowed grass he had previously been standing on.

---

James slowly opened his eyes and sat up, blinking a couple of times to get the blurriness out of his eyes. He looked down and saw he had been sleeping in the middle of a park, and was mildly confused. Then everything rushed back to him, flashes of red, that loud noise, then falling unconscious. James looked around himself, he first noticed that the sun was setting, lighting the clouds above him a beautiful orange. ‘So I’ve probably been unconscious for about five hours now, or twenty-nine, or more… Although I feel like I would be more thirsty if I had been asleep that long.’ Speaking of thirsty, the man realized he was not thirsty at all, or hungry either for that matter. He thought that was weird, but decided to ignore that for now in favor of further examining his surroundings.

He was sitting in the middle of Simmons Park outside Downtown Cismont. The park was designed so that it was surrounded on all sides by a layer of various trees, while the middle was left open as a large field of grass where only a few trees were speckled around. Usually the park would be crowded with people, however, at the moment he was the park’s only occupant. Although, now that he thought about it, the park had been empty as well when he had been there earlier in the day, the heat had probably scared everyone into the comfort of indoors. He himself had only been in the park because it was the most direct route to work.

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James shrugged, it was weird that he had suddenly fallen unconscious as that hadn’t happened before, but he felt physically fine, so he decided he should probably go to work and finish the last few hours of his shift. He realized his boss would be angry at him for missing most of his shift, but he could just claim that he had a heat stroke and his boss wouldn’t be able to get too angry at him. However, just as he was about to start walking again he realized something was wrong.

He looked around, then suddenly figured out what was wrong. ‘Even if I’m in the middle of this park right now, I should still be able to hear some cars as there is a pretty large street next to Simmons Park.’

Confused, James walked towards the treeline next to the large street to see if anything was wrong. As he got closer the trees cast long ominous shadows around him, and he shivered. He dodged around a few trees, and as soon as he passed the last tree his jaw dropped.

Before him a minivan had crashed into a street light. Its front had completely crumpled, and the street light was bent at a forty-five degree angle. He looked up and down the street, and saw the same carnage continued up and down the block as far as he could see. Suddenly, the door of the minivan opened and a middle aged looking man came out. The man looked around and slowly a bewildered look fell across his face as he stared around in shock. As if that man coming out of his car was a starting signal, slowly more and more people started coming out of their own cars, each one adopting the same shocked expression.

Suddenly James once again realized that something was off, some of the people who had walked out of the cars looked like they came out of some really bad accidents, yet everyone he saw around him looked perfectly fine. Sure their clothes might be a bit disheveled, but besides that they didn’t look any worse for wear.

James started collecting his thoughts. ‘So, why is everybody crashed and are only now just getting out of their cars. Wait, this probably means I wasn’t the only one who fell unconscious, and all these people had fallen unconscious while driving, and that’s why they crashed. And the reason everyone is not injured is because—’ James thought back to when he woke up and suddenly realized ‘just like how I didn’t feel thirsty or hungry when I woke up, these people must have not had any physical changes to themselves from before they fell unconscious either. So something like a time freeze that hit everyone at once, and just now released everyone from its grasp, but that’s impossible…’

James' thought process ground to a halt as he realized if everyone could fall unconscious at once, then a time freeze might be possible too.

But before he could delve further into that thought process, he felt someone tapping his shoulder. He looked up and saw the middle aged man who came out of the minivan earlier. “Hey, do you know what’s going on, I saw you were the only one awake when I got out of my car ” the middle aged man asked with a confused expression.

“To be honest, I have no clue, I woke up just a few minutes ago too,” James responded. “Let me check my phone to see if there is any news,” James added, as he pulled out his phone.

He turned his phone on, and looked at his notifications. James saw that he only had one notification, but it wasn’t from the news so he joked “I have no new notifications other than that my wizard tower has finished upgra---”

[The key word ‘tower’ has been identified]

[The users request has been accepted]

[Sending user to the tower]