The first meteor shower came without warning.
Not the soft, romantic kind she once read about in books.
No, this one howled.
Flaming stones rained from the heavens, splitting buildings like paper and lighting forests ablaze. Entire cities went dark. Power grids collapsed. Skies turned ochre for days.
Even from the villa, shielded deep in the mountains, protected by pre-fall tech and reinforced architecture, Julyah had felt the tremors. Glass rattled in the windowpanes. The greenhouse lights flickered. Something in the sky had screamed as it broke apart.
She didn't sleep that night.
No one did.
Or rather… no one she could hear anymore.
Morning came gray and bitter. The world outside looked the same, but it felt wrong. The air tasted scorched. The birds didn't sing.
Julyah wrapped herself in layers and started her day like always, because she had to. Because routine, no matter how fragile, kept her sane.
The villa stood untouched, at least for now. The perimeter held. The automated security reports blinked green. The bunker was still full. And deep within her magical storage space, enough emergency supplies to outlast a small siege sat quietly waiting.
But she knew better than to grow lazy.
Preserve the good days. Prepare for the worse.
She scribbled a to-do list in her notebook with the same calmness she'd once used to plan grocery trips.
Check greenhouse systems. Plant fast-yield crops. Conserve storage rations. Practice shooting. Cook something real.
She started with the greenhouse.
It was a miracle of pre-apocalypse luxury, temperature-controlled, UV-lit, semi-autonomous. But she didn't trust systems entirely. Not anymore.
She rolled up her sleeves and got to work, carefully sowing the easiest vegetables she could remember: cherry tomatoes, spring onions, spinach. Plants that didn't argue. Things that wouldn't punish her for being a beginner.
She knelt in the warm soil, fingers moving clumsily at first, then more confidently. Her childhood in the city hadn't prepared her for this, but the quiet helped her think.
This isn't to eat now, she reminded herself. This is so I don't touch the emergency stock.
Ration logic. Future-proofing.
The kind of thinking that kept her alive.
By late afternoon, her hands were sore and her back ached. But she didn't complain.
Instead, she headed to the kitchen.
Cooking had always been her escape, before the fall, before the villa, before the sky turned violent. As a homebody, she never minded staying in. She baked during storms. Roasted chicken during blackouts. Learned to make broth when the internet died.
Here, in the stainless steel warmth of the villa's kitchen, she chopped vegetables in perfect silence, the rhythmic sound of the blade grounding her.
She made stew.
Rich and hot and savory, bubbling in a ceramic pot while she hummed a song no one remembered but her.
Let the world burn, she thought. I will still eat like a queen.
After dinner, she cleaned her dish, dried her hands, and walked to the old armory at the edge of the property. A place she'd avoided for monthsdays. A place that now called to her.
Inside: weapons. Dozens of them. Leftovers from whoever built this place. Guns, knives, even old compound bows.
She chose a rifle.
Long, polished. Heavy in her hands.
She remembered it.
Not from real life, from the dream.
Adrian's hands guiding hers.
"Breathe. Don't blink. Feel the weight. Let the silence do half the work."
She could still feel the warmth of his breath by her ear when she closed her eyes.
Back then, she'd laughed at him. "You want me to be a sniper?"
And he'd smirked, moonlight in his eyes. "You want to survive, don't you?"
That night, Julyah stood on the rooftop with the rifle slung over her shoulder, eyes scanning the woods below.
She wasn't a sniper yet.
But she would be.
If the meteors didn't kill her, the loneliness wouldn't either.