Across the galaxy, on a blue planet mostly covered in water, a certain species called humans had made their home. They called it Earth. And today, Earth was under attack.
Well. A piece of it.
Two hundred miles north of the Eastern Cardinal's outer wall sat a farming settlement called Kessler's Reach. Eleven thousand people, give or take. Grain silos, a water plant, a school with a mural of a sunflower on the side that the kids had painted themselves. It had a wall too, nothing like the Cardinal's, but tall enough and thick enough that most beasts gave up after a few tries and went looking for something easier.
Most beasts. Not this many.
They came out of the tree line to the east in a brown, heaving wave that didn't seem to have an end to it. Low and heavy, built like oversized boars with ridges of bone down their spines, tusks curling forward like hooks. They ran with their heads down, and when the first ones hit the outer fence, the fence didn't slow them. It just folded.
