Valley of the Kings, Egypt
Dr. Hassan sat on the ground outside the collapsed entrance of KV62, sweat streaking through the dust on his face. Two other teachers knelt nearby, both ashen and silent, their eyes locked on the collapsed tomb entrance.
He had made the call, demanding a rescue team for the student he'd left behind inside the tomb. Now, his phone was a dead piece of glass in his hand. No signal. No bars.
A cluster of local workers and site guards had already gathered near the rubble. One of the archaeologists from a nearby dig was coordinating with the Valley's emergency team. But they were still unable to clear the blockage, as they were waiting for heavy machinery to remove the obstructing stones.
Hassan closed his eyes, his jaw clenched.
Then the desert sky tore open.
At first it looked like a heat green mirage of light on the distant horizon. Then the circle widened, rippling outward into a sickening yellow and a molten orange. It was a perfect ring, hanging in the sky.
One of the other teachers staggered to his feet. "What… what is that?"
Hassan had no answer. He could only watch with his breath caught in his chest as shadows began to pour out of the ring. They were long, spindly things that dropped to the sand. Even from kilometres away, he could hear their high-pitched screeches.
*******
On the highway, hours from Cairo
The tour bus rattled along the desert road, its headlights cutting narrow beams into the night. Inside, the surviving students sat numbly, the joy of their trip replaced by a hollow grief for the friend they had left behind.
Megan hugged her bag so tightly to her chest. Leo sat beside her, endlessly trying to refresh the same feed.
"Still nothing?" Megan whispered, her voice hoarse.
"Nope. Dead zone," Leo muttered, his leg bouncing anxiously. "Pearson would probably climb on the roof, hold his phone up, and get five bars."
Megan flinched at the name, and Leo immediately cursed under his breath, shoving the phone to his pocket.
Up front, the driver grumbled in Arabic, thumping a hand against the steering wheel. "Road is too empty. This is not normal."
Just then, Megan's phone buzzed once, giving a single notification flash before the signal died for good.
SIMILAR PHENOMENA REPORTED GLOBALLY. COMMUNICATIONS FAILING.
"What the hell does that mean?" she whispered, showing the screen to Leo.
Before he could answer, the driver swore loudly. Brake screeched, and the bus lurched to a violent stop, throwing students against the seats in front of them.
"What's going on?" someone yelped.
"Look," the driver whispered in horror, pointing through the massive windshield.
There, out over the desert horizon, a green circle burned in the sky. A dozen phones immediately lit up the dim bus as students scrambled to record the impossible sight.
"Oh my god…" Megan breathed.
The ring rippled, then something dropped from it. A creature with long, spidery limbs that hit the sand with a distant puff of dust. Another followed. Then another. One of them broke from the pack, its claws clicking against the asphalt as it skittered directly onto the road ahead of them.
"Shut the curtains!" one of the teachers snapped with panic. "Now!"
All hands fumbled with the thin fabric, plunging the bus into dim half-dark, lit only by the thin glow of floor strips. The driver killed the engine, and a suffocating silence fell.
Scrape… Scrape…
The sound of claws on the road outside was deafening.
Leo pressed his backpack against his chest, whispering, "We're screwed. Like… screwed-screwed."
Megan clapped a hand over his mouth, her eyes wide with terror.
The scraping stopped right outside the bus, making thirty people hold their breath at once. Then, after what it felt like an eternity, the claws clicked away into the dunes.
*******
Manhattan, New York.
In Times Square, the world ended in seconds. The giant screens, once ablaze with a riot of ads, all blinked out at once. Phones lost their signal. Then a jaundiced yellow circle split the sky open above the skyscrapers.
Then the monsters came. Ghouls with skin like grey stone and hulking ape-boar hybrids dropped onto the asphalt and charged into the screaming crowds. NYPD officers opened fire, but the bullets sparked uselessly against the creatures' hides. Barricades were torn apart like papers, officers were ripped apart in the street.
Times Square turned into a slaughterhouse.
*******
Tokyo, Japan.
At Shibuya Crossing, thousands of people filmed the brilliant orange circle as it bloomed over the 109 Building.
