In the quiet hills of Eldrin Vale, Tomas mended his fence under a lazy afternoon sun. The wooden posts had splintered from last winter's frost, as he drove nails with steady swings of his hammer like a professional. His dog, Barrow, dozed in the grass nearby, ears twitching at the occasional fly. Sheep grazed the meadow, their bells tinkling softly, while birds wheeled overhead in lazy circles.
Life was simple: plow the earth, tend the flock, watch the seasons turn. Tomas wiped sweat from his brow, pausing to gaze at the distant village spire, where smoke curled from chimneys like promises of evening rest.
Then Barrow whined, catching his attention. He glanced down as the dog rose to his feet and stared at the sky.
A flock of starlings exploded from the treeline, wings beating frantic against the still air. Tomas frowned because no wind stirred the leaves and the world had gone quiet as if holding its breath.
The sky shifted first, like ink bleeding into clear water.
Tomas rubbed his eyes, thinking it a trick of the light, but the blue deepened to bruised purple, then sickly green at the edges. Clouds parted without wind, tearing open like old cloth. Barrow barked now, circling Tomas's legs. The sheep bolted back to their gardens, bells clanging in chaos as they trampled over the fence he'd just fixed.
"Ohhhh please!"
High above, a rift formed like a gash in the heavens. It widened slowly as if the sky itself had been wounded. Light bent strangely around it, colors inverting from reds to blacks. Tomas's skin prickled; his hammer slipping from numb fingers.
The air grew heavy, pressing down like an invisible hand.
Then the thing emerged. Not a falling star, nor was it a rock from outer space, but something bleeding fire and shadow. It tore through the rift like a birth gone wrong, trailing ethereal ichor that smeared the horizon.
Screams rose from the village below, distant but clear. The ground trembled faintly as Tomas staggered, clutching Barrow's collar.
The impact came like the end of all things. Tomas barely had time to drop to his knees before the meteor struck the vale's heart with a thunder that split his eardrums. Bones vibrated in his body, sharp pain blooming through his system from the sound wave.
He heard Barrow howl once, then went silent.
Not long, the ground folded like parchment under a fist as the earth erupted in geysers of soil and stone. Tomas was flung backward, rolling end over end, each impact jarring his ribs until something snapped inside him and blood filled his mouth.
Screams from the village peaked, then was cut short as homes collapsed in waves, timber splintering like matchsticks, roofs caving under invisible weight. Likewise were people who vanished in the chaos: either crushed, burned, buried alive.
Tomas crawled blindly, coughing blood, with every breath no different from a knife to the throat. He dragged himself toward the crater, pulled by some insatiable urge he couldn't explain. The pain in his chest sharpened with each move, but he couldn't stop.
Around him, others emerged from the rubble too, dazed and broken. He saw a woman clutch her child, both coughing slimy ash. Another staggered, arm dangling useless. They all converged towards the smoking pit, drawn like moths to flame.
The crater pulsed with unnatural light, a sickly colorful glow emanating from the shattered shards like broken glass. However, the actual meteor which stood in form of a rough sphere at the middle, breathed as if it were alive.
"What in the light?" someone said.
The first to pick a little shard was a young man, whose eyes opened wide with awe and curiousity.
But not long….particles of the shard melted into his skin in a flash, his veins igniting blue before bursting into violent flames. He screamed and thrashed on the ground until he couldn't.
Most stood in fear but madness ran through the eyes of a few who couldn't resist the urge.
One man's skin sloughed off like wet paper, exposing glowing muscle beneath. Another swelled, convulsing until he exploded in a spray of blood and light. Screams blended into a chorus of horror: bodies warping, burning, dissolving.
The air thickened with the stench of charred flesh
and ozone.
Tomas retreated to the edge of his field, horror rooting through him. But one: a girl, no older than twelve, touched a shard and lived. Her veins lit green, air warping around her as if she were it's master.
She stood and raised a hand towards a fellow human. And he instantly jerked, life draining from him in visible threads that funneled into her. The man withered to husk before her feet.
She blinked, confused, then smiled; one too wrong and too wide.
The crater pulsed stronger now, a heartbeat in the earth, sending tremors that cracked stone and toppled what remained of the village. Survivors fled the vale, but the ash was everywhere, claiming fields and rivers.
Tomas watched from a hilltop, coughing blood, as the once-green Eldrin became a barren wasteland of an unknown disaster. He noticed a few of his sheep survived the impact, but it was clear they weren't going to survive as they staggered around in confusion.
Above he trailed the cut in the sky from which the meteor crashed, understanding something dark had bled into the world of humanity. And it was either they had been cursed or was soon bound to extinction.
The girl walked among the ruins, her accidental kills trailing behind like shadowy guilts.
Then he knew the land would never heal. And neither would those it had changed.