Cataclysm

2

"I'm telling you, I know what I saw !".
"It was right behind that corner, legit I tell you !".

Why was no one listening to him ?

They all began to walk away. He tugged on whatever he could grab. A shirt sleeve.

"Listen to me ! I don't think we're safe settling here-".

The sleeve was pulled back by its owner. "Yeosang, seriously, let's just go ."

And he was left alone as they walked back to their small settlement.

They had been there for 2 days after walking from the north. Presumably it was winter, as the leader of their trek had said. The air was crisp with chill, but traces of snow were nowhere to be found during their trip. The trees laid bare with their branches poking various parts of the sky.

Yeosang stood at the foot of the hill where the rest of his group were busy preparing for the night. Not too far from him stood an empty electrical station, small but definitely seemed to have done its purpose. The low hum of electricity flowed softly through the air. Beyond the generator, frolicking bushes strewn with stray wires from the old fence surrounded the area. At first glance, all was well.

He had gone down to investigate the generator, going inside the concrete cube and probing through some of the wirings. All that power certainly came from somewhere, and wherever that was, it meant more people were waiting. After leaving the music academy, Yeosang pretty much never turned back. Days turned into weeks of walking past villages, through empty highways and silent fields before he stumbled across this group of people. To say the generator brought relief was an understatement; he was too isolated from human interaction for too long, even a slight flicker of electricity meant civilisation was kicking and running as usual to him.

Sometimes being a realist makes your will to survive weaker, his subconscious would say.

The spiral began once he set foot out of the building. He wasn't sure why, but the feeling of air dropping from his lungs came almost instantly at the sound of light rustling. The hill was right in front of him, he could've ran straight back to camp, yet something in his gut told him to turn around and confirm his suspicions.

Looking back, Yeosang felt infuriated at his own curiosity.

It started with a slight moving of the broken wire fence, the slender metal poles holding it together wobbling as if a gust of wind pushed by. Silence ensued, and Yeosang could feel his own two feet propelling him a step closer, one step at a time. It's just the wind, it's just the wind, he replayed in his head at an attempt to still the chaos consuming his mind. He placed a hand on the concrete wall of the building bracing himself for whatever came.

Nothing.

That is, at first glance. His eyes widened as a darkness emerged from the forest beyond the fence, almost shapeless but completely discernable by the human eye. It was coming, and coming forth to him. The worn wire fence bended as the darkness came into its contact, as if it was pulled backwards by a strong force. Yeosang shivered, his eyes darting to search for a figure, a manifestation to lay his eyes on to find out what it was, but there was none.

The sun began to set at its usual course. Killing his hesitance, he ran up the hill, barely hearing the twang of the wire fence behind him. He screamed, waving an arm up to the darkening sky as he climbed up, grasping on whatever he could just to not tumble back towards the unknown below.

As his group came and left, Yeosang wondered whether he was going insane or simply nearing his time to meet the grim reaper.