The Twilight of Man.

Hello, my name’s Daniel Silva.

Julia said I should start a journal, so I guess this is my attempt though I’m not very good at this, so I guess I’ll just recount what happened since... well since the world burned.

I didn’t think it would really happen, I honestly thought my dream was just that, a dream. But I was wrong.

Three months ago my family and I dropped into the back garden of an old friend of mine, Kate Vostroya, y’know... as you do... teleporting yourself from Miami, Florida to well, Coburg just outside Eugene, Oregon. After fixing up my... after fixing up Azara’s wound that message played, accompanied by footage I don’t think any of us would ever forget quickly.

Demons, demons were coming out of the woodwork all across the East Coast, doing much better at hiding their occult practices than the other regions, they all moved at once. Washington, New York, Philly, Miami, Chicago, all fell over night.

The entire US Military redeployed along the Mississippi River to hold them back as best they could whilst the Roman Catholic Church of North America (RCCNA) set up a long line of essentially ‘fortress monasteries’ all along the Rocky Mountains, everything west of that line from North to South was considered the Holy Lands, everything East from that line to the Mississippi was considered the ‘Badlands’. A lawless, faction-less land that resembled war torn Iraq rather than the American mid-west.

The RCCNA aided the US, and Canadian Militaries with their Exorcists and Templars whilst their Inquisitors took an iron fisted grip over the remaining safe lands in North America, establishing a religious dictatorship led by Archbishop Dieter Issacs. And things changed, police raids on peoples houses suspected of being cult leaders, strict christian doctrine dominated society, and life seemed to slow, as fire consumed the earth.

Europe fell within a week, the Middle East within a fortnight. Russia went silent, Japan, South Korea, Taiwain, the Phillipines, and New Zealand became safe havens for those fleeing the destruction as hell was unleashed on earth.

Vampires were suddenly a reality, serving the resurgent Prince of Envy, Prince Baal, who now ruled over all of Eastern Europe and much of Russia, fighting with the last vestiges of Scandinavia who had swiftly reverted to Paganism in the wake of the catastrophe, only now instead of vikings with axes and long ships, they were vikings with machine guns and motorboats.

A lot of people ended up afflicted with a disease called ‘The Rage’, and became servants of the Prince of Wrath, Prince Sathanas or Satan, these people I just felt sorry for, her disease, her anger was all consuming and reduced people to nothing but utterly insane monsters who laughed at pain and delighted in bloodshed, taking grotesque trophies from their victims.

Even worse than Prince Sathanas was the Prince of Gluttony, Prince Belphegor, a grotesque monstrosity who sat where the Lincoln Statue once stood, his pus filled blight ridden body devouring anything and everything his demonic servants brought him, be they man, woman, child, animal. Belphegor just devoured it all with glee.

But even if you managed to sleep through the screams Prince Apollyon, Prince of Sloth could still find you, the buzzing of locusts filling your dreams as they turned to nightmares that his power fed upon. No one knew where he resided, many theorised that he travelled like Sathanas, moving across the world like a natural disaster.

Sat upon a throne in Paris was Prince Lucifer, the Prince of Pride styling himself as the Prince of Princes ruled over a vast empire that stretched across much of Central and Western Europe, his only enemies being the Swiss and the people of Great Britain and Ireland. Everyone else who still dwelled in his land were kept as his slaves, **** to worship him as a God, and exist forever in servitude to his army of demonic soldiers led by his greatest general, and twin sister, Lilith.

Of course, there was... my patron as well. Prince Asmodeus, the Prince of Lust. He whispered to me still in my dreams, urging me to come find him, to come serve him once again, and it took a great deal of my concentration to block him out. It didn’t help that he was uncomfortably close having made his home in New Orleans and ruling over some facsimile of the former Confederate States, with Succubi and Incubi as the dominate ****, and everyone else as nothing more than chattel and playthings.

The most mysterious one though? Was the absent Prince, Prince Mammon, the Prince of Greed had arrived at the same time as the other Princes, rising out of the Gehenna Gate in Jerusalem, but disappeared shortly after, and no one had seen her since. Not that many people had time to worry about a missing demoness prince.

So, the world is pretty much fucked. To put bluntly, it’s clear that the Princes are supposed to be opening the other gates of hell, but left to their own devices they fought each other just as much as they fought humanity.

As for me though? Well, we didn’t really have a choice we kinda had to stay with Kate after everything happened so quickly, which she begrudgingly allowed.

Special Agent Adams who we learnt was called Rachel, eventually stopped trying to kill us after she processed what had happened and stopped blaming it on me, in fact she seemed to blame everything on the church now, which I don’t know seemed understandable. Considering she, along with the rest of us were listed as amongst the ‘dead’ she didn’t exactly have a life to go back to. The inquisitors of the church would just burn her alive anyway. It hasn’t made things easier but she took a job with the Eugene PD, which helped the rest of us.

I managed to get a job at a recently opened Academy for gifted teens that was designed to prepare 18-20 year olds for admission to university. I was the PE Teacher there, which was a decent cover, and after her recovery Azara got a position as the Head of History, which was a no brainer given how long she’d been alive. Amy also enrolled in the academy as a student which was handy as it let me keep an eye on them both.

Mom took a job as a nurse working at Kate’s clinic in her hometown of Coburg, which she seemed to enjoy. It was hard on her more than anyone though, what with Beth declared missing and Brian being listed as amongst the dead. None of us had any idea how to find her without revealing ourselves either.

Angela had got a job at a bar in Coburg as well, working as a bartender and quickly becoming popular amongst the locals whilst exploring her witchcraft as sneakily as she could.

Julia tried her best to find out what happened to her parents, but she herself was listed as dead and they were listed missing, so there wasn’t much we could do besides support her as best we could, not that she needed it. As with every confidence she happily opened an independent law firm in Eugene, and was quickly making strides in making a name for herself, so much so that Amy had resolved to study law at College and work alongside Julia, who she had taken to calling ‘big sis’ when she thought is was jus the two of them.

I suppose things could be worse for us, it was a lot worse for a lot more people, so I can’t complain. After everything that happened it was Rachel’s help with our cover stories and fake names that really saved us from getting caught, which was a surprising development to say the least.

Well, that’s all I can muster for now, I guess...

Daniel Silva