It’s been a few years since the school of L. Krieg was destroyed.

Gather ‘round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown

Many have learned how to adapt though. With the universe constantly shifting and moving, different worlds opening and closing at random, but there is an overall sense of peace and balance where there was once chaos and disorder.

And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin’

Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

The ex-students of the school, those that have survived at least, have managed to figure out new and different tricks. Teleportation or portal-making seemed to be the top subjeccts. Some have gone on to expand their own powers, learning what they can to survive. Leroy Kuno would be extremely proud, if anyone could find out where the headmaster was. Ever since the fall of his school, he seemed to vanish. But seeing as how he’s unneeded, no one’s gone out of their way to search for him.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
Keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again

That was, until, the sixth year anniversary of the school’s destruction. As always, a few managed to make their way there to pay their respects to old friends, to reminisce on old times, laugh at how foolish and naïve they had been back then. A few even come by just to make sure all is still well. After all, as they’ve learned before, that single place in the world was easily influenced by the surrounding realms.

Don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’

For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they, they are a-changing’

Something was different about this time, yet no one knew why or what made it different. They were all six years older, wiser than they were back then, but it wasn’t any of that. It was something in the very island itself. It was as if there was less life there, the sky was a little more grey, the plants a little more dead. The air itself felt thick and heavy. Yet, no one could quite pinpoint the source of it. Perhaps if they had known just a little more, had bothered to pay more attention, they would’ve seen the warning signs.

Come senators, Congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t block at the doorway
Don’t block up the hall

Just a few weeks after that anniversary, several grew sick, and a few weeks after that some died. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal, if the sickness hadn’t left doctors, scientists and healers at a loss. Nothing anyone did could heal those that were sick. What was worse, it was quickly spreading to anyone who came in contact with the ill.

For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it’s ragin’

It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

But while it was a crisis, not too many were concerned with it. After all, they weren’t affected with the sickness, plague, whatever it was they were calling it nowadays. They had their own worries to deal with. Day to day life, working with their families, their job. If some people were dying, it didn’t matter. As long as it wasn’t someone they cared for.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
Don’t criticize
What you can’t understand

There were signs that only few would be able to see and understand. However, no one could get the same message. Some started to preach of the end of times, others preached about a golden age that was to come soon. Arguments would spike up. Each would claim to be in the right, yet no one had the concrete proof.

Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’

Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend a hand
For your times they are a-changing’

With a possible apocalypse on the rise, panic came with it. Those that were in charge tried to calm the masses down with reassuring words of misinterpreted predictions and crack-pots that didn’t know what they were really doing. Yet no one listened. Why should they? There was a plague running rampant through the worlds, those with the sight constantly saw a dark and dangerous future, and no one seemed to be able to stop it. Never before had life seemed so uncertain.

The line it is drawn
And the curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast

So they did the one thing they could. They closed the island down, the source of all the trouble. Guards and barriers were erected to discourage anyone from returning. Those with the plague were locked inside. All the easier to contain it and them. Slowly the riots were controlled, yet the panic was still there. Was it possible that this really was the end? What was really going on?

As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’

And now, where do you fit into all of this? Are you one of the diseased, now shunned from the rest of the world to keep you from spreading it? Or are you searching the stars, the future, anything for a sign of what’s to come? Or do you think you know what it is? Something that everyone fears, yet refuses to speak of it aloud. Are you someone that’s on that side? The dark, the evil?

And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changing’