The sky burned a bruised orange above the city, a sunset that never ended. Smoke rose from the skyline like pillars of mourning, and the wind carried the smell of iron and ozone—the perfume of the world's last war. My visor filtered the glare, but no lens could soften what lay below: streets cracking open from bombardments, rivers choked with ash, the hum of collapsing power grids echoing like dying heartbeats.
We were three shadows moving through a world already gone.
"Thermal signatures ahead," Kael's voice murmured in my earpiece—flat, precise, the tone of a man who'd seen too many endings. "Twelve hostiles. Civilian cluster behind them."
"Copy," I whispered. The rifle rested easy in my hands, a memory of routine more than a weapon. My HUD painted ghostly outlines through the haze. Lucien knelt beside a shattered transport drone, white hair catching the faint flicker of distant fires. His eyes—icy blue, calculating—studied the map flickering on his wrist display.
"We can cut through the east underpass," he said. "Less exposure. We still have one evac shuttle waiting at Pier Nine. That's our window."
"Pier Nine's a crater," Kael replied. "Heard the blast from three clicks out."
Lucien's jaw tightened. "Then we make a new window."
I looked between them—brothers born minutes apart, worlds apart in spirit. Kael was the quiet blade, Lucien the schemer, and me…the one who tried to hold the line between them. We'd spent a lifetime fighting wars for governments that no longer existed. Now we fought for ghosts.
Our boots crunched over glass and cinder as we advanced down the corridor of ruined skyscrapers. The rain came without warning—black, oily, hissing as it met hot metal. I pulled my hood up, though it hardly mattered. Everything was poisoned now.
A flash lit the horizon—another orbital strike falling somewhere beyond the mountains. For an instant, night turned to day, and the silhouette of the city showed its bones: skeletal towers, broken bridges, the ribs of civilization exposed.
Lucien slowed beside me. "Do you ever think we were meant to fail?" he asked quietly.
I frowned. "Now's not the time for philosophy."
"There's never time," he said. "That's the problem."
Kael raised a fist—signal. We dropped low behind a gutted vehicle. Ahead, a squad of raiders moved through the debris, patchwork armor glinting. Desperation had turned men into scavengers, and scavengers into beasts. They carried stolen rifles, some wearing military tags torn from the dead. They weren't enemy soldiers; they were what was left of us.
Lucien tapped his wristpad. "EMP pulse, three-second charge. On my mark."
I exhaled, steadying my aim. "Mark."
The pulse flared soundlessly, washing the street in pale blue. The raiders' lights flickered out; confusion followed. We moved as one—silent, efficient, ghosts in the smog. Kael's blade shimmered once, clean and quick. My rifle coughed three bursts, each a heartbeat. When the smoