Long before the fires and the clocks, there was Everfield—the flower farm nestled just outside the city, known for its rolling hills of violet and gold.
Michael couldn't remember the sound of his parents' voices. Not really. But he remembered the way the sun felt on his skin the day before everything ended—the way the scent of blooming lavender clung to the wind and how laughter carried through the warm summer air like it belonged there.
His parents had taken him out to the flower farm just outside the city. His mother wore a yellow dress, floating like sunlight itself. His father carried him on his shoulders, pointing out shapes in the clouds. There was no tragedy in the moment. Only peace, fleeting and golden.
The boy had been too young to hold onto much else. Faces became silhouettes. Voices turned to static. But the warmth stayed. The smell of sun-kissed petals. His father's smile, wide and silent—like it was saying everything will be alright. A memory that blurred at the edges, like it came from a dream.
That night, the world changed.
The screams were the first to come. Then the firelight poured in through the windows like it was searching for something. The door cracked. The walls groaned. Shadows spilled into the home like ink.
And then—they appeared.
Demons with wings like razors and voices like knives on glass. Their faces were hidden in shadow or blurred by something unnatural, as if reality refused to describe them. Michael saw them, but he could not understand them. He remembered only flashes: his mother shielding him, his father charging with nothing but a broken chair leg. He remembered the warmth vanishing. He remembered the silence that followed.
When morning came, the boy sat alone beside two bodies that no longer looked like his parents. Blood soaked the wooden floors. The house had been reduced to half-burnt memories. Smoke still curled up from the edges of collapsed beams.
And then came the voice.
Oozing, slow, filled with sorrow but not pity.
"Hey kiddo… you alright?"
The voice oozed slow, filled with sorrow but not pity.
"Well now... What do we have here?"
A man in a navy uniform crouched beside him. Broad-shouldered, with soft creases on his weathered face. Kindness in his eyes. He reached out carefully, like trying not to scare a wounded animal.
The man's name was Officer Graves. His badge said so, but his presence said something warmer—something steadier. When he placed a gentle hand on Michael's shoulder and draped a blanket over the boy's back, he did it like someone who had once raised children, or lost them. But Michael remembered him only as the one with a comforting warmth in a sea of terror.
He was wrapped in a blanket, loaded into a car. The flowers were gone. The sunlight had vanished. All that remained was ash and silence.
That day, something shifted.
In the days that followed, no one could get Michael to speak. Doctors called it shock. Social workers said he'd grow out of it. But something deeper had taken root. He began to notice things others didn't. A drop of rain pausing mid-fall. A flicker in a hallway light that no one else saw. Dreams that didn't feel like dreams.
So began the story of the boy who would one day be called a savior.
But for now, he was just a child lost in the noise.
And a world that had already begun to unravel.