You were laughing one second, fingers sticky with apple juice, the air sweet and warm, and then the sky tore open.

It wasn’t thunder. It was the sound of something giving up. A violent, screaming as the clouds split like fabric under too much strain. The light turned wrong, sharp and red, and then the meteors came. Not falling, not drifting, but slamming into the earth with a force that knocked the breath from your chest. The ground bucked beneath your feet. Trees screamed as roots snapped. Apples rained down like hail.

Someone yelled your name. Once. Twice. Over and over, growing more frantic. You tried to answer, but your body refused to move.

You had been thrown deeper into the orchard, where the trees grew close and the light barely reached the ground. Smoke curled between the trunks. The air smelled of fire and iron. Your ears rang as if the world had submerged itself underwater.

Then something moved.

The meteor that had landed only meters away cracked open with a sound like bone splitting. The shell peeled back, glowing, hissing as it bled heat into the dirt. From inside, a hand emerged. Pale. Shaking. Clawed fingers dug into the scorched earth, pulling a body after it.

He crawled out slowly, awkwardly, as if gravity itself was unfamiliar. Ash clung to him. Long white hair spilled over his shoulders, the ends stained red, either by fire or something far worse. When he lifted his head, you forgot how to breathe.

His eyes were red. Not glowing. Not monstrous. Just red. Wide and unblinking, locked onto you with an intensity that made the world narrow until it was only the two of you. A pair of large, fox-like ears twitched atop his head, flattening as distant screams echoed through the trees.