The Dark Age of Blood

Chapter 1: The Omen Before Darkness Noah Vance never believed that an ordinary morning could become the beginning of the end of the world. At 7:15 a.m., he was sitting in his apartment in Seattle, holding a cup of coffee while scrolling through the news on his phone. It was a normal day. People were heading to work. Children were going to school. The streets were filled with traffic. The world was still moving exactly as it always had. Until the sunlight disappeared. At first, nobody understood what was happening. Noah looked up from his phone. The room slowly became darker. It wasn't like clouds covering the sun. It wasn't like a storm approaching. It was different. The sunlight simply vanished. Outside his window, the entire city seemed to freeze. Cars stopped. People walked out of buildings. Thousands of people stared at the sky with confusion and fear. Because above them... the sun was gone. The first ten seconds felt unreal. The first minute felt impossible. But after five minutes of darkness, humanity began to panic. Phones started malfunctioning. Satellite connections became unstable. Airports around the world reported communication failures. The internet exploded with rumors. Some people claimed it was a government experiment. Some believed it was a rare cosmic event. Others whispered the word nobody wanted to say. Apocalypse. Ten minutes later... the sunlight returned. The world breathed again. Governments announced that everything was under control. Scientists promised investigations. People slowly returned to their normal lives. They believed the nightmare was over. They were wrong. Because nobody noticed the most important change. The sun had returned. But the warmth it brought back... was no longer the same. Noah Vance turned off the television. The news anchors were discussing the same topic everyone around the world was talking about. "A rare astronomical phenomenon." "A temporary solar anomaly." "An event that can be fully explained by science." Experts repeated these statements again and again. But Noah didn't believe them. Not because he hated scientists. Not because he believed the ridiculous apocalypse theories spreading across the internet. He simply knew something was wrong. He was an engineer. His entire life had been built on numbers, evidence, and logic. And that was exactly why this situation bothered him. Because there was no explanation. At 7:15 a.m., the sun disappeared. It wasn't blocked. It wasn't covered by clouds. It simply vanished. For ten minutes, billions of people around the world experienced the same impossible event. Planes lost navigation signals. Satellites stopped responding. Communication networks collapsed. Then, ten minutes later... the sun returned. Everything went back to normal. Almost. Noah looked outside his window. The city was still full of life. Cars were moving. People were walking. The streets were filled with noise. But something had changed. Everyone was pretending nothing had happened. Because admitting that something impossible had occurred meant accepting a terrifying possibility. Humanity didn't truly understand the world it lived in. Noah walked to his desk. He placed an old notebook on the table. A notebook that had belonged to his grandfather. It was the strangest thing he had ever seen. The pages were made of a material that modern technology could not identify. The symbols written on them looked like a language that belonged to no civilization on Earth. For years, Noah believed it was nothing more than an old family artifact. A meaningless object passed down through generations. Until three months ago. That night, after another sleepless night studying the strange symbols, something impossible happened. The notebook began to glow. Not a reflection. Not a damaged electronic device. A faint light slowly appeared between the pages. The entire room was illuminated. Noah still remembered that moment. The cold feeling. The fear. And the strange certainty that came from somewhere deep inside him. The notebook wasn't trying to show him something. It was trying to warn him. After months of research, Noah had only managed to understand fragments of the mysterious text. Most of it remained impossible to translate. But one phrase appeared repeatedly. A sentence that felt like a message from someone in the future. "When the light disappears, the world will enter the age of darkness." At first, Noah thought it was nothing more than another strange prediction. Until today. Until the sun disappeared. He slowly opened the notebook. The blank pages were no longer blank. New words appeared. Impossible words. Because they were written in a language Noah had never seen before. But somehow... he understood them. Three simple sentences. Day One. The light has awakened. The countdown has begun. Noah stared at those words for a long time. Outside the window, sunlight was still shining. People were still laughing. The world was still normal. But Noah knew something nobody else knew. The disappearance of the sun was not a warning. It was the beginning.Three months earlier. Noah Vance did not believe in the end of the world. He was an engineer. He believed in data. He believed in evidence. Facts were stronger than rumors. Logic was stronger than fear. That was exactly why the notebook made him so uncomfortable. Not because of the strange symbols. Not because of the mysterious light. But because its contents were matching reality. Slowly, Noah began to understand what was happening. He spent countless nights comparing the symbols in his grandfather's notebook with astronomical records. Most of his attempts failed. The symbols seemed meaningless. Random. Impossible to understand. But hidden among those unknown patterns, he discovered something. A repeated pattern. Patterns connected to solar activity. Atmospheric changes. And something else he still couldn't identify. Then he found a date. July 22, 2027. At first, Noah believed it was only a coincidence.