Darkness came in brilliant light.

It could have been a moment where adversity forced humanity to their best or dragged them to their worst. In the end, as with most things, it was a mixture of both and heroics and villainy abounded in near equal measure. 760 million lights left an equivalent count of hungry voids to tear at the hearts and minds of those that remained. Brilliance which exposed the best of mankind and shadows that pulled the worst into the open.

A teacher drowned saving all of the students on her bus which had driven into deep water after the bus driver was destroyed by the light.

A man spent his final moments as he was consumed unloading a shotgun into bystanders; determined to take as many with him as he could.

A man only certified to pilot single-props landed a jumbo jet after both pilots vanished.

A woman was relieved when the child she had never wanted was immolated.

For once the United States responded decisively and effectively to stabilize the nation thanks in large part to the sitting President Parker who, in a move that would later embroil him in scandal as congress decried him for alarmism and overreach, immediately deployed the national guard to maintain order, imposed a nationwide curfew, froze the stock market and closed the banks among other measures.

Still, strife was not completely avoided. Not all rioting and looting was prevented. Utilities saw rampant failures and inadequate service as understaffed facilities struggled to remain operational. The most serious of these saw several towns and cities wracked with disease as waste treatment facilities failed.

Commodity prices skyrocketed as demand did likewise. Canned goods and bottled water vanished from shelves with frightening rapidity. Guns and gun prices also spiked massively, although percentage-wise that increase was still less than that for ammunition.

When the markets reopened everything plummeted except for gold, silver and other similar items that shot up precipitously. Many small and midsize businesses went bankrupt, along with uncountable individuals.

Credit card companies were ordered to honor existing credit, but getting a new loan or credit of any kind became fiendishly difficult. Companies involved with this kind of business lobbied hard to have losses covered by the government. A class-action suit was filed against insurance companies who refused to pay out life insurance claims on victims of the event.

The rate of new pregnancies dropped, and the rate of stillbirths increased. Of the pregnancies carried to term far fewer children were born with birth defects.

A scientist at NASA working on a negative energy project discovered that his extremely sensitive instrumentation showed consistent fluctuations when his assistants were in proximity. The readings varied by the individual but were always the same for each person. This discovery was classified and the research prioritized.

In the midst of all of this, strange stories started surfacing from time to time. A bodybuilder lost forty pounds in less than a week but nearly doubled his strength. A former Olympic runner set a two-minute mile record. A mother leaped forty feet to catch her son when he slipped when climbing a tree. Wiccans and practitioners of other more ancient magic systems seemed to have a measurable effect on the world with their rituals albeit a slight one; barely above statistical anomaly.

Most of the larger or wealthier nations made it through while maintaining various degrees of order. Smaller and countries which had already been struggling or war-torn were hit hardest and a not insignificant percentage of those descended back to tribalism if not anarchy.

After a few months, the dust began to settle and people began to look for answers. The pictures captured by the International Space Station of the alien, whom the news had taken to calling the Herald, descending to Earth protected by neither ship nor suit were made public in their uncompressed form so anyone who had the skill and inclination could verify that they were unaltered finally convincing the majority of the public that this was not an action taken by any terrestrial nation. Questions of who she was, who she represented, and what the reason for the "punishment" had been, were hotly debated but largely fruitless. That, however, did not stop everyone and their cousin from loudly voicing their assuredly correct opinion from every rooftop and pulpit that was available to them.

The most relevant questions were talked about but more rarely as they were both hard and frightening. What did one cycle mean? The prevailing theory was that one cycle would be equivalent to one year, but no one could say that with complete surety. Would another 760 million be lost or would it only be ten percent of the remaining population? There were no answers to this question until the next event, but it was the most worrisome because the answer meant the difference between ten percent or fifty percent of humanity surviving.

As the end of the first year approached preparations were made. The national guard was deployed in advance and police forces, first responders and hospitals had all hands on deck. All businesses were closed for the day and people were advised to stay in their homes. As the remaining hours turned into minutes the world held its breath. Minutes decremented into seconds and when the time finally came... nothing. Time continued to pass and as the world drew further from the appointed time more and more people began to relax.

It wasn't until almost six hours later that the bells began to toll.