Colt opened his eyes.

  Nothing.

  Flat ground stretched out in every direction. No end to it anywhere he could see. No trees. No grass. No rivers or mountains. Just dirt. Brown and empty and dead.

  The sky was gray. Not cloudy. Just gray. Like someone had drained all the color out of it.

  He looked down at his hands. They moved when he told them to. He felt wind on his face even though there was nothing for wind to move through.

  “Where are we?” Colt turned around.

  Toyahdoh stood behind him. Not the old man from the lodge. Younger. His hair was black, no grays. His face had fewer lines. He wore the same paint across his skin but the colors looked brighter.

  “This is the first Earth,” Toyahdoh said. “Before the Father shaped it.”

  Colt looked around again. Nothing but flat dirt and gray sky.

  “Looks dead.”

  “It was empty,” Toyahdoh said. “Waiting.”

  He raised his hand and pointed ahead.

  “The Father walked this place and saw what it could be. He began with the bones of the world.”

  The ground shook under Colt’s boots.

  He stumbled back a step. The dirt ahead of him started to rise. Slow at first, then faster. It pushed up from below, forming hills that grew into something bigger.

  Mountains.

  They climbed toward the sky, rock breaking through the surface and piling higher. Peaks formed. Ridges cut across them. Snow appeared at the tops, white against the gray.

  Colt’s mouth hung open.

  “Then he gave it blood,” Toyahdoh said.

  Cracks formed in the dirt. Water bubbled up from them, spilling out and spreading across the ground. It found the low places and filled them. Streams formed and flowed downhill. They joined together and became rivers.

  One of them cut past Colt’s boots. He stepped back and watched the water run clear and fast.

  “He gave it breath,” Toyahdoh said.

  The sky changed. Blue bled into the gray from the edges, spreading across until there was no gray left. Clouds formed. White ones that drifted slow.

  Wind picked up. Real wind this time. Colt felt it pull at his coat.

  “And he gave it skin,” Toyahdoh said.

  Green spread across the dirt. Grass pushed up from the ground, covering everything in a blanket that moved with the wind. Trees sprouted along the rivers. Small at first, then taller. Their branches spread wide and leaves filled them in.

  The world came alive around him.

  Colt turned in a slow circle. Mountains. Rivers. Forests. Sky so blue it hurt to look at. The air smelled clean. Fresh. Like nothing he’d ever smelled before.

  “He filled it with life,” Toyahdoh said. “The deer. The wolf. The eagle.”

  An eagle cried out somewhere above them.

  Colt looked up and saw it circling high over the trees.

  Deer appeared in the grass ahead, moving through in a group. A wolf watched them from the tree line but didn’t chase.

  “This is beautiful,” Colt said. He didn’t know what else to say.

  Toyahdoh started walking through the grass.

  “But the world was empty of those who could know its beauty. Who could speak of it. Who could give thanks.”

  Colt followed him. The grass bent under his boots.

  “The Father’s brother. Isapa. The younger one. The Coyote.” Toyahdoh’s voice went harder. “Isapa said it was wrong to make man. That man would corrupt what had been made pure. That man would take and take until nothing remained.”

  The wind picked up around them.

  “The Father did not listen. He believed man could be more. Could learn. Could protect this world instead of destroying it.”

  Toyahdoh stopped walking. He raised his hand and pointed ahead.

  “Watch.”

  The world shifted.

  Not all at once. Slow at first, like someone was pulling on the edges of everything and stretching it forward.

  Shapes moved through the grass ahead of them. Men. Naked except for hides wrapped around their waists. They carried spears with stone heads and ran together in a group, chasing a deer through the tall grass.

  “The first people,” Toyahdoh said. “They hunted. They gathered. They learned.”

  The men brought down the deer and gathered around it. One of them knelt and put his hand on its side. His mouth moved but Colt couldn’t hear the words.

  “They gave thanks for what they took,” Toyahdoh said. “They understood the balance.”

  The world moved forward again.

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  The grass changed. The trees grew taller. Huts appeared in a clearing, small ones made of branches and mud. Smoke rose from fires. Women scraped hides near the flames. Children ran between the huts.

