the PREY PHASE: Volume One of Beast Epoch

The contract with nature has expired. The hunter has become the harvested. For millennia, humanity has lived under the comfortable illusion of total dominion. We built our cities of concrete, insulated our homes with glass, and relied entirely on a modern, interconnected grid-secure in the belief that we had permanently removed ourselves from the food chain. We treated the wild as something to be managed, and our domestic animals as companions to be trusted. We were wrong. In a single, terrifying millisecond, the boundary collapses. Across the dense, unforgiving valleys of the Continental Divide, the natural world systematically awakens with a unified, silent intelligence. From the highest peaks to the quietest suburban yards, billions of creatures erase their own territorial conflicts to focus on a new, singular purpose: the eradication of the human species. They don't strike out of wild, chaotic rage. They execute their campaign with clinical, spine-chilling patience. The local fauna cuts the fiber-optic cables. The avian flocks crush the power lines. And inside the perimeter of our remaining safe spaces, the ultimate betrayal occurs as trusted domestic pets and livestock turn their intimate knowledge of our homes against us. The Prey Phase follows an isolated family's desperate struggle to survive the first twelve hours of the collapse. Stranded on a freezing mountain ridge with the power grids shattered and the sky raining talons, they are forced to abandon everything they know to make a grueling, vertical ascent toward an abandoned deep-rock silver mine. But as the wilderness closes in, they quickly realize that the environment no longer belongs to humanity-and the raw survival instincts of the past are their only hope of lasting through the night. A visceral, slow-burn psychological horror, The Prey Phase strips away modern human arrogance to explore what happens when the planet decides its patience has officially expired. Praise for The Prey Phase "A chillingly realistic look at ecological collapse. Dr. Melissa Holt uses her background in behavioral science to craft a horror narrative that feels unnervingly plausible. You will never look at the tree line the same way again."

Pages: 114, Paperback, Independently published