Erin Volter stood paralyzed at the living room window, her fingers clutching the curtains so tightly her knuckles turned chalk-white.
Outside, barely twenty yards from her front porch, the atmosphere had split wide open. A bruised-purple dimensional tear hovered in the air, pulsing like a festering wound and disgorging waves of cold, metallic ozone and corrupted dark mana.
Then came the beasts.
First, tens of smaller Calamity Beasts poured onto the asphalt. They were twisted, multi-limbed abominations covered in jagged chitin and dark fur, their featureless heads snapping erratically in every direction as they tested the air. Their eyes burned with a feral, unholy red light—hungry, angry, and frantic. Because of the thick walls and light-dampening curtains, the smaller creatures couldn't see Erin, and their instinctual fear of enclosed human structures kept them prowling the street.
But then, the gate expanded with a sickening, wet tear.
