The first people who approached Sera after the catastrophe did not know what to make of her.
She was sitting among the ruins, staring toward the sea.
Her clothes were torn.
Her face was covered with dust.
There was dried blood on one sleeve.
And there was no hiding her ears.
They were long and pointed, extending naturally from the sides of her head.
A young man stared at them for several seconds before finally asking,
“What happened to you?”
Sera looked at him.
She touched one of her ears.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you hurt?”
She thought about the question.
“Probably.”
The man looked toward the others.
Nobody knew what to say.
Before the catastrophe, a person with ears like that would have been impossible.
Now, after everything they had seen, impossible had become a much less useful word.
More survivors gradually gathered around her.
Some asked where she had come from.
Others asked whether she had been exposed to something.
One woman wanted to know whether she was infected.
Sera answered honestly whenever she could.
“I don’t know.”
“Where did you get those?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened during the wave?”
“I don’t remember everything.”
That last answer was true.
There were pieces missing.
The two enormous creatures.
The forces entering her.
The wave.
The moment she reached toward a possibility in which she survived.
Everything afterward felt fragmented.
Then the authorities arrived.
It took several days.
There was no functioning city administration anymore, but eventually military personnel and emergency officials reached the surviving settlements.
They were exhausted too, but they still had orders, equipment, and questions.
Sera was one of those questions.
A group of soldiers approached her carefully.
Behind them were medical personnel and people carrying scanning equipment.
One of the officers looked at her for a long time.
“Name?”
“Seraphina Kalhari.”
“Nationality?”
She hesitated.
Then answered.
“South Asian.”
“Where were you when the tsunami struck?”
“Here.”
“How did you survive?”
Sera looked at him.
“I don’t know.”
The officer frowned.
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember the water.”
“And then?”
Sera looked toward the sea.
“Then I was alive.”
The officer exchanged a glance with one of the scientists.
They examined her.
Blood samples.
Body scans.
Temperature.
Neurological tests.
Nothing explained the ears.
Nothing explained several of the other changes they detected.
Her physical structure was still recognizably human, but there were differences they couldn’t classify.
One scientist quietly asked,
“Was she exposed to some kind of radiation?”
Another shook his head.
“No known radiation exposure produces this.”
They scanned her again.
The machine produced an error.
The scientist tried again.
Another error.
Sera watched them.
She almost laughed.
She didn’t know why.
The scientist looked at her.
“Is something funny?”
“No.”
“Then why are you smiling?”
Sera touched her mouth.
She was smiling.
“I don’t know.”
The scientist stepped away.
The authorities eventually stopped trying to find an ordinary explanation.
They didn’t arrest her.
They didn’t know what crime she had committed.
They simply marked her as an unusual survivor and kept her under observation.
For several days, Sera remained near the temporary settlement.
Then the Earth shook again.
The ground moved beneath their feet.
People screamed.
Buildings that had somehow survived the first disaster collapsed.
The soldiers immediately moved everyone into the open.
Sera remained still.
She could feel the vibration through her feet.
Then another came.
And another.
The earthquakes were becoming more frequent.
They were no longer isolated events.
The ground seemed restless.
Roads split apart.
New cracks appeared across fields.
Mountains shifted.
Entire sections of coastline changed shape.
The sea repeatedly pulled backward before rushing forward again.
The survivors began to understand that the first catastrophe had not been an isolated disaster.
It had been the beginning.
Every few days, another earthquake struck.
Sometimes there were several in one day.
Some were small.
Others were powerful enough to destroy whatever remained standing.
Scientists attempted to map the activity.
The maps quickly became useless.
The pattern was changing too quickly.
Something was happening beneath the Earth.
Nobody knew what.
And then people began changing.
At first, it was only a handful.
Someone developed strange eyes.
Someone’s skin became unusually pale.
Another person survived injuries that should have been fatal.
Others became violently ill.
Some died.
Some went mad.
Some began displaying abilities that no medical instrument could explain.
The authorities tried to isolate the affected.
But there were too many.
And the changes were not consistent.
Some people became stronger.
Some became weaker.
Some changed physically.
Others changed only mentally.
A few seemed completely normal until they suddenly weren’t.
Rumors spread faster than official information.
People started whispering about monsters.
About gods.
About the end of the world.
Sera listened without commenting.
She had no answers.
She barely had answers about herself.
Then, one evening, someone pointed toward the sky.
“The Moon.”
Sera looked up.
The Moon was still white.
But there was something strange about it.
A faint pink color had appeared around its edge.
Nobody spoke.
The next night, it was slightly darker.
The following night, darker still.
People began taking photographs.
Scientists compared them.
Governments issued statements.
Dust from the catastrophe.
Atmospheric changes.
Volcanic ash.
Every explanation sounded reasonable.
Until Sera looked at the Moon.
Her instincts told her otherwise.
The Moon seemed closer.
Not enough to crash into Earth.
Not enough to cause an obvious gravitational catastrophe.
But close enough to feel wrong.
She stared at it.
The stars seemed strangely bright around it.
Some appeared almost within reach.
Then the pressure returned.
That invisible weight.
That feeling of something above her.
Sera lowered her head.
Her breathing became difficult.
For a moment, she remembered the cosmos.
The feeling she had experienced years ago.
The sense that something had noticed her.
She had thought it was a warning.
Now she wondered whether it had been something else.
The Moon slowly became pink.
The people around her began behaving strangely.
One person started laughing.
Another began crying.
Someone suddenly embraced a stranger.
Others became angry over meaningless things.
It was not madness yet.
Not completely.
But the boundary was beginning to weaken.
Sera looked at the Moon.
She touched one of her pointed ears without realizing it.
Someone nearby whispered,
“What is happening to us?”
Sera didn’t answer.
She didn’t know.
The Moon continued changing.
White became pink.
Pink became crimson.
And beneath that growing red light, the Earth continued to shake.
The catastrophe was no longer something that happened once.
It was becoming the new reality.
And whatever had begun above them was only beginning to show itself.
Guys I don’t need to explictly say what red moon represent right?