Chapter 1: Welcome to the Red Sky

Miles Venn died with both hands inside a stranger’s chest, holding a torn artery closed while the subway ceiling came down.

The man on the tracks had been alive when Miles reached him. Barely. A construction worker by the look of him, orange vest turned black with dust and red with blood, one boot missing, face gray beneath the emergency lights. The train had missed him by inches when the first tremor split the tunnel. The concrete had not.

“Stay with me,” Miles had said, because that was what you said when there was nothing else left that made sense. “Hey. Look at me. What’s your name?”

The man’s lips moved around a bubble of blood. “N-Nate.”

“Good. Nate, I’m Miles. I’m a paramedic. You picked a hell of a place to take a nap.”

It had made the man laugh. Or cough. The difference became academic when the cough sprayed red across Miles’s cheek.

The platform above had screamed. People ran in that strange stop-motion way disasters created, all elbows and open mouths under flickering lights. Someone was praying. Someone else was filming. Dust drifted down in sheets from cracked tile and exposed rebar, turning the yellow tunnel lamps into dirty halos.

Miles had ignored all of it.

His world had narrowed to a wound.

Gloved fingers pressed through ruined fabric and broken rib, slick against the pulsing warmth of a severed artery. He could feel the life trying to leave Nate one heartbeat at a time. It shoved against Miles’s fingertips with obscene strength, hot and insistent, as if the body resented his interference.

“Pressure,” Miles snapped.

His partner, Lena, slid down beside him with a trauma pack banging against her hip. “I’ve got gauze.”

“Gauze won’t do it.”

Another tremor rolled through the tunnel. The rails screamed. Somewhere behind them, glass shattered with a sound like ice breaking over a lake.

Lena looked up.

So did Miles.

A fracture crawled across the subway ceiling, fast as lightning and twice as final. Concrete dust poured from it. Above the crack, something groaned—a huge, tired animal waking angry.

“Miles,” Lena said.

“Backboard him.”

“Miles.”

He didn’t look away from Nate. The man’s pupils were blown wide, reflecting the strobing emergency lights. Miles felt the artery slipping under his fingers. He dug deeper, swallowed bile, and pinched harder.

“Get the board under him.”

Lena grabbed his shoulder. “The ceiling’s going.”

“Then move faster.”

Nate’s hand found Miles’s sleeve with surprising strength. “Don’t leave.”

Miles had heard that before. In alleys. In apartments that smelled like old cigarettes. In the twisted front seats of cars while gasoline dripped onto hot asphalt. The words changed. The voice changed. The grip did not.

He leaned closer. Dust coated his tongue. Blood warmed his wrists.

“I’m right here.”

The tunnel gave a deep metallic shriek.

Lena cursed, something ugly and terrified, and tried to haul him back by the collar. Miles barely felt it. His fingers were numb from pressure. His shoulders burned. His knees ground against gravel and broken tile.

Nate’s heart beat once.

Twice.

The ceiling fell.

There was no dramatic darkness at first. There was only impact, an impossible weight, and a flash of white so bright Miles thought for one stupid second that the lights had come back on.

Then the white became red.

Not blood red.

Sky red.

Miles woke choking on dirt.

He rolled onto his side and vomited dust, bile, and a thin string of black grit. His lungs clawed at air. Every breath scraped. His ears rang with a high, steady whine that seemed too pure for pain.

Grass pressed against his cheek.

That was wrong.

Subway tunnels did not have grass.

He pushed himself up on trembling arms. His gloves were gone. His uniform was torn, gray shirt slashed across the chest, navy pants stiff with drying blood that might have been his, Nate’s, or half the city’s. His hands shook in front of him, bare fingers caked beneath the nails, skin split across the knuckles.

Above him hung a crimson sky.

No sun. No clouds. Just a vast red dome streaked with black veins, like light shining through the inside of an eyelid. Far overhead, shapes moved behind the color—massive silhouettes turning slowly, too distant to understand. The air smelled of iron, wet stone, and crushed weeds.

For one suspended second, Miles thought he had survived and been blown clear somehow. Shock could do that. Concussion could scramble memory. Gas leak. Hallucination. Hypoxia.

Then the screaming started.

He turned.

Thousands of people covered the field.

They lay scattered through knee-high black grass that whispered without wind. Men in suits. A woman in scrubs. A delivery driver still wearing his helmet. An old man in pajamas clutching an oxygen tube that led nowhere. A teenage girl with half her hair burned away. Some sat upright and sobbed. Some stumbled in circles calling names. Some stared at their hands as if expecting them to vanish.

A child cried for his mother.

Miles moved before he thought.

He pushed to his feet, swayed, caught himself, and ran toward the sound. His legs protested with a deep bone ache, but they held. Ten yards away, a boy no older than seven sat beside a woman lying too still in the grass. Her neck bent at a wrong angle.

Miles dropped beside her, fingers already going to the carotid.

No pulse.

Skin cool.

Fixed pupils.

