The sky was black. It was midday and yet the sky, which should have been a normal blue and if an eclipse was to happen, which it would not, it would be a little dark, was a washed-out shade of black, reminiscent of a black dress shirt that has been put through the wash one too many times. To the residents of all continents this sky was black. These residents, of course, did not know that this was so across the entire world and assumed themselves to be the only unlucky bunch in the universe as a whole. They huddled in their homes, some in the cellars and basements, and some had even prayed. They were angry and scared and then there was no power and the children were crying. It was like this for hours, just this thick, black sky; looming over everything everywhere. There was no rain or even any moisture at first and then, some hours into the time when residents were regaining their courage and getting used to the darkness, the storm started.

At first came rain. Sheets of it, thick as frosted glass. Then came hail. It was small and bead-like but then there were golf balls of it and they beat down on cars and houses and caved in windows and turned puffy tennis-court covers and pool blankets into shredded flags. Then came shocks as the golf balls turned to baseballs and then to volleyballs and the old men, the ones who remembered the real great war, the one that passed decades before the current generation could even be conceived, likened them to crashing shells and ducked for the cover of the tanks they once drove. Of course, now there were no tanks but there were cars and they drove these cars flat against stone walls and ushered their grandchildren and all who could fit underneath. These were few, however. Few people reacted well. Few people were on high ground, as well. Rain poured. The towns were reduced to craters, a moon landscape, gray and brown and wet. What's gray and brown and wet all over? Everything. The answer is everything.

And then it stopped. The moon landscape was frozen now. The survivors dragged themselves from underneath their cars and out of their cellars and basements and for the first time in days they looked around. And then It happened. What It was no one understood and all they knew is that they witnessed this, in various places in various forms: A little girl came out with her dog on a leash. They were a little worse for wear but they stood and breathed and all was good and then It came. The dog teetered on its four healthy legs and then one leg collapsed and then another and then he fell to his side and closed his dog eyes and ceased to breathe. A freshly-spawned gnat in a nearby field crawled out of its crater and mimicked the dog. Some hours passed and the survivors knew this: every animal, creature, bird and fish and insect has perished. While the humans felt nothing every being with a sixth sense, every magical and abnormal and special creature and every animal, whether wild or tame, was now dead.

And the sky was still black. And now, now it was midday again.

The Training Center was a swimming pool. There was no T-Rex. The dormitories were catacombs. The library was a mess of pulp and the little girl that had worked there was now one with that pulp which she had loved and maintained in the days before. The cafeteria was only three walls and a only one table had miraculously remained whole. There were no classrooms. There were no children who were told to hide under their desks and cover their heads and who had remained so for a complete day before the roof had caved in. The smart ones were in the parking garage. They lived. Some of them lived.

This is where Xu was, in the parking garage and by the ventilator with blades that stilled long ago. They led to the outside and it was through them that air flowed. She was wearing her fancy uniform and although at the moment it was caked with mud and not very fancy, she still looked impressive. Next to her was the body of her student. His head had split in two. Next to the body was an almost-body of another student, a girl, who's chest moved rapidly and her breathing was shallow. She would be a body soon, Xu knew, and watched the girl gasp for her last breaths until they slowed and she was no more. Now Xu was by two bodies. Whether these two bodies had friends nearby Xu did not recollect and the light, trickling down from the ventilator shaft, did not penetrate far enough for her to judge. Her manicured fingers clung on to the ventilator cage. Touching it, touching this source of air and light and life, she felt safe.

"Hello," came out of the darkness. It was a ghostly sound.

"Hello .." it repeated, shakily, but louder. It was a man's voice and one that Xu found familiar. She reminded herself that there were bodies next to her and probably more just a few cinderblocks over.

"Hello," the voice came closer. There were footsteps behind it. "Anyone alive? Hello?" Then the voice swore. It coughed and swore.

"Yes," Xu found her own and whispered. "Yes!" she yelled. "I'm alive, I'm alive!" She looked down at herself and thought yes, she was alive.

There were sounds of a person walking, sliding and climbing and of things falling and of dirt and water hitting surfaces and being shifted by no natural force. There were crunches and footsteps. Then there was dust and something burst forth from the darkness and then there was breathing.

The person, the man, now stood before her, illuminated by the little light and close enough to touch. "Xu, Hyne .." said the man and crouched down. Xu could see his knees were bright red beneath the dust and dirt that coated him thoroughly. His face was a mask of this dust and dirt and of sweat and blood. He touched her shoulder.

"Zell," she answered him. "My students are dead."

Having received this message, Zell looked around. He saw the bodies. He had seen—no, he had felt—more bodies earlier on, as he stumbled from the elevator shaft he had spent the days past in. It was full of bodies. At first some breathed, later all were still.

"Everyone is dead," he told her. His throat was dry.

"Everyone is dead," Xu repeated and let go of the ventilator cage.

Outside, the clouds were still there. The rays of sun peaked through them, muted and lost, and the world was that of shadows and dimmed, darkened hues. Zell kicked through the blades of the fan and then through the outside cage, emerging into this world with calloused hands from climbing. Behind him, Xu followed suit, pulling herself up and then along with the last bit of her strength. The landscape was ice and moon craters and twisted metal.

"It's so dark .." she whispered as she saw the sun behind the wall of black clouds. "The moon is so dim .."

Zell looked up. "I think that's the sun .." he replied.

"Hello!" yelled Xu with all her might.

Silence answered her.

"We need to find some Cures," Zell turned to her and gestured to a cut above her eyebrow she did not know was there and then to his own knees.

Xu looked at him as if at a mad man. "The Cures don't work," she replied slowly, in a voice that is normally reserved for children and foreigners. "There are no Cures .. There is no more magic. I tried, don't you think I tried? The GFs don't come, the summons don't come, nothing comes. The Cures don't work."

"The Cures don't work," he parroted her words.

"Yes," she said and flinched as he put his arm around her shoulders. They looked up at the sky and a little rain fell, as if the sky was crying, and in response, they cried too.