( A New World )

August 8th, 2019. Three days after the towers fell from the sky. A younger Elijah Draker is carrying his brother on his back, blood clotted on his head due to it being on there for a while. Elijah's lips were dry and cracked. Walking upon the rubble of the building, he walks toward the military shelter in the distance; his vision starts to blur the closer he gets to the settlement.

'How long have I been walking for, a day? Two? Why is this happening to us? What did we do to deserve this? I can barely stand. What would dad do...' Elijah thinks.

Elijah hears a sound behind him, snapping him out of his deep thought. He whips around quickly to see what it is, but before he can, he is knocked to the ground.

"Move out of the way, kid!" The passing man shouts.

Gathering himself, Elijah begins to shout back, but no sound exits his mouth. Looking beside him on the ground, he sees his brother unharmed but still unconscious. Elijah lets out a sigh of relief before struggling to get back up on his feet. After a minute, Elijah brings himself to his feet and puts his brother on his back, beginning to walk again. The closer he got, the louder the sound of people got until eventually he arrived at the base and saw hundreds of people standing outside the gate with armed soldiers guarding the entrance.

"What do you mean you're at capacity? There are people who haven't eaten in days, and there are still monsters out here. You're the military; you're supposed to help us," a man in the crowd says.

"Again, sir, we were given direct orders to not let any other people in because we are above maximum capacity. There is another military base a couple of miles from here; they may have enough space for you all. I'm sorry," the soldier says.

"You expect us to make it all the way over there with all these monsters running around, and it's almost dark. You know they get more aggressive at night. We won't make it to the morning," another man says.

"At least take our children with you. You can do that much, right?" a woman holding a baby says.

"I'm sorry... there's nothing I could do. We have nothing for you all. Clear out before you'll all attract monsters. Head about 3 miles northwest, and you'll arrive at the other shelter," the soldier says.

Most keep arguing at the gate of the shelter while others look to find shelter for the night, and a few start to run northwest. Elijah stands there after hearing this and begins to bite his bottom lip so hard it starts to bleed.

After calming himself a bit, he looks toward the setting sun with a hopeless expression on his face and questions, "What am I supposed to do... Dad?"

"Elijah! Elijah! Are you okay?" Cecil asks.

Breaking out of his trance, Elijah finds himself biting his bottom lip. He looks back toward Cecil and Lola, then looks at Makoa and Luke and says, "Sorry, let's see what's happening."

Walking down the hill, they run into the group of people and start cutting their way through the crowd, making sure not to lose each other. After a minute, they get to the front of the gate where the guards are located. Looking closer at the guard, they sport all-white armor with a hue of blue on the shoulder plates. Their helmets curve backward to a point, and they have an insignia welded into their breastplate that looks like a large tree whose leaves and branches don't end and fade into the armor's luster. The person in the suit of armor has slightly pale skin with pointy ears and silver hair.

"Hey, our friend is injured. We have to get him to a doctor," Elijah says to one of the soldiers guarding the gate.

The soldier stays silent.

"Hey, can you hear us?"

...

"I know you can hear us. Our friend is injured, and we don't know what's wrong with him, so we need to come in," Luke says.

The soldier remains silent.

Luke leaves Makoa with Elijah and angrily walks to the guard and says. "Hey, asshole, I said..." Before he can finish, he is grabbed by the hand and swung towards Elijah. His forearm is forced behind his back while he's forced into the air an inch or two.

"Ack!" Luke exclaims.

Elijah starts to clench his available hand while Cecil intervenes.

"Hey, let him go. We'll step back, okay? Just let him go!" Lola says.

After a split second, the guard throws Luke to the ground and stands back in his previous position. Lola kneels down beside Luke and asks, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, but his grip was strong as hell. I could barely move," Luke responds while holding his forearm.

"Hey, let's get out of this crowd before we get stuck. It seems like more people are starting to wake up," Cecil says.

"Yeah, she's right. Let's move," Elijah says.

Shimmying their way out of the crowd, they come out to a semi-open area a fair way apart from the watchtower.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Luke asks.

"We could try to sneak in," Lola suggests.

"No chance. This wall is at least forty feet tall, and not to mention it's very smooth, excluding those engravings. Then there are those archers; they'll shoot us down before we even get two feet on that wall," Elijah responds.

"How about we go look for another town? There could be people who will be willing to help us."

"I don't know. From what I saw on the hill, this was the only structure anywhere close to us. And even then, we have no food or water, no equipment, no map, no idea if there's even any other settlements, or even what's really out there. What if there are monsters like there are out there in here?" Elijah explains.

Everyone sits there in silence, deep in thought. For a couple of minutes, no one said a thing to each other. While thinking, Makoa starts to squirm around.

"Makoa?" Elijah questions.

"Huh... Ahhhhhhhh," Makoa says.

Makoa pulls his hands from around Elijah and Luke and uses them to cover his eyes but is unable to keep himself up. Falling to the ground, he starts to grunt in pain while squirming. Soon after he falls, his eyes start to excrete an alarming amount of blood starts to pour from his eyes.

"That's a lot of blood," Lola says.

"Yeah, this can't be any normal wound. Do you think it has to do something with the quills Abbadon hit us?" Luke says.

"Maybe, but we can't worry about it right now; we have to get him to a doctor," Elijah exclaims.

"How? You said it yourself, we can't sneak in, and it's too much of a risk to go search for another settlement," Lola says.

"I... we... Fuck," Elijah whispers.

Cecil looks at Elijah with concern, but before anything else can happen, they hear a robotic voice from behind them. "Your friend doesn't seem to be in the best shape."

"What?" Elijah says. Looking behind him, he sees a tall figure wearing an all-black cloak covering everything but her shiny silver, iron-clad greaves and long black hair with red highlights sticking out of the hood of the coat reaching below their chest.

"Who are you?" Luke asks.

"You don't need to know right now, at least not until you accept my proposal."

"What are you talking about" Luke asks

Makoa continues to scream in pain, while Cecil and Lola tend to him on the ground.

"I'll keep this brief because your friend doesn't seem to have much time left and neither do I, your friend is suffering from a condition called Manoah overload syndrome, he currently cannot control his Manoah flow so it all rushing to the point where his Manoah is highest naturally, and in this case, it's his eyes. No treatment, medicine, or vaccine can help him. The only way for him to stop the bleeding is for him to calm down and try to control his Manoah but by the looks of it he's lost a lot of blood and in a frantic state."

"Why are you telling us this?" Elijah asks.

"Because I can help him, all I need is a little bit of payment."

"We don't have any money to pay you with," Lola says.

"Who said anything about money? The money of the regular world doesn't mean anything here, what I want is your power." The masked figure says.

"Our power?" Luke questions.

The masked figure looks up at the air suddenly, then pulls back his sleeve to reveal a watch with a small blue gem.

"looks like we are running out of time, do you accept my offer or not."

"We don't even know your name, or what you look like how can we trust you" Elijah says.

"Do you have a choice?" the figure says while motioning to Elijah on the ground.

"Elijah right how could we possibly trust yo..." Luke says before he is cut off

"Fine we accept your offer" Elijah responds

"What?!" the rest of the group exclaims

"Please help my friend."