Dead before she arrived here, if here was any kind of arrival.

The boy hiccupped. “Mom won’t wake up.”

Miles’s hand stayed at the woman’s throat a heartbeat too long. He forced his face into the calm mask. The one that broke later, never on scene.

“What’s your name, buddy?”

“Eli.”

“Eli, I need you to look at me.”

The boy’s wet eyes flicked up.

“Are you hurt?” Miles asked.

“My arm.”

Miles checked. Bruising, swelling, possible fracture. No arterial bleed. No immediate airway compromise. His mind sorted the world into triage tags out of habit, because habit was all that stood between him and the red sky.

A woman stumbled past them with a shard of glass in her cheek, touching it and laughing. “This isn’t real,” she said. “This isn’t real. This isn’t—”

A glowing rectangle slammed into existence across Miles’s vision.

WELCOME TO THE RED TUTORIAL.

Species: Human

Origin: Earth-12191

Status: Deceased

Integration: Unauthorized

Survive to be evaluated.

Miles jerked backward so hard he nearly fell on Eli. The words stayed fixed in front of his eyes, crisp white letters edged in red, no matter where he looked.

“No,” he said.

The message faded.

A dozen new screams rose around the field as other people saw their own.

“What the hell was that?” shouted a man in a bloodstained business shirt. “Did everyone see that? Did everyone see that?”

“Status deceased?” someone shrieked. “I’m not dead. I’m standing right here!”

“Unauthorized?”

“Tutorial? Like a game?”

A laugh cut through the panic, sharp and too loud. A young woman stood on a low rock twenty yards away, holding one hand out like she was framing herself for an invisible camera. She wore a cropped black jacket over a neon-green shirt, a headset still hanging around her neck. Blood matted one side of her purple hair.

“Okay,” she said, voice shaking under the bravado. “Okay, chat, if this is a coma dream, the production value is insane.”

No one laughed.

She looked around, smile twitching. “Right. No chat. Cool. Love that.”

Miles ignored her and turned back to the boy. “Eli, I’m going to splint your arm. Stay with me.”

“Is Mom dead?”

The question had no safe place to land.

Miles reached for supplies that weren’t there. No trauma bag. No shears. No gauze. No SAM splint. He stripped off what remained of his uniform overshirt, tore it into long bands with his teeth and hands, then broke a dry stalk from a nearby shrub. It was black as charcoal but flexible enough.

“Your mom can’t come with us right now,” he said, each word costing more than the last. “But I can. I need you to be brave for ten seconds.”

The boy’s chin trembled. He nodded.

Miles set the splint. Eli screamed anyway. As the cry tore free, a red number flashed above the boy’s arm.

-3 HP

Miles froze.

The number dissolved like sparks.

“What did you do to him?” a heavyset man barked, storming over. He wore an MTA jacket and had a face built for suspicion. “You hurt that kid?”

“His arm’s broken,” Miles said. “I stabilized it.”

“You made numbers come out of him!”

“I saw them too.” The streamer girl hopped down from the rock, eyes bright with fear and fascination. “Damage indicator. Definitely damage indicator. We’re in some kind of full-dive nightmare. Or hell has UI.”

“Not helpful,” Miles said.

“Usually am.” She glanced at Eli and softened by a fraction. “Hey, little dude. Nice splint. Very post-apocalyptic chic.”

Eli sniffed. “What’s chic?”

“Means you’re pulling it off.”

The boy stared at her, then at Miles, and clutched his injured arm.

Another system message burned into the sky itself.

INITIAL SORTING COMMENCING.

Population: 10,000 candidates

Objective: Survive Phase One

Time to first evaluation: 06:00:00

Classes will be assigned or selected upon qualification.

Parties available after first blood.

The words stretched from horizon to horizon, vast and merciless. Ten thousand voices fell into stunned silence.

Then the field erupted.

“Six hours?”

“What does first blood mean?”

“Candidates for what?”

“Who’s doing this?”

The red sky did not answer.

Miles stood slowly. Beyond the crowd, the field rolled toward a broken landscape of jagged stone pillars and distant walls. To the east, a black forest bristled like a nest of spears. To the west, ruined arches rose from the grass, each carved with symbols that hurt to look at. Farther still, a tower leaned against the horizon, its top lost in red haze.

Safe exits: none visible.

Resources: unknown.

Threat level: catastrophic.

He breathed through his nose. In. Out. Count four. Assess. Act.

“We need organization,” he said.

The MTA man snorted. “You in charge?”

“No. But I’m the guy saying don’t run blind into the murder forest.”

“He’s got a point,” the streamer said. “Murder forest has terrible branding.”

“People are hurt,” Miles continued. “We set up a triage area. Anyone who can walk helps anyone who can’t. We need water, shelter, and a perimeter.”

“Perimeter against what?” the MTA man demanded.

As if summoned by the question, a horn sounded from the black forest.

Not a trumpet. Not a siren. A wet, bellowing note that vibrated in Miles’s teeth and turned the grass tips toward the sound.

