<span style="font-size: 150%; line-height: 116%;"><span style="text-decoration: underline">Year 1</span></span><br/><br/>Long ago, in the place where stone faces were the earth, there lay a woman with a lantern sleeping in a heavy, dreamless slumber. The woman knew nothing. Not of the world. Not of who she was. Not of what would happen next. Not how to speak, to communicate.<br/><br/>One day, the woman woke up. Her eyes were greeted by the sight of others with lanterns stirring and beyond the tiny pool of light, a horizon hidden completely by an endless darkness. A simple white cloth was draped over her, covering her nakedness.<br/><br/>She rose to her feet, securing the cloth around herself, a gentle gust of wind bringing small specks of grey ash from the darkness above. She stared into the darkness, willing herself to see beyond the lit stone faces and was rewarded with the silhouettes of more faces, some larger than normal, covering the earth like small hills, others like boulders, dotting the landscape around them. Her picked up her lantern, holding it up before, noting that it shifted the darkness, or rather the darkness shifted around it. She shifted her footing, stepping on the cracked surface of the ground, avoiding the noses which poked at her soles.<br/><br/>She caught the glance of another, he too was a mystery to her as what lay ahead,<span style="font-style: italic">What now?</span>She gestured with a shrug.<br/><br/><div style="text-align: center;">------</div><br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Unknown to the newly waken survivors, the darkness shifted around them, a beast void of reasoning, its eyes filled with hunger and fury. The snake leaped onto its first prey, its immense weight smashing the man's bones before it drove the bladed end of its tail into a man. The survivors screamed, fleeing and scattering, some tripping over themselves in their hurry.</span><br/><br/><div style="text-align: center;">------</div><br/><br/>Her curious spirit evaporated instantly, being replaced with horror and distress as blood splattered against her. She turned to flee, only to trip against the uneven surface, the cold stone noses poking into her side. She did not want to die. Not here. Not like this. She scrambled away, feeling the beast's eyes landing on her as her hands dug in between the faces, her legs pushing as she attempted to flee. Her hand caught in a crack in the stone and she pulled with all her might.<br/><br/>The piece of stone cracked free as she pulled it into her grasp, her legs somehow managing to get under herself back up to face the beast. She turned to face the beast. She did not want to die here. The rock was sharp and deadly.<br/><br/>Olivia roared at the beast, desperate and defiant.