1 Chapter 1: The sky darkens

Rymora's POV

I remember my grandmother telling me bedtime stories of princesses in castles and frogs being able to turn into princes.

I got older and I read novels about vampires and scary night creatures with red eyes, werewolves with the ability to transform under a full moon, and strange creatures that could fly.

No one…

I repeat… no one warned me that these stories were REAL.

***********************

On the third floor of the Nevania firm was the finance department. There were heavy murmurings on all sides as the staff tapped away on their computers, half staring at the wall clock.

Two o'clock was the time the review board was set to arrive, and everyone had to ensure that no mistakes had been made.

"Hey Rye! Can you grab those documents on the top left center of the high shelf for me?" Josiah yelled in a loud voice from where he sat typing away on his Laptop.

Rye barely grumbled, a mostly blank expression on her face as she got off her seat and moved to grab them before setting them on Josiah's table.

Without a word of thanks, even though it wasn't as if she expected it, she walked back to her seat and sat back down.

On the large floor she worked, were fifty official staff and five unlucky interns, and she just happened to be part of the unlucky ones.

It was a big firm, and the pay was pretty good, even if the work to be done was just as bad since they were extremely understaffed.

To Rye, it was obvious that no one in the upper management would care if she was worked to death.

'Do I want to sit behind a desk for the rest of my life doing something I don't give a damn about,' Rye thought knowing that she was just as dispensable as the rest and could be fired for any flimsy mistake.

Mistakes that any other department would make and get away with.

Rye slowly snapped back to reality groaning under her breath, as she gently rubbed her eyes urging them to go through the documents on her screen.

Her head was slightly bent, her fingers moving against the mouse as she scrolled through it when the sound of high heels shoes echoed in her ears from behind her.

She barely had enough time to turn around when she heard a loud bang on her table.

"THUMP!"

"Abandon everything else…Maddy needs this by noon,"

"I can't. James already told me to…"

"Maddy is one rank above James and you know how she is!" Tina, Maddy's secretary half whispered and Rye had no retort to give as she watched her leave.

Staring at the new pile of documents on her table, her gaze shifting to the ones on her computer Rye slowly felt the onslaught of a migraine.

'There's no way I'm finishing early enough to make it out of here earlier than five," Rye sighed, ignoring everything else to grab her phone and text every member of her family.

To Inri: { Your sister is dying here. Do something!} with a full crying emoji.

Barely a few seconds had passed when her younger sister by two years replied.

{What? Do you need help dying faster?}

{INRI!! I want to quit}

Rye stated hoping for some good old motivation and encouragement only to be extremely disappointed.

{Okay. We can set up a small lemon shop with your savings. If you leave now, we should have a solid plan for the shop by dusk}

Rye couldn't help but chuckle unable to find anything else to say knowing that her sister meant every word.

Inri already had a lemonade shop of her one she managed with their eldest brother Isaac who was usually in charge of procuring the goods.

Ignoring her sister, she went ahead to text Isaac.

But she had only just begun typing when she got his message.

{I was standing beside Inri when she replied. We already discussed it and I agree. If you don't want a lemon shop we can help you get another kind}

{What? A fruit shop?}

{Mhmm…That could work}

Again, Rye couldn't help but lightly chuckle imagining the deathly serious expression her eldest brother was bound to have.

'These two are hopeless. Let's see what my dad thinks,' Rye thought with a sly expression on her face as she moved to send him a message.

{Hey dad} she sent wondering how long it would take for him to see it.

She was still waiting for a message from him when she suddenly got a smiling selfie of her mum's face with her Auburn red hair tied in a ponytail and a wide smile on her face.

{It's me. Your father's a little busy with his hands right now}

Sending a laughing emoji, Rye couldn't help the soft smile that crept onto her face.

{Mum. What's he doing?}

{I just finished making brunch for him, he's doing his part. He's massaging my feet. Aren't you at work?}

Before Rye could respond she instantly saw her mother send another.

