Mark peered through the small gap in the side of his shutters thinking about the unbearable silence that the gloomy sky left. No birds chirping without a care in the day, no cheerful laughs of the young children outside and no rustling of the grass swaying from side to side in the gentle wind. Sweat trickled down the side of Mark’s rough cheek. His dark and stuffy room fit almost perfectly with the vibe outside. Most people would think that the day was just peaceful, rain softly hitting on the rooftops, a cool breeze howling in the distance, but the breeze never blew, it never rained heavily. Mark ran his hands across the dusty grooves forming in the window sill.

People began flooding in through the gates outside his house forming a messy shape of a scribble that a toddler would have drawn. Distraught commotion echoed throughout the village that Mark lived in. He gently pushed open the door hoping that no one would jump out right in front of him. Mark tiptoed down the old and creaky stairs as if they were made to catch people trying to sneak through. He poked his eye through the miniscule hole just big enough for someone to get a glimpse of the outside and inside.

Mark watched anxious as to why so many people crowded around the small gates of his little town. Apprehensive and curious he stepped out of his little apartment. People surrounded him as if they were bees who had their hive destroyed. Thunder cried into the distance as Mark slowly shifted his foot backwards discretely. The people pointed towards the settle ment in the distance, canons were being set up, armies were being trained He jogged through the muddy grass towards the old cottage where his grandpa lived. Mark tapped his bruised and scratched knuckle hoping his grandpa wasn’t taking a nap or doing something ridiculous like he normally was. The door was flung open startling Mark on the spot. “GRANDPA!!!” he cried out towards the old and wrinkly man in front of him. “Hush kid,” his grandpa paused, “Wait, why are you here?” His grandpa anxiously tapped his foot on the worn down floor boards as Mark stood there soaked in sweat. Mark pointed towards the feint croud of people covered up by the unusual and eerie fog as the shrouded sun shed no light over the land. His grandpa gasped as if he was going to feint on the spot. “So?” Mark questioned himself wether his gramps could really help him in a dire situation like this “Can you help? Or not?” His Grandfather stared down at his broken down slippers. He pointed to the shed and then turned around as the rain started to pour down throughout the forgotten valley. Mark walked over to the rustic shed wondering how long it was there for. When was it there? Mark had never noticed its presence nor seen it. He broke open the door expecting this to be one of grandpa’s ridiculous pranks. He pulled it open and found all sorts of things; rope, traps, explosives and even weapons. Mark dropped his bag onto the floor and began shoving whatever he could into.

Mark's arms were full: rope coiled over one shoulder, a rusted blade shoved through his belt, so when the voices came, he had to drop everything in a clattering pile to follow the crowd. Dozens of voices, rising over the storm. What had been a chaotic mass pointing toward the distant cannons was now flowing, like water finding a drain, toward the crooked little cottage behind him. Mark's stomach twisted. He pushed past the door frame just as the first of them reached his grandfather.

"Elder Thomas!" a woman cried, mud splattered up to her knees. "You said this would happen!"

Mark froze mid-step. Said?

"Twenty years," an old man wheezed, shoving through the crowd with a cane. "Twenty years we laughed you out of the square. Called you mad. And now--" His voice cracked. "Now the fog's here just like you told us."

Grandpa said nothing. His eyes, usually soft and half-amused, had gone flat and distant, fixed on some point over the heads of the crowd, as though he were watching something none of them could see.

"Grandpa?" Mark's voice came out smaller than he meant it to.

The old man didn't look at him. "I told them," he said quietly, almost to himself. "Every harvest festival. Every winter gathering. I told them the sky would forget how to rain, that the birds would go first, that the ground itself would hold its breath." He finally turned, and his eyes held a terrible, tired certainty. "Nobody believed an old drunk raving about the end of the world."

"You never told me," Mark said.

"Because I hoped I was wrong." Grandpa's gaze drifted back to the crowd, now three-deep around the cottage, faces upturned like sunflowers starving for light. Someone near the back was already on their knees in the mud. Someone else was chanting. "Prophet," they were calling him. "The Prophet of Adwen Hollow."

"They think you can save them," Mark said slowly.

"I know what they think." Grandpa's jaw tightened. "I'm not a prophet, boy. I made guesses. Educated ones, built on things I saw when I was young and stupid enough to go looking for them. That's all this ever was."

But the crowd wasn't listening. They surged closer, hands outstretched, someone shouting for him to tell us what comes next, tell us how to survive, tell us what you see now, and Grandpa, for the first time in Mark's life, looked afraid. He stood in the shed doorway, weapons at his feet, watching his grandfather drown in the very belief he'd spent twenty years being mocked for. Behind him, through the fog-choked distance, the cannons kept being wheeled into place, patient and indifferent to whether anyone in Adwen Hollow believed in prophecies at all.

"Grandpa," Mark said again, stepping down into the mud, "what did you actually see? Twenty years ago--what did you see that made you say all this?"

For a long moment, the old man just looked at him. Then: "I saw this exact morning. I saw you standing right where you're standing now. And I saw myself with no idea what to tell you."