My name is Paladian. I’m the son of a farmer’s son. Now, as I survey the trampled landscape, what I am doesn’t matter, or more accurately, has no meaning. Frantically, I scan the destruction around me for my father—a large terse man, and my mother a slip of a woman with a determination of steel.

My calls turn to screams of despair. But even the silence has no echo. I stare. The small things—the living town of buildings, farms, a small inn and all of the people have been replaced by flattened rubble and debris. I stumble, dazed searching for my parents, as I leave the remains of our house and home into what used to be the Main Street. I’m aghast. Even the trees have been pulverized into small splinters of wood.

The rain pummels down on me dripping off me to drill small holes in the mud at my feed. The sound of the rain thunders in my ears the way my pain, despair and blood roars in rage.