{Oh….is this one of your I want to quit days}

{MUM!!!}

{Your father and I already discussed it. You could come home and live rent-free for the rest of your life and you'll be fine. Aren't you tired of working in that stuffy office? It's bad for your eyes}

{It pays more}

{Money is not everything}

{It is if I hope to get ever a brand new Bentley Continental GT}

{Just know that we love you very much and you don't have to do everything yourself}

Rye couldn't help but stare at her phone for a couple of seconds with a huge smile on her face before responding.

{I love you guys more}

{Your father says we love you the most}

Chuckling slightly, she was about to argue a little more about it when she suddenly heard footsteps behind her.

As smoothly as she could, she slid her phone right into the already open drawer beside her and leaned forward in a way that made it seem like she was staring vigorously at her screen when she saw absolutely nothing.

"Don't forget that the documents are due by noon," she heard Tina's voice from behind her as she passed and Rye simply nodded, knowing fully well that they couldn't be ready by then.

'Even if I could make a wish, I wouldn't waste it,' Rye thought glaring hatefully at the papers slowly moving to grab the one at the very top, with one hand, while sliding her other hand through her curly red hair, which was almost as unruly as her mother's own.

She was slowly settling into the agonizing pace of reading through the numbers when she suddenly heard someone yell loudly…loud enough to catch the attention of almost everyone there.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!"

Rye's attention instantly shifted in the direction of the voice but even before her gaze could land on the person who had screamed the words out, her gaze suddenly stopped right on the high transparent windows by her left side.

The scene before her was like a dream…one that could only be likened to a nightmare.

Gone was the beautiful blue sky, and in its place were swirling thick dark clouds so big it seemed like a storm full of lightning was brewing on the horizon.

What made it even more heart-gripping were the people dressed in some sort of cosplay clothes descending one after the other from the sky.

Rye was already on her feet, standing in front of the huge windows along with others around her, as she stared at the unbelievable sight in front of her.

"What—who—are they shooting a movie or something," she stammered in shock as she tried and failed to understand what was going on.

The silence that descended in the office was deafening.

Everyone stared out the windows, especially Rye who looked bewildered at what she saw.

There were more than twenty men, with each of them carrying long medieval swords in their hands.

"They're probably just shooting a movie. There's no way these group of men dressed in Victorian outfits are real," Josiah commented with a scoff.

Tina, who stood right beside him instantly agreed, going as far as to point fingers at them.

"Did you see their red eyes? What do they think this is? I'm sure they didn't get permission before shooting here," Tina added.

Regardless, she continued to stand there staring at the handsome faces of each of the men, wondering why she couldn't recognize even one of them.

Tina leaned forward and had just fixed her gaze on one of them when she saw him disappear.

One second, she could see him, and the next, she saw no trace of him.

Instead what she heard were screams as she looked around the parking lot and saw men slowly start to die one after the other.

She chuckled a little as she watched a person's head roll off his shoulders, blood spluttering like a fountain.

But horror finally dawned on her when she watched it happen to five others in the space of a few seconds.

"AHHHHH!!!!!!!" Patricia, one of the interns screamed, backing away from the glass almost as if it had burned her.

The men weren't any different as almost all of them slowly brought out their phones and began dialing 911.

Rye who now stood slightly behind Tina, couldn't help it as she watched the massacre continue with bulging eyes.

But more shocking was how only the men were being killed while the women who came in contact with the strange men slowly disappeared.

'What the hell's going on?' Rye wondered, picking up her phone and trying to call her parents only to realize that there was no signal.

She stared hard at her phone and confirmed that the signal was truly gone.

The screams at the parking lot were getting louder and closer to them and it soon dawned on most of them that, the second the strange men were done with the people there, they would immediately move to their firm.

"We need to move! We need to leave!" Josiah shouted at the top of his voice with a heavy expression of anxiety on his face.

"I'm not going downstairs. Do you want to be killed?" Maddy yelled back with a terrified expression on her face.

She was a supervisor above Josiah who was a team leader and Rue had never seen her be anything but calm, which was why her reaction was even more surprising.

"What do you think will happen when they walk into the company?" Josiah countered, his heart thumping in his chest at the thought that his life was in danger.

"You must have noticed it too! Women disappear but MEN die! I have not seen a single woman be sliced into two and tossed on the ground,"

Josiah's words only served to scare most of the men there who could no longer hide how terrified they were.