Intro. The Veiled World – Beneath the Unchanging Indigo
No one can pinpoint when the sky betrayed the world. One heartbeat it held sunrises and storms; the next, every horizon froze into bruised indigo—too dim for night, too dull for day. Clocks halted. Screens flickered once and died. The veil fell and never lifted.
The sky is eternal dusk now, choked with smoke from fires that rage without reason. No stars show. No breeze stirs the haze. The air carries ash, rust, and the metallic tang of blood that refuses to fade.
It started with homes.
Ordinary dwellings—frame, brick, clapboard—began losing pieces. Not smashed, not torched. Removed. Siding lifted away in flawless sheets, drywall stacked neatly, insulation set aside like molted skin. Figures labored in silence: no cries, no rush, only the measured scrape of hands and tools. When walls gave way and frames stood exposed like bones, they paused. Watched. Waited.
Then came the mobs.
They arrived howling, armed with axes, crowbars.