The silence didn't last long.

  A loud bang 'BOOM' vibrated in the air in the far distant. A silent but uncanny humming could be heard in the darkness. Everyone flinched. One man screamed "Where the hell I'm I?,

  Does anyone know what's happening???". A woman clutched at her ears. Thomas stood still, with desperate eyes, trying to remember—

  "Th- this is familiar. This was the start" he thought quietly to himself.

  "In Chronicle Torment, Volume 2, Chapter 3: The Harvest Begins. This was the Calling, the moment the Game began."

  At this point, there was a large disarray in the crowd. Thomas could hear the sounds of crying, shouting, even sudden fights, and a voice crying out, "The government will help us, right?"

  "What the hell can the government even do in this situation? Everyone is out for themselves now" Thomas muttered to himself.

  "Everyone here must have read the book, right?!!" a police officer shouted loudly.

  "Are you saying I'm here because of that shitty book Chronicle Torment?" another man shouted from the crowd.

  "F**k, I knew I shouldn't have touched that da*n book!" a woman in the crowd cried out, tears streaming down her face.

  "Crying isn't going to get us anywhere. If everything happening to us is following the book, then we all know what's coming next," the police officer shouted with disdain.

  "The Dreadlords—they'll start the trials, which we'll be forced to endure for their amusement," the policeman continued.

  "Let's all try our best to help each other out."

  Thomas's let out a misted sigh in the cold wind.

  And then… they appeared.

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  Silhouettes in the mist. 9ft Tall, Elongated. Their forms flickered between humanoid and beast, their skin appeared like dark flames. No eyes. Just masks— carved in where expressions of amusement, cruelty, and indifference.

  The Dreadlords.

  Fear gripped everyone as they saw these figures approach them.

  "We welcome you, O broken ones. Flesh-born. Page-marked. You have read the prophecy. Now you live it."

  A voice echoed inside the mind rather than the air.

  Everyone whimpered, backed away—some dropped to their knees.

  Suddenly as if a spur of adrenaline overtook a man in tracksuit, he ran shouting, "help, monsters". The Dreadlord didn't stop him. The man screamed mid-stride, fell, and convulsed—tortured by his skin boiling from the inside out before finally dying, his body turned to ash.

  NO WARNING. NO MERCY.

  Thomas didn't move. He knew. You don't run during the Calling, you don't oppose either. Right now they are like insects to this supernatural beings.

  Another voice echoed—this one higher, almost musical.

  "Your world was dull. Your lives insignificant. But now, we have graced you with an opportunity. Each of you will be tested. You will face Trials. You will bleed. You will break. YOU WILL DESPAIR. And if you amuse us… you may yet survive."

  "May. Not will."

  A pale woman in the tank top looking around her mid-thirties sobbed softly. A boy beside her—no older than seventeen—was whispering something under his breath. A prayer maybe.

  Fear had engulfed everyone.

  Thomas forced himself to speak, with clenched fists and a voice hoarse. "Where are the Trials?"

  The Dreadlords tilted their heads in eerie unison, as if amused by the display of courage.

  "The first has already begun, Look beneath your feet."

  The earth cracked.

  The ground collapsed.

  Swallowing them.