Ampelius thought of the different possibilities over in his head. He thought that maybe it was a terrorist attack, or perhaps, it was an uprising against the local Roman government. He knew the Empire stretched across much of the world, and wherever its grip was weakest, separatists and rebellions weren’t uncommon. That was the cost of holding an empire together. But this… this felt different.

  With the sun gone, the apartment was sinking into darkness. Ampelius switched on a couple of lamps, using their weak glow to chase away the gloom. He dropped onto the couch and began flipping through the channels, searching for answers.

  Almost every station had broken from their usual programming. Talk shows, dramas, even commercials were all cut off and replaced by the same thing: breaking news. Different anchors, different voices, but all of them spoke in the same clipped, urgent tone.

  None of it was clear, just fragments, half-sentences, and shaky headlines scrolling across the screen. His thumb stilled when he landed on one broadcast that looked more focused than the rest, a bold headline flashing in red across the bottom of the screen.

  The broadcast was a wreck, the audio was crackling in and out and the words chopped mid-sentence while the picture warped with static. Ampelius leaned in, brow furrowed, trying to catch anything he could. Only a few words slipped through the noise: “green,” “rocky,” “connection,” “blackout.”

  Then the feed shifted. The distortion eased just enough to reveal a plume of ash boiling up from Mount Blackrock, the volcano near Capsai. But it wasn’t like any eruption he’d ever seen. The cloud burned with an eerie green glow, spreading across the screen in a sickly haze that made his stomach knot.

  The broken words hadn’t done it justice. Seeing it was worse. Wrong. Like the earth itself had gone off script.

  His mind began to fill with questions, all chasing the scraps of his memory that refused to line up. He thought back to something he’d heard earlier in the day. At the restraunt, where he watched a news reel about a distant military installation attacked. At the time, it hadn’t seemed important, it was just a Roman base destroyed.

  But now, as he stared at the glowing green cloud on his television, he couldn’t shake the thought that maybe the two events were connected in some way. He tried to recall the details of the earlier broadcast of where that base was, or when it had happened, but the harder he thought about it, the faster it left him with nothing but fragments and frustration.

  The broadcast sputtered on as the audio continued to brake down into nothing but garbled fragments before cutting out completely. The static suddenly gave way to silence, leaving only the warped image of that green cloud twisting across the screen. It lingered there for a minute or so when the feed suddenly jumped to a different scene.

  An eyewitness recording took over, the distortion gone. The sudden clarity made it feel uncomfortably real, every detail sharp enough to draw him in. Ampelius leaned forward, his heart ticking faster as the shift sank in.

  “This must be the recording she mentioned,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes at the screen.

  He could hardly process what he was seeing. Capsai was burning, being consumed. Thick black smoke poured upward, climbing out of the frame and choking the horizon with a single, unbroken column. The camera shook, but his eyes stayed locked on the screen, caught between disbelief and horror.

  He was so absorbed in the chaos unfolding that he didn’t even hear the door. Bella slipped inside and sat down beside him. When he finally noticed her, her face was as pale as his own, her hands trembling in her lap as her wide eyes fixed on the same impossible scene.

  “What the hell is happening?” she asked, her voice trembling, her eyes glued to the screen.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “I have no idea. The audio was spotty at best, and I couldn’t make out any words. I suspect this has something to do with Mount Blackrock next to the city—some sort of eruption, I think,” Ampelius replied, brow furrowed in confusion, trying to piece together the fragmented clues.

  “This must have been recorded right before the sun went down. I wonder if this is the recording they mentioned,” she said, leaning closer, her mind racing to connect the dots.

  Suddenly, the video showed a glowing blue light hovering above a tall building in the distance. The building was bathed in an eerie blue glow, the light pulsating as it hung in the air, casting strange shadows that danced across the surrounding structures.

  “Is that a flare? I’ve never seen a...” Ampelius started to say, his voice trailing off in confusion as the blue light suddenly shot toward the cameraman, moving with unnatural speed.