Then the first monster oozed through, a writhing mass of tentacles, eyes, and mouths that defied all logic and biology. It swatted a JSDF helicopter out of the sky like a fly. The soldiers' rockets and machine guns did nothing.
In a matter of seconds, Shibuya Crossing vanished into bloody chaos.
*******
Back on the desert highway.
The bus hadn't moved. No one dared to move or speak too loud. Megan pressed her forehead against the glass window, tears fell from her eyes.
Far in the distance, Cairo's horizon glowed faintly red, the unmistakable sign of a city on fire.
Leo swallowed hard. "We're not going back there, are we?"
One of the teachers in the aisle shook his head. "We wait. At dawn, maybe we turn back. Tonight, we hide here."
The bus fell still once more. Every student inside knew the same terrible truths. Cairo was falling, and the world was falling apart.
*******
Everywhere.
The story was the same in London, where winged harpies with shrieking faces descended over the Thames. In Moscow, where shadow creatures bled from a black rift into the Red Square. In cities and towns, big and small, across every continent, those circles appeared.
The monsters that poured from these rifts were brutally fast and horrifyingly efficient, attacking and killing anyone who couldn't get away fast enough. Some tore flesh with their claws, others used their powerful limbs, and like in Tokyo, snapping off a shrieking man's head with its maw filled with rows of sharp teeth.
Governments tried to respond, but their weaponries were designed for human enemies, not these monstrous beings. Their bullets bounced off or simply passed through them with no discernible impact. Police forces, fire departments, medical teams—all tried to protect citizens and control the chaos, but they were vastly outmatched. Their few specialized military units found themselves overwhelmed by sheer numbers of the monsters.
Across the globe, cities went into immediate lockdown. Makeshift barricades were erected from whatever could be found. The military personnel, alongside what remained of the police, formed thin lines of defence. But the efforts were futile. The circles were everywhere, sometimes opening within the supposed safety of city limits, and occasionally even inside buildings.
Communication networks, strained by a billion panicked calls and disruptions from the rings, finally crumbled. Power grids failed. In the encroaching darkness, local TV stations running on emergency generators broadcast harrowing scenes of the slaughter, of ever-widening zones of uncontrolled monster activity, and of the rising death toll.
On shaky livestreams and emergency broadcasts, one word began repeating, whispered first by terrified civilians, then by anchors and reporters alike.
GATES.
That was what people were calling the circles now, as if naming them might make them less monstrous. The name spread faster than the creatures themselves. It was simple and a familiar name from games and fiction.
The world was shaken to its core. The endless monsters were pouring out from the gates. Humanity found itself abruptly demoted from the apex predator title of its own planet.
*******
Valley of the Kings, Egypt.
Dr. Hassan heard the gunfire before he saw the soldiers. A pair of battered military trucks finally rolled up the dusty slope to the sealed entrance of KV62, kicking up clouds of sand. Rescue workers leapt down with cutting torches, heavy gear, and riffles slung casually over their shoulders. They had come to save the boy.
But the desert no longer belonged to men.
The first scream cut through the dry air. Every head snapped toward the horizon where the green and yellow circle pulsed like an infected wound in the sky. Something spindly and wrong scuttled over a nearby ridge, its limbs moving too fast, with too many joints bending in unnatural directions. It was followed by another, then three more, bounding across the sand on clawed hands and feet.
"Positions! Positions!" a lieutenant barked as he waved his rifle with panic. The rescue team formed a shaky firing line, their barrels aimed at the growing tide of horrors.
Hassan's heart thundered. He stumbled backward toward the bus where the students had once stood, but he knew there was nowhere left to run. The creatures shrieked, and charged.
The first volley of bullets cracked open the night, muzzle flashes lighting the valley in flashes of light. The monsters staggered under the impacts… then kept coming. Their claws and chitinous hides tore through the hail of rounds as if it were nothing.
Hassan felt his throat tighten, pure terror choking him. He watched the soldiers desperately trying to reload as the creatures closed the last fifty metres in a blur of unnatural speed. Their red eyes glowed in the dark like burned coals.
And in that moment, as the first monster leapt into the firing line, Hassan knew with a crushing certainty.
NO ONE IN THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS WAS GETTING OUT ALIVE.