Light enveloped me. A strong feeling of vertigo gripped me. Then there was blackness so deep it felt like the void between galaxies—no light at all. Then suddenly, a box appeared in my face.

  Paul awoke with a start. There were strange noises coming from outside, near the front door. He glanced at his phone—3 in the morning. He crept quietly past his kids’ rooms and down to the first floor. Now that he was closer to the noises, he was even more perplexed. They sounded like nothing he’d heard before in his life. It was like a cross between wild dogs and little children—each screech sending a shiver up his spine.

  Paul grabbed his shotgun and cautiously approached the front door. As soon as he did, the sounds outside began to concentrate on the other side of the door, as if whatever was there could sense him. He flicked the porch light on and nearly shat his pants at what he saw.

  Grouped on his front porch were five humanoid creatures with angular heads and thin but muscular limbs. ‘Goblin’ was the only thing that came to mind matching what he saw, and that just didn’t make any sense. Goblins were from stories!

  Paul gripped the shotgun tightly and cocked it. He was thankful that these creatures weren’t overly smart. When one got the bright idea to break the narrow glass next to the front door as another potential way to get inside, he leveled the shotgun and blasted the thing to kingdom come.

  The earsplitting sound of the gun gave the creatures pause—especially when one of their number slumped over—but within seconds, they were even more frantically attempting to enter Paul’s house. He pumped the shotgun and fired again. Pump and fire. Pump and fire. Again and again. Finally, the last creature was dead and Paul sat down—the adrenaline leaving his body.

  Thump thump thump came the steps of his children racing down the stairs. His oldest, Madelaine, came to make sure he was ok. The other two raced back upstairs, screaming after glimpsing the bloody mess outside the front door. Paul stood up and hugged his daughter. He needed a plan. He needed to—

  A growl tore his attention away. As he turned his head, the door splintered from a substantial force. As the remains of the door slammed into him and his daughter, he saw golden eyes reflecting the light behind him. His world went black before he could comprehend the monster in front of him.

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  Across the world, encounters like that played out. There were a few lucky survivors—though maybe they weren’t all that lucky in the end. Though they survived the initial onslaught of the monsters, the invasion that happened soon after was the end of human domination of Earth.

  Most of those survivors died as slaves. Some managed to live on as curiosities in alien zoos, bred together simply to keep an endangered species alive for study—and as an example of a failed integration. Humans were not alone in that classification. Most species and most civilizations did not endure once mana arrived.

  I flinched at the violence and the cruelty of it all. I figured this show was put on by whatever deity had granted my original wish. It was gut-wrenching to be sure, seeing most of my species get wrecked by monsters and then have the survivors exploited by aliens. I looked back at the message in front of me.

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