I ran through a dark, shadowed city rendered in shades of blue and gray. Small red eyes peered out from crevices, tracking me.

A thick layer of soot carpeted this town, yet I left no footprints in the ash. As I ran along the waterfront, I passed an old school building with a fenced in field. A small girl appeared at the entrance as I passed, and grabbed me around the waist. A ripple of light arched across our forms, and we were both gone.

I now stood in the same place, but the gray and blue shading of the world seemed peeled away. That area sat like a malevolent rift at the edge of this school.

The girl explained this was a sanctuary against the darkness beyond. This school seemed like an unfamiliar hybrid of cathedral holy site, and a girls grade school. The world was now in vibrant colour.

I was shown the recreation area, which was as large as a soccer field and filled with children. Beside this field was a river, separated from the school by a fence. Leading up the school was a floating staircase, assembled from blessed wooden planks, and gold. Inside, the building, the hallways were all brightly lit, and a calming shade of beige. Down a series of winding, blind-corner hallways, was a sleeping area. I rested here until I heard screams echo in from outside. I rushed toward the water front area, to see a series of the red eyed creatures breaching the sanctuary. It was the emotional willpower of the children that held the dark creatures at bay, but I could sense them failing. Colour was beginning to drain from the sky. Patches of grass, and the children themselves began to desaturate before my eyes. Another, older child grabbed my arm, and pointed toward the building. I understood without words that that sanctuary was lost - and I needed to escape.

Running out of the fallen sanctuary, back into the gray world. Down a highway overpass, on to a main road clogged with both ash and snow. Two people danced atop a car, a man and a woman. Both wore a flickering assortment of gask and filter masks. They pointed toward the highway below. A writhing mass of the red eyed creatures rode a rusted, hulking vehicle of some kind down the road. Mounted on the vehicles front was a snow plow, and it caused a tidal-arch of snow, grit, and soot to swirl and quake in it's wake.

I ran to the vehicle, and climbed on top as it passed. I pushed the deamons aside, and they payed me no mind. I reached the front of the deamon-plow, and rode like a flowing wave the arch of snow on my stomach. Soon, the highway blended into a dark train system. The screech of rails filled the packed cabin. The world outside was still soot grey, but we were no longer in a city. The rickety subway-style train passed swampland that was once suburbs - flooded skeletons of houses, with only their rooftops and sidebeams intact.

The people on the train seemed intent on getting to the front, so I followed. We seemed to descend downward through four levels of cars, stacked upon one another. Once I reached the furthest car, I saw the driver. They sat looking out at non-existent tracks, rocketing their vehicle and passengers toward the colourless horizon.