The world exploded back into color. This time grim, the sky right before dawn looming over me with a heavy, almost oppressive feeling to it. Something was familiar about the sky, about the day, but nothing I could really put my finger on as I hefted the axe upon my shoulder and carried a few blocks of firewood beneath my free arm. The cold months were coming soon and my sister’s newborn needed to stay warm if he was going to survive. As my father’s heir, it was my duty to help take care of all of my six sisters and their children, working side by side with my father and some of their husbands, until we had enough to live off during the months of severe cold when the ocean water froze and nothing grew in the hard, dark ground. When the daylight disappeared completely and all we could do was huddle by the fire and each other, pressing our freezing skin against one another to share heat, until the warm months came again.

There was an odd tinge in the air, almost like ash, a metallic type of taste in the wind that brought me discomfort and unease that traveled down my spine. I crouched and pressed a hand to the ground, trying to listen, to feel, the way the earth was speaking to me. The minute the ground spoke my eyes shot open and wide. Hoofbeats, the sound of dozens of horses against the frozen ground, the cries of hunters who had no human blood, their faces flashed in my mind from the connection in the ground, and I dropped the firewood and raced back to where I knew I’d be safe—in the lake under the rushing water of the falls the river made.

I stopped dead in my tracks when I realized what I was doing. I was no coward. I couldn’t run, not when I had a family to defend. So, I turned on my heel and raced back to my small village and into the midst of a slaughter.

Never before had I seen such creatures with so much speed, ferocity, the animalistic way in which they hunted and killed, and the way their faces contorted into monstrous features as they reveled in their kill.

A sword came for me and I blocked it with my axe, twisting until the weapon was locked in the space between the blade and the handle and yanking it out of my attacker’s hands. The effort left my own hands red and smarting, but I followed through until my blade was embedded into my attacker’s side. Wrenching it out, blood splattered onto my body as I took a deep gasp of air and attacked another foe. It didn’t matter if they were human, goblin, some unholy mix. I fought my way step by step to where my family was.