Many things arrived without warning, like unrest, disaster, or death. Even if there had been many clues beforehand, enough to put people on alert, no one could know how those scattered traces, buried beneath the Ninefold Earth, would intertwine and take root, or when they would finally sprout into some monstrous calamity.

Again and again, people removed the threats and stayed vigilant. Time after time, they examined and weighed the situation. But in the end, how much could any of it really accomplish?

Once disaster broke through the surface, floodwaters overwhelmed the levees, torrential rain crashed down from the heavens, and a tsunami swept across the land, there was little left to do beyond relying on whatever preparations had been made and reacting as best one could, just as they were doing now.

***

Ten minutes before the mutation in Spring City, at the Association’s construction site…

A pillar of fire rose from...