The First Ashen

THE FIRST ASHEN

The sky lit green.

It wasn't subtle.

It was global — a wave of luminous energy that rolled through the clouds, across oceans, over mountaintops. Planes dipped. Traffic stopped. Children pointed. Dogs howled. Entire cities paused mid-breath as the flash streaked across the atmosphere like a second aurora, sharp and slow and wrong.

But nothing happened.

No fires. No collapse. No screams.

Just a beautiful, brilliant shimmer that lasted all of fourteen seconds.

And then it was gone.

The world resumed.

Riverside Hospital, Westside Maternity Ward — fourteen seconds before the flash:

"Push, love. One more. You're right there."

Marienne Nacht was bleeding, but smiling. The kind of smile that looked less like joy and more like survival. Her hands gripped the hospital bed, her body arched like something ancient was leaving her.

"I'm not letting him cry alone," she whispered.

The nurses thought she was talking nonsense. But they didn't know Marienne the way she'd known herself — fiercely

alone, stubborn to the bone, brave in quiet ways no one ever gave her credit for.

She bore down one last time.

Then came the flash.

It passed through the hospital windows, ignoring the blinds. It lit the ceiling tiles with a green shimmer and made the fluorescents buzz like confused bees.

People saw it. The maternity nurse — Danae, barely twenty-two, still shaking off med school nerves — turned toward the light and squinted.

"What the hell was that?"

Monitors flickered. Some reset. But nothing exploded. No one screamed. No one died.

Not yet.

Marienne gasped — not from pain, but from peace. Her body went still. The child had arrived.

He did not cry right away.

The silence was terrifying.

Then, with a sharp inhale, the newborn's lungs opened like a door slamming against wind.

Flare Nacht screamed his first scream.

It echoed through the ward like something ancient remembering how to live.

Danae held him, blinking through the adrenaline rush, and passed him to Marienne.

She took him like she'd always known what to do. Like the world hadn't ended outside.

"My Flare," she whispered, pressing her lips to his forehead. "My light. You don't know what you've done just by being here."

Flare blinked.

A nurse down the hall chuckled. "Another one. That makes seven today. Full moon, huh?"

Then the beeping stopped.

Just one monitor. Just one heart.

The nurse walked back into the room to

check on Marienne.

She was pale. Too pale. Her hands trembled — and not from exhaustion.

"Marienne?"

No answer.

The silence was growing now, like something pulling the walls in tighter.

Marienne looked down at Flare, still in her arms.

Then her head tilted back — slowly, almost peacefully — and her mouth fell open.

And kept opening.

Her spine cracked.

Her skin started to dry — not decay, not rot, but as if the life inside her was burning from the soul outward. A heatless combustion. Her hair lifted. Her teeth lengthened.

And her eyes — once full of love — turned black, pupil-less, and wrong.

She had died.

And something else had taken her place.

The first Ashen.

Danae screamed.

Instinct overrode training.

She didn't call security. She didn't hit the alarm. She grabbed the child — still silent now, watching — and ran.

Marienne's body lunged.

Claws where fingers should be. Tendons

snapping like piano wires. Her face collapsed inward like a skull stretching too tight. A mouth that didn't scream — just hissed, vibrating low and guttural, like hate made into sound.

Danae sprinted down the hall.

A patient was coughing in one room. Another had just flatlined. Nurses were running. Orderlies dropped trays, and down by the end of the corridor, a janitor collapsed from a brain hemorrhage.

Another death.

Another change.

More screams.

Danae ducked into a supply room, slammed the door, pressed her back to it.

Flare didn't cry.

Not once.

She looked down at him. His eyes were open. Calm. The green shimmer from the flash had long since faded, but something in the room still glowed — faint and unseen.

Something inside him.

She whispered, "You're just a baby."

But the truth had already rooted itself inside her:

This child didn't break the world.

The world broke because it was waiting

for him.

The Day After

Riverside Hospital: Ground Zero.

The structure collapsed from within during the night. Emergency crews found no signs of conventional explosives. No fires. No virus. No gas leaks. Just shattered walls, twisted hallways, and corpses—some still twitching, hours after death.

Only one survivor.

A child.

Found wrapped in a bloodied blue blanket inside a sealed medical fridge — unharmed, healthy, silent.

The body of the nurse was never found.

The world moved on — confused, but not

yet afraid. They told stories. News anchors speculated about "the green sky." Hashtags formed. Memes were made.

Then it happened again.

And again.

Week One: Global Spread

It started as coincidences.

A car crash in Brazil. Only one victim. When responders arrived, they were slaughtered by something that looked like a spider made of rusted steel and flesh. A suicide in Tokyo, self immolation. The woman's family tried to stop her. She rose from the fire, blackened, screaming with a dozen mouths. An old man's heart gave out in Brooklyn. His family tried to revive him. His corpse bit through the paramedic's arm.

And from then on… it was undeniable.

Every death became a nightmare.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

Each dead transformed into a creature shaped by their own fear — distorted, grotesque, ravenous. Creatures that should not exist. Creatures that burned from the inside, spewing ash and sorrow in equal measure.

The Ashen.

The New Normal

Governments fell into silence, then panic, then control.

Systems were built. Monitoring began. Deaths were tracked with an urgency that bordered on religious. Assisted suicide was legalized and ritualized. Secure containment centers were constructed.

When someone was about to die — they

were moved.

Quickly.

Quietly.

Better to burn them in a chamber than let them turn where others might fall.

The world didn't end overnight.

But it remembered the day it started to.

That day?

The day the sky turned green.

The day the first Ashen was born

holding her son against her chest.