The glass in Riley's hand was still half full when the sky broke.He'd been mid-sentence, something about the Sumerians and their obsession with celestial record-keeping, when Miko kicked him under the table and told him he was boring everyone to death. Arianna had laughed so hard she'd snorted into her cider, and Amber had quietly passed her a napkin while pretending not to stare at the way Arianna's nose crinkled.A normal Thursday evening. The King's Arms on a corner of Southwark, with its sticky floors and yellow lighting and the particular smell of stale hops that Riley had come to associate with the best hours of his week. These three people, this booth, these drinks. The only place he ever let his guard down."I'm just saying," Riley continued, ignoring the bruise forming on his shin, "if the Sumerians had modern telescopes, half of what we call mythology would be classified as astronomy.""And I'm just saying," Miko replied, leaning forward with that look she got when she was

Arianna was the first to break.She paced the length of her kitchen and back, hands knotted in her hair, words tumbling out in a stream that wasn't directed at anyone. "This isn't real. That thing had teeth, it had—Amber, your leg, let me see your leg. No, wait. The sky. Did anyone else see the sky? It cracked. Skies don't crack. Skies don't—""Ari." Amber caught her wrist gently. "Breathe.""I am breathing. I'm breathing and talking and there's a timer on my phone counting down and I don't understand what any of it means."Miko sat on the counter, the glass shard resting on her thigh. She'd cleaned the creature's fluid off it with a tea towel and hadn't spoken since they'd come inside. Her blue eyes tracked between her phone screen and the window where moonlight pooled across the linoleum like spilled milk.Riley stood by the kitchen table. His phone read forty-nine minutes. He could feel the panic in the room, threatening to fill every corner. He felt it in himself too—a cold static

They stepped into a world that had finished dying and started rotting.The street outside Arianna's flat was carpeted in feathers. Hundreds of pigeons lay twisted across the pavement, bodies split open from the inside as though something had tried to hatch out of them and failed. The smell hit Riley first—copper and decay and the chemical sweetness of burst organs. Miko covered her nose with her sleeve. Amber pressed her hand to her mouth, swallowing hard. Arianna walked through the dead birds without looking down, one hand locked in Biscuit's scruff, and Riley understood that something behind her eyes had been cauterised shut.A taxi sat in the middle of Tooley Street with its bonnet up and its driver slumped over the wheel. Riley tried the door. Dead electrics. He tried a BMW parked against the kerb, then a delivery van, then a motorcycle toppled beside a postbox. Nothing. No ignition, no dash lights, no phone signal beyond the System interface glowing faintly on each of their scree

They looted what they could carry in eleven minutes. Tinned beans, bottled water, paracetamol, bandages, three torches that still worked because they ran on batteries instead of circuits. Riley stuffed everything into a rucksack stripped from a dead delivery driver's locker and tried not to think about the name stitched on the strap.Outside, the voices were closer. Firelight flickered between the terraces south of Old Kent Road, and Riley counted at least a dozen silhouettes moving in a loose column. Someone was shouting instructions. Someone else was crying."We could join them," Amber said. She stood at the edge of the car park, gold still threading faintly between her fingers. "Strength in numbers.""Numbers attract attention." Riley hoisted the rucksack. "Big groups move slow, argue loud, and fall apart when something hits them.""They're scared, Riley. Same as us.""Which is exactly why they're dangerous." He turned south, away from the firelight. "Scared people do stupid things

The church door was oak, six inches thick, and someone had barricaded it from the inside with pews stacked three deep. Craig struck the door with his sledgehammer and the sound boomed like a cannon shot through the predawn dark.A voice from inside, thin and hoarse. "How many?""Seven," Craig called back. "Plus a dog. A big dog."Silence. Then bolts sliding, wood scraping stone, and the door cracked open to reveal a man with a cricket bat and hollow eyes. He looked at them—bloodied, swaying, Riley barely vertical—and stepped aside without a word.The moment Riley crossed the threshold, his phone buzzed.SYSTEM NOTICE — SAFE ZONE DETECTED. DESIGNATION: ST. STEPHEN'S PARISH HALL. NO HOSTILE ENTITIES WILL SPAWN WITHIN SAFE ZONE BOUNDARIES. HEALTH AND MANA REGENERATION: 200%. SAFE ZONE SHOP: AVAILABLE.The cold hollow in his chest—the absence where his lunar reserves had been—immediately eased. Not filled, not even close, but the bleeding stopped. A faint warmth rekindled behind his ribs,