S
Literature
Shattered - Prologue Prologue
The rain over Northwinster did not fall; it collapsed.
Torrential, ice-cold water pounded against the cracking asphalt of the deserted commercial district, turning the gutters into roaring rivulets. Lightning flared across the dead Ohio sky, illuminating the colossal, rotting silhouette of Northwinster Shopping Mall—a cavernous monument of nineteen-eighties consumerism, long abandoned and decaying behind rusted chain-link fences.
Through the deluge, a solitary figure sprinted toward the mall's shattered glass entrance.
He moved with an unnatural, fluid grace. He wore a sweeping, heavy coat of crimson black—a color so deep it seemed to absorb the strobing flashes of lightning rather than reflect them. Where his boots struck the ground, the rainwater didn't splash; it hissed and evaporated, leaving tiny plumes of sulfurous mist in his wake.
A hundred yards behind him, two dark tactical SUVs skidded to a halt, their tires tearing through flooded potholes.
The doors
