DARKNESS RISES: BLOOD DAWN

CHAPTER ONE
It was way past midnight and the city of Vale was deathly quiet. Save for the low chiming of bells on the ships in the harbour, and the occasional whisper of folk that should long have been in bed, the great city was still and silent.

The skies were filled with grey clouds that drifted listlessly across the heavens. They obscured the moon from view, granting not a sliver of light to the world below.

The market square was empty, the stalls gone. Nothing remained but an open expanse of stone with the closed taverns and inns huddled around it, long since shut for the night.

Even the poorer areas of Vale were deserted, the urchins sleeping soundly in their dirty beds.

And then they came, and suddenly everything was different.

It was as though they came from somewhere else, some realm that was utterly different to our own, for they slipped out of the shadows, reality blurring and twisting behind them as though they had torn themselves free from another place, perhaps even another time. And with their existence, the world was darker still, as though their very presence was wrong.

The skies bled liquid shadow. Time seemed to stand still.

For a moment the creatures stood, all darkness and shadows and deep, dark hoods from which only the pale yellow of their eyes could be seen. The group: seven tall figures garbed entirely in black flowing robes, floated just off the ground in the very centre of the market and looked around.

None of them breathed; none of them made any sounds at all.

They were not human, they were not even alive. They were tall and silent strangers in the realm of the living, and they had a single terrible purpose: death!