The crowd went still.

A second horn answered from the west.

Then a third.

Something moved at the treeline.

Miles saw antlers first, except antlers didn’t curve forward like hooks and they didn’t drip dark fluid onto the ground. The creatures came low and fast through the grass on jointed legs, their bodies the size of starving wolves, covered in gray hide stretched tight over ropey muscle. Bone masks grew over their faces, each mask split by a vertical mouth full of needle teeth. Their horns jutted from their skulls in uneven pairs.

They carried knives.

Not crude claws. Knives. Rusted blades tied to long fingers with strips of tendon.

The first one leapt onto the back of a man still kneeling in prayer.

His scream snapped the field in half.

Horned Scavenger – Level 1

The label flashed above the creature’s head as it sawed at the man’s throat. Red numbers burst in the air.

-12 HP

-9 HP

Bleed applied.

Then all ten thousand candidates learned what first blood meant.

Panic detonated.

People stampeded away from the forest, trampling the injured, dragging the screaming, abandoning the dead. More scavengers poured from the grass, dozens of them, their horn calls rising into gleeful yips. They moved with awful purpose, flanking stragglers, hamstringing runners, darting back before anyone could kick them.

Miles grabbed Eli with one arm and hauled him up. “Move!”

The boy stumbled. “Mom!”

“Eli, move!”

The streamer girl appeared beside him, a knife in her hand.

Miles stared. “Where did you get that?”

“Sock sheath,” she said. “Don’t judge. Convention downtown. Long story.”

A scavenger lunged at an old woman behind her. The streamer pivoted with surprising speed and slashed across its face. The blade skidded over the bone mask, throwing sparks.

-2 HP

“Seriously?” she snapped. “Chip damage?”

The creature shrieked and backhanded her. Its knife-fingers opened three lines across her forearm.

-7 HP

Bleed resisted.

She staggered but didn’t fall. “Ow! Okay, not immersive anymore. Hate it.”

Miles shoved Eli behind him. He needed a weapon. He had grass, torn cloth, and a dead woman’s shoe. A few yards away, the MTA man swung a briefcase at a scavenger, connecting with a meaty crack. The creature tumbled, sprang back up, and buried its blade-hand in his thigh.

The man collapsed, howling.

Miles ran to him.

“Help!” the man screamed. “Help me, help me, get it off!”

The scavenger raised its other knife-hand toward the man’s belly.

Miles hit it shoulder-first.

He had tackled drunk men, panicked patients, one meth-head with a fire axe, and a linebacker-sized firefighter who thought he could walk on a broken femur. The scavenger weighed less than it looked. Miles drove it into the ground, but its body twisted under him like a bag of snakes. A horn clipped his cheek. Pain flashed hot.

-4 HP

The number burst so close he flinched.

The creature snapped at his face. Its breath smelled like pennies and rot. Miles jammed his forearm under its jaw, pinning the bone mask back. Its knife-fingers scrabbled at his ribs.

The streamer girl appeared above him.

“Hold still!”

“Me or it?” Miles grunted.

“Yes!”

She drove her knife into the soft place under the scavenger’s mask.

This time the number was bigger.

Critical Hit!

-18 HP

Black blood sprayed Miles’s face. The creature convulsed, legs drumming against the dirt. Its body dissolved into gray ash and a single yellow spark that shot into the streamer’s chest.

Assist credited.

First Blood achieved.

Party formation unlocked.

Miles didn’t have time to process it. The MTA man was bleeding hard from the thigh.

Arterial? No. Venous, heavy. Deep laceration. He needed pressure.

Miles dropped to his knees, grabbed the man’s own belt, and cinched it high around the thigh.

“What are you doing?” the man cried.

“Keeping you from bleeding out.”

“It hurts!”

“That’s how you know you’re alive.”

Blood pulsed around Miles’s fingers. As he pressed down, the wound glowed faintly red. A health bar flickered above the man’s head.

Grant Hask: 22/61 HP

Bleed: Severe

“Grant,” Miles said. “You’re Grant?”

The man blinked through tears. “How’d you—”

“Name tag from hell. Hold this pressure.”

Grant slapped shaking hands over the wound.

Another scavenger raced toward Eli.

The boy stood frozen beside his mother’s body, eyes huge, splinted arm hugged to his chest.

Miles surged up, too far away.

“Eli!”

The streamer threw her knife.

It spun end over end and struck the scavenger hilt-first.

-1 HP

“Oh, come on!” she yelled.

But the impact made the creature flinch. Eli stumbled backward. Miles grabbed a rock from the dirt and hurled it with everything he had. It cracked against one horn.

-5 HP

Daze applied.

The scavenger reeled.

Miles closed the distance and kicked it in the chest. Something snapped under his boot. The creature fell, shrieking, knife-hands slashing wildly. He stomped again. Again. On the third stomp, the bone mask split.

-8 HP

Horned Scavenger slain.

Experience gained.

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