Part 2

Huge tremors shake the earth, and something snaps.

You were right to be cautious.

It’s been months since the first quake set off a nearly daily chain of tremors over the entire continent, but despite the fear early on, people have started to become used to it. Aside from the slight feeling of dread, you no longer jump or panic when you feel the ground move. For a moment you think that maybe this is just the new normal for Skire.

You’re asleep when it happens. A jolt wakes you from your slumber, and at first you’re only annoyed. Instead of the quake petering to an end, the shaking only gets more and more intense. You sit up in bed and patiently wait for it to stop. It doesn’t.

As you get out of bed, the glass in your windows shatters covering the floor in glimmering shards. The sound of it triggers your survival mode; and you run out of the room and into the world. Even out here, you can still hear the shattering noise. It’s not just your windows, the land itself seems to be screeching in agony. A chorus of shrieking, crashing, and something reverberating from deep under your feet. It makes you want to cover your ears, but it echoes through your body in a way that can’t be shut out.

A sudden powerful shockwave sends you to your knees; the earth bucking upwards underneath you, as if you’re being shot upwards into space. In the distance, all around you, the earth is breaking. It cracks into pieces with smoke and dust billowing from the fissures. Terrified, your eyes trace the cracks and chasms to one bulging point in the distance. You hope that whoever is nearest those fractures will not be swallowed up alive.

You’re sitting there, mind racing as you try to figure out what will happen next. Then, you see it. Out of the bulging earth, something starts to breach. It’s a strange thing, trying to describe a being of a size you couldn’t begin to fathom exists, but it’s there… jutting upwards like you’re witnessing a mountain being formed in real-time. A Titan, slick with oily Ichor that seeps from it’s body and waterfalls down to the land below, so far below. It crushes whole settlements with its hands as it heaves itself upwards until the crags of its long, shimmering neck touch the sky.

As you crane your own neck back, it opens its jaw and the siren roar pierces deep into your skull.

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You wonder if this is the end of the world. You will realize soon that in a way, it is.