Prologue

The world used to hum. A quiet rhythm, always there, in the background, comforting in its constancy. People filled it with their trivialities, noise and laughter, heartbreak and joy. Cities teemed with life; streets were alive with the scent of food, the buzz of conversation, the chaos of day-to-day existence. Now, silence had settled in like a heavy fog. When the sky first cracked open and the beasts poured out, no one believed it. Not at first. Demons, creatures born of nightmare and shadow, walking freely among us? It sounded like a bad movie or the kind of conspiracy theory people laughed at on the internet. But then came the screams—sharp, blood-curdling—the endless dark. And suddenly, the monsters were real. 

They had come from nowhere and everywhere all at once, slipping through the fissures in reality that had somehow—impossibly—split wide open. Some said it was Satan himself who had come to claim the Earth. Others said the world had been rotting for centuries, and this was simply the natural order taking hold.

Riley had always imagined the end of the world would be more... poetic, more cinematic, maybe. Not this. Not this slow unraveling of everything they knew. They'd spent their days in a city that never slept, managing to carve out a life amidst the chaos. Their mornings were routine: coffee strong enough to melt metal, a quick scroll through social media feeds they didn't even care about, and then a long day working a dead-end job they barely tolerated. Nights were spent with friends—bars, clubs, anywhere they could drown out the monotony with lights, noise, and fleeting connections. Life had been empty, sure, but at least it had been something.

Now, all of that is gone. Now, there was just survival.

And Cass? Cass had always lived by her own rules. She didn't need the world, not the way everyone else did. She'd lived off the grid in her small cabin, miles away from civilization, the hum of technology, the noise of people. She'd thought herself lucky when the chaos began, far enough away to be spared the immediate destruction. But when the sky burned red and the earth trembled beneath her feet, she knew isolation wouldn't save her. Not this time. She had always prided herself on self-reliance, but even she couldn't fight demons alone. They had each been wandering, scavenging for supplies,

weapons, anything, when they crossed paths. Not that it mattered. Neither had been looking for company, especially not the kind they didn't get along with. Riley had been brash, sarcastic, and cynical—too much for Cass, who valued quiet resilience and practicality. The tension had sparked almost immediately, both were wary of trusting anyone else in a world that had collapsed into madness.

Still, they kept running into each other, kept sharing this hollowed-out earth, both too stubborn to leave the other alone and too angry to admit they needed one another. In a world where hell had broken loose, where the bodies of the fallen littered the streets, it was ironic how they—two people who barely tolerated each other—had survived. The last two, maybe. Alone, but never more together. The world had become a wasteland, overrun by shadows and fire, but they kept moving.

 And as much as they hated to admit it, the only thing more terrifying than the demons that had torn the world apart was the thought of facing this new reality alone.