  “They built,” Toyahdoh said. “They made families. They spread across the land.”

  It kept moving.

  The huts became bigger. Logs stacked and fitted together. Dirt paths formed between them. Men worked in fields, planting rows of corn.

  Colt watched it blur past. Seasons changing fast. Snow covering the ground then melting. Green grass turning brown then green again.

  The settlement grew. More huts. More people. The paths became roads.

  Then the fighting started.

  Men in different clothes clashed in an open field. Blue coats and red coats. Muskets firing. Swords flashing. Bodies falling.

  “War,” Toyahdoh said. His voice stayed flat. “Man always finds reasons to fight.”

  The colors changed. Gray and blue now instead of red and blue. Cannons roared across trenches. Smoke filled the air so thick Colt could barely see through it.

  “They fought over land. Over beliefs. Over power.” Toyahdoh started walking again. “And while they fought, they built.”

  The land kept changing under it all. The clearing became a town. The town became something bigger. Buildings rose higher than any Colt had seen back home. Brick and wood gave way to stone.

  Colt had to jog to keep up with Toyahdoh. The old man’s legs covered ground fast even though he didn’t look like he was hurrying.

  Roads appeared everywhere now. Not dirt. Hard black stone that stretched between the buildings. Those metal cars rolled across them, the same kind Colt had seen in New York.

  “They moved faster,” Toyahdoh said. “Always faster. Always reaching for more.”

  The buildings kept rising. Some of them had glass covering entire sides. The black roads turned into wide paths with lines painted on them. More cars. More people.

  Then Colt heard it.

  A roar overhead.

  He looked up and saw one of the metal birds. The same kind that had flown over them before. It passed above them with its metal wings stretched wide.

  “Those big metal birds,” Colt said. “I seen those before.”

  “Man learned to fly,” Toyahdoh said. “He conquered the sky the same way he conquered the land.”

  More of them appeared. Dozens. Coming and going in streams across the sky.

  The buildings kept getting taller. Stranger. Some had shapes that didn’t make sense, bending in ways stone shouldn’t bend. Others glowed with lights that moved across their surfaces.

  Colt stopped walking.

  He recognized the shape of the land. The way the buildings sat next to water. The big open space in the middle.

  “That’s New York,” he said. “I was there.”

  Toyahdoh nodded. “This is many winters after you walked its streets.”

  The city didn’t look the same. The buildings were different. Taller. There were more of them packed together. And the metal birds overhead had changed too. Some of them didn’t have wings anymore. They were just long shapes that climbed straight up and disappeared into the clouds.

  One of them sat on a platform near the water. It was huge. Bigger than any building Colt had seen.

  Fire burst from the bottom.

  The whole thing lifted off slow, climbing higher and higher. The roar shook the ground under Colt’s boots. He watched it punch through the clouds and keep going until he couldn’t see it anymore.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Man reached beyond the sky,” Toyahdoh said. “Beyond the clouds. Beyond this world.”

  Colt’s mouth hung open.

  “That ain’t possible.”

  “You have seen many things that should not be possible.” Toyahdoh’s white eyes stayed on the sky where the metal shape had vanished. “Yet they are.”

  The city kept growing. The buildings got taller still. Some of them didn’t even touch the ground anymore. They floated above the streets on nothing Colt could see.

  “How—”

  “Watch,” Toyahdoh said. “It is coming.”

  The sky changed.

  A building near the center of the city started to glow. One of the tallest ones. Violet light bled through the windows and climbed up the walls from the inside.

  Colt’s gut tightened. He knew that color. He’d seen it too many times.

  “What’s happenin’?”

  “Man found something he should not have found.” Toyahdoh’s voice went quiet. “He reached into a place that was closed. A place that should have stayed closed.”

  The violet light gathered at the top of the building. It swirled faster and faster until it looked like a tornado spinning in place.

  The sky above it tore.

  Colt stepped back. His hand went to his belt but his gun wasn’t there. This wasn’t real. He was just watching.

