One day, monsters started showing up on earth. There was never a name established for this event, because all of the options sounded too religious. Those who defeated the monsters in battle began to change and grow beyond human limits, all the while attuning themselves to powers beyond the logic of the universe we knew.
Half a year later, and the world looks about the same, save for a few extra craters. The most powerful amongst these ‘Aspected’ keep one another in check, having become their own institution. No, nothing’s really changed. But there’s a whole lot to talk about, so people can pretend that isn’t true fairly easily.
Alex is a runaway from Alaska who’s traveled the US. He’s got an Aspect, and that fact’s obvious enough to ensure nobody will look at him as anything but a potential threat. With his traveling companion splitting off to pursue his dreams of making music and only lonely roads ahead, Alex decides to meet up with an online friend, looking for some reason not to come back home and finish his journey.
"It was that time of evening where the sun no longer had the proper angle to illuminate the whole of the earth. As I watched it grow orange from the side, the shadows of the bare trees and fishing docks and water towers and suburban houses reached back into the structures which cast them, turning the foreground to a silhouette before the sunset. It was as though all of the color in the world was bleeding into the sky..."