Year One

On New Year's Eve, it started.

The illness struck without warning and spread swiftly. Fear multiplied even more quickly. Everything people relied on started to fail them within weeks. The government and legal system failed, the electrical grid malfunctioned, and over half of the world's people perished.

There was pandemonium now where order had formerly been. And magic replaced science and technology as the dominant forces in the world. Some of it is beneficial, such as the witchcraft that Lana Bingham practises in the loft apartment that she and her partner, Max, share. Some of it is really nasty, and it may be found anywhere, in smelly tunnels under rivers, around corners, or in the people you know and love the most.

With nothing left to rely on except one another, Lana and Max escape a devastated New York City as word gets out that neither the immune nor the gifted are safe from the cops who patrol the devastated streets. Concurrently, other voyagers are also moving westward, into an uncharted territory. Chuck is a tech wizard attempting to navigate an offline world by hacking. Journalist Arlys, who has lost her readership, nonetheless documents the facts with a pen and paper. Her young coworker Fred has promising skills and an optimistic outlook that seems out of place in this desolate environment. And there are Jonah and Rachel, a paramedic and a resourceful doctor, who fight hopelessness with their unwavering will to save the lives of a young mother and her three babies.

None of the survivors in this world know precisely where they are going or why, and every stranger they come across may be a savage or a saviour. However, they have a mission that will influence both their lives and the lives of everyone who is left.

It's all over now. The next step is the beginning.