I don't think people appreciate how evil chickens can be.
Yes. Chickens. Real, feathery, beady-eyed demons with wings. They were currently chasing me across the barnyard with the wrath of a thousand underfed gods. Their clucks sounded like war drums, their flapping wings like battle cries, and their eyes? Soulless. Like they knew I didn't belong here. Like they knew who I used to be.
And all the while, my older brother—Leuven, the little snot—was practically rolling in the dirt, howling with laughter. He screamed, doubling over as he slapped his knee like a farmer fresh from comedy hour.
"Run, Mona, run! You look like a squeaky mouse!"
I didn't dignify him with a reply. One, because my breath was running out. And two, because my pride had already died a painful death three seconds into this poultry apocalypse.
Four years old.
That's how old I was now. Four years of listening, observing, piecing things together. Four years of quiet rebellion, of slowly wrestling control over a body that was never meant to hold my mind. But I was learning. I had balance now. I was learning to use my Flux—or what little of it had started stirring. My motor skills were catching up to my memories.
Unfortunately, none of that mattered when you were being mobbed by a flock of avian psychos with territorial issues.
Still, as I ducked into the coop's back gate and slammed it shut, panting and red-faced, the laughter of my brother faded into the background of my thoughts. And those thoughts, as always, drifted back to the reason I was here. To why I chose this cursed, chicken-infested island in the first place.
North New Island.
The last habitable Eden untouched by humanity's rot and cursed by that very isolation.
The Ashven Blood Rain (ABR) happened decades ago. It was a time when the sky wept blue and the Earth bled chaos. It fell on March 14th, 2015, an otherwise normal day until the clouds cracked open and poured azure death across the world.
And it didn't stop. Not for 39 days and nights.
Oceans turned blue and rivers thickened into something syrupy and unnatural. Flora and fauna changed too. Raincoats didn't save anyone. No umbrella, no bunker or prayer could stop what it unleashed.
And when it was done, when the final drop fell, humanity found itself cleaved into two.
The blessed… and the damned.
The Fluxers—those touched by the ABR, those whose biology twisted into potential—gained powers. They called it Flux. It could be anything—control over flame, mind, shadow, sound, or substance. Some were born healers, others destroyers. And then there were the unlucky ones...
The HODs. Hydrides of Death. The monsters.
Human frames were reshaped into nightmares. They were bodies hollowed of empathy, minds erased of conscience. They were walking horrors that tore through civilization without mercy. And worst of all, they weren't just born during the rain. The mutation was ongoing.
No one knew when or how someone would turn.
It took sixty years for humanity to claw itself out of extinction.
With Flux came survival. Cities built Flux Barriers, which were protective domes of pure energy to keep HODs at bay. Massive operations flushed the infected into containment zones. The two worst-hit? Australia and Antarctica, which were both rendered uninhabitable. Every HOD, every infestation, every anomaly were pushed to those two massive, forsaken landmasses.
And humanity carried on.
But North New Island was different. It was never touched.
Not one drop of the ABR fell on it ever since the first time it landed. The land remained pure. The sky remained blue in the normal way. The animals didn't mutate. The people didn't turn. The flora, fauna, everything... was clean.
And with that came a price. A curse.
Anyone born on its soil could never leave. Not without dying. It wasn't a sickness or a political decision. The moment you crossed the water border, your body would begin to break down at a cellular level and die.
The government knew this. So did the global leaders. And that's why they sealed the island. Only endemic natives lived there. No one from the outside world was allowed in to trade or visit. Only whispers were spread about the land where no Flux was born… but something else existed.
So why did I choose to be born here?
Because I knew something most people didn't.
There is a way to leave.
There is a hidden method, an ancient path that allows one to escape the curse, but only if you were born here, and only if you passed a certain rite. A rite I wasn't old enough for yet. Hell, I still couldn't outrun chickens.
But I remembered it from my past life, from the scattered files of myth and theology that the survivors and scholars had pieced together.
There was a rumor about an anomaly. A soul-thread that could override the binding. And I was banking everything on that rumor being true.
Because if it wasn't?
I'd grow up, stuck in paradise… as the rest of the world fell apart again. Well, until the fourth disaster anyways.
Leuven flopped next to me in the grass, still giggling, eyes squinting under the gold sun.
"You okay, Moon?"
He said between laughs—his nickname for me since I babbled at the full moon once.
I nodded, wiping the sweat off my brow and glancing back at the coop. The chickens were finally calm again, probably taking shifts to watch me.
"Next time," I grumbled, brushing grass off my legs, "I'm bringing armor."
"You're four!"
"I'm advanced for my age."
He paused. "Huh?"
"Nothing," I said quickly, switching to a giggle. "Just wait 'til I'm five. You're doomed."
He gave me a side-eye, smirked, then ruffled my hair, his signature sign of affection and dominance as the "mature" one.
So here I was, a four-year-old girl with the memories of a warrior and a mind full of apocalyptic history, cursed skies, and divine promises. I was born in the safest place in the world... and it still wasn't safe enough for what was coming.
The disasters would come. And after that, the end. But for now, I'm going to focus on how to collect eggs from chickens without them chasing me...