  “Isapa tried to harness the Father’s power,” Toyahdoh said. “He wanted to control what should not be controlled. And when he failed, he tore a hole between worlds.”

  Violet light poured out of the tear. A beam shot down and hit the building.

  The whole structure exploded.

  The blast knocked over everything around it. Glass and stone flew outward. Buildings collapsed. The sound hit Colt’s chest like a hammer.

  “Jesus Christ,” Colt breathed.

  The patch in the sky started to spread. Violet bled out from the center in every direction. Lightning flickered inside it.

  More buildings exploded. Some collapsed inward. Others burned with violet fire that didn’t move like normal fire.

  People ran through the streets below. Thousands of them. They scattered in every direction.

  “They cannot escape,” Toyahdoh said. “There is nowhere to run.”

  The patch kept growing. It covered half the sky now. The violet light on the ground spread with it, creeping across streets and climbing up buildings.

  Then something came through the hole.

  Colt’s breath stopped.

  It was big. Winged. Covered in black scales that caught the violet light. It had a long neck and a head full of teeth bigger than a man.

  It flew out of the tear and dove toward the city. Its mouth opened and violet fire poured out, washing across a whole block of buildings. Everything it touched turned black.

  “Holy shit,” Colt said. “What is that thing?”

  “Oni,” Toyahdoh said. “Demon lords. They lived in the space between worlds. And when Isapa opened the way, they came through.”

  More followed. Things with too many limbs. Things with faces that kept changing. They poured out of the hole like water breaking through a dam.

  The city fell apart under them.

  Buildings crumbled. Fires spread. The violet patch swallowed the sky until there was no blue left.

  Colt wanted to look away but couldn’t. He watched one of those winged beasts tear through a floating building and bring the whole thing down. Watched people running and getting swallowed by the violet light on the ground.

  “This is the first Earth,” Toyahdoh said. “The one where the Father made his children. The one where Isapa’s warning came true.”

  The violet spread beyond the city now. It crawled across the land in every direction. Forests turned black. Rivers ran dark. Even the mountains in the distance looked sick.

  “It didn’t stop here,” Colt said.

  “No.” Toyahdoh turned to face him. “The poison spread to other worlds. One by one, they fell. Some fought. Some tried to hide. None could stop it.”

  The winged beasts circled overhead. More shapes moved in the streets below. Things that shuffled and reached. Things that used to be people but weren’t anymore.

  Colt’s throat went tight. He’d seen that before. Jeff and Earl and Henry, stumbling through the woods with violet in their eyes, hanging in the tree.

  “How many?” Colt asked. “How many Earths fell?”

  “Many,” Toyahdoh said. “Too many to count.”

  The violet covered everything now. The whole world looked dead. The sky. The ground. Even the water had gone dark.

  “The Father saw what he had made,” Toyahdoh said. “Saw what his brother had unleashed. And he spent many winters searching for a way to undo it. To heal what had been broken.”

  “Did he find it?” Colt looked at him. “A way to fix it?”

  Toyahdoh’s white eyes held on him.

  “He could not undo it. Could not close what Isapa had opened. The Oni were too strong. Their corruption too deep.” He paused. “But he found another way.”

  “What way?”

  “A weapon.” Toyahdoh raised his hand and placed it on Colt’s chest. “A last stand.”

  Everything went dark.

  Colt sucked in a breath and his eyes snapped open.

  He was back in the lodge. The fire crackled in the pit. Smoke rose through the hole in the roof.

  Toyahdoh sat across from him. Old again. Gray hair. Lined face. Those white eyes steady.

  Colt’s chest was heaving. His shirt stuck to his back with sweat. His hand was still holding Toyahdoh’s

  “What the hell was that?” His voice came out rough.

  “The truth,” Toyahdoh said. “What came before. What is coming again.”

  Colt let go of Toyahdoh’s hand.

  “That was real? That actually happened?”

  “Yes.”

  Colt stared at the fire. The flames looked small after what he’d just seen.

  “You said the Father made a weapon.” He looked up. “What weapon?”

  Toyahdoh’s eyes stayed on him. He didn’t answer right away.

  Then he said it quiet.

  “You.“