I remember the sound of the Blacklight most of all.
It wasn't like thunder or an explosion—those are sounds you can place, even fear. The Blacklight was something else. It was a tearing, an absence, as though the air itself was ripped open and everything familiar was swallowed. That was the moment Ladysmith stopped being a small town on Vancouver Island and became something else entirely.
We didn't know where we were at first. The stars were wrong, the grey and lifeless moon we'd come to know was now covered in ocean and atmosphere, and the horizon was jagged with mountains that hadn't been there before. The silence afterward was worse than the sound. Even the ocean held its breath, as if it feared being noticed.
At first, we clung to the pieces of the world we'd lost. We tried to use our phones, but there was no signal. Cars became useless husks without fuel, and even our clothes felt alien—so out of place against this strange, medieval landscape. We thought someone would come for us. Someone always comes, don't they?
No one came.
The Pactlands didn't welcome us. They were too busy with their own chaos to care about a displaced town of eight thousand souls. Vector was already moving its armies into the Disputed Lands when we arrived. To them, we were an opportunity, a resource. The High Magus Council called us an aberration, a stain on the balance of their world. The Freefolk clans looked at us like scavengers deciding whether to share their scraps or fight for them.
Some of us thought we could carve out our corner and wait for the world to leave us alone. I was young then. Idealistic. That was before the visions took hold. Before we learned to adopt magic. Before the Vectoran raids. Before the waves of death that took our old, our ill. That first year broke us, reshaped us. It made us fighters, survivors. And the world? It learned to fear us.
Looking back, I don't see how it could have gone any other way. Ladysmith wasn't just our home; it was a tether to the lives we'd lost. And there wasn't one among us who would give that up for anything.
I've thought a lot about how we survived, how we changed. I was born into a world of guns and endless information, of plentiful resources and safety nets. Now, I live in a world of sharp steel, shifting alliances, and scarcity, where an honor-bound promise is worth more than gold and a single harvest can decide life or death.
Sometimes, when I look at the people around me, I wonder if I'd even recognize them as the neighbors I once knew. There's a strength in them now, a hardness that wasn't there before. To survive, we had to become part of this world.
For me, the change was more literal. I didn't understand what it meant to be a Greenseer at first. The visions came in flashes—glimpses of paths not taken, shadows of futures that might be or might never come. I used to think they were dreams, a lingering trauma from everything we'd lost. But they weren't.
The Pactlands have their own rules, their own ways of shaping the people who live here. This place doesn't just take you in—it remakes you. Some call it magic; others call it fate. I don't know what to call it.
Even now, I'm not sure if the Blacklight was an accident or if something, somewhere, wanted us here. The tribes of the eastern islands speak of omens and balance, of debts owed to ancient forces. I've seen the scars of this world: barren fields, ruins where the stones hold their sorrow, skies painted in colors that don't belong.
And I've seen what is and what's still to come. Not everything, not clearly, but enough. I've seen the battles and the betrayals. Kings killed. Empires falling. The shadows that walk as men. I've seen Ladysmith's role at the center of it all. The Vectoran Empire marches to claim what they think is theirs. The High Magus Council schemes. The Freefolk fight to stay free. And the tribes of Caede? Silent, watching from the edges, waiting for their moment to act.
But one truth is consistent in every vision: Ladysmith will not be ignored. Whatever brought us here, it isn't finished with us yet.
Sometimes, I wonder what's left of the town I grew up in. Not the buildings—they're still here, though most of them have changed. I mean the people. I mean me. I used to dream of going back, of undoing what happened. But now?
Now, I dream of what's next.
Because this isn't over.