Prologue

Long ago, an arcane legend spread through Kassandra. It began with a man—an outcast—who claimed to have visions of their future. He screamed warnings until his voice gave out, begging them to prepare, begging them to listen.

No one did. They mocked him. Laughed at him. Called him cursed.

And then, one day, he vanished. Some said he fled. Others swore he died. To mask their guilt, the villagers turned his words into a story—a tale passed down to their children, shared around firesides and bedsides, stripped of its terror and dressed up as a fable.

But the words remained.

Screams will resound throughout the world.

Hopes, dreams, and everything we hold dear will come crashing down.

Pain will be commonplace, and nothing we know will remain the same.

People will scream. People will cry. Stragglers will struggle to survive.

Everything falls—no hopes, no dreams, no desires.

All that remains is the will to stay alive.

And when it comes, all that will be left is—

Calamity.

Most believed it was nothing more than a chilling fireside tale. Nothing to fear. Nothing real.

Hinato thought so too. Until the day he Saw.

The vision was vivid, suffocating. He saw the doubles, faces both familiar and wrong, tearing through the world like a plague. He heard the overlapping cries of people he loved and strangers he’d never meet, all twisted together into one endless shriek.

That was the day the bedtime story became truth.

That was the day the Calamity began.

At least—for Hinato—it was