  The light moved so fast it made them both flinch. In a blink, it flooded the area in a harsh blue glare that swallowed everything in sight. The camera tilted wildly, catching a final glimpse of the blinding source before the recording cut off in a burst of static.

  When the feed returned, it snapped back to the anchor’s desk. The man just sat there, eyes wide, mouth half-open, as if he couldn’t find the words. His stunned silence said more than any broadcast could.

  “What did I just watch? What was that?” he asked, his voice tinged with disbelief.

  “I’ve got no idea,” Bella replied, her eyes wide, her mind still reeling from the footage.

  “Damn audio. They really need subtitles for these broadcasts,” Ampelius muttered. “From what I caught, Mount Blackrock erupted, but instead of normal ash it was glowing green. Then they tried to show a live feed of the city burning, but the connection was trash as barely anything came through. After that, they ran this recording, but it cuts off right when things get strange. Makes me wonder if someone stumbled on the camera and turned it in.”

  A shiver ran through him as he spoke, the pieces refusing to fit together, no matter how he tried.

  They sat in silence for several minutes, the replay looping again and again, but neither had the words. The room felt heavier with each passing second when finally, they pulled themselves away from the screen. If they couldn’t make sense of what they were seeing, the least they could do was prepare.

  They gathered what they could: a flashlight, some food, and a couple bottles of water. Ampelius flicked the flashlight on, checked the beam, then stuffed extra batteries into the bag. He was halfway through zipping it shut when a sudden burst of blue light washed over the room.

  The flash seared through the window like lightning, bright enough to sting his eyes. For an instant everything in the apartment was bathed in a ghostly glow, then the light snapped away, leaving a sickly afterimage hanging in his vision.

  Before he could process it, every lamp in the apartment cut out. Even the flashlight in his hand fizzled and died with a faint pop. The apartment plunged into total darkness, the kind that made it feel like the air itself was pressing in on them.

  Ampelius stood frozen, ears straining, heart pounding, as the silence swallowed everything whole.

  “What just happened?” Bella asked, on the edge of panic.

  “I don’t know, but my flashlight no longer works. We saw that bright flash from the window just before, this has to do with that.” Ampelius replied, his voice steady but strained, trying to stay calm despite the unsettling blackout.

  An eerie silence blanketed the apartment as Ampelius moved toward the window. Behind him, Bella scrambled with every electronic she could find. She switched lamps on and off, pressed buttons on the radio, even tried the TV. None of it so much as flickered.

  “Nothing’s working,” she said at last, her voice sharp with panic. “It’s all dead.”

  Ampelius looked out the window, staring out at a city swallowed in complete darkness. “Whatever that flash was, it hit the whole city,” he muttered at Bella. He shoved the window open and leaned out, scanning the sky—then immediately froze. Just above the skyline, he noticed a glowing blue explosion spreading like a spider’s web across the heavens, rippling outward in wide, expanding rings. The pulses washed over the city below, casting the buildings in a ghostly, unnatural light.

  “Bella, come look at this!” he called, pointing to the sky toward the glowing explosion. She rushed to the window and looked up, her eyes widening as she took in the sight.

  “Is that what caused this blackout?” she asked, her voice hushed with awe and fear, the weight of the unknown pressing down on her.

  Ampelius noticed a faded, dust-like smoke trail starting from the explosion that went in the direction of Mount Nerva. “It almost looks like this originated from Mount Nerva. You see that trail at the center?” he said, his voice filled with a mix of curiosity and dread, his gaze following the smoky path.

  “Did someone fire a missile at us? What kind of missile kills the power like that?” Bella asked, her voice shaking.

  Ampelius didn’t answer. He kept his eyes on the fading trail above Mount Nerva, his jaw tight. Whatever it was, it hadn’t just lit up the sky, it had buried the whole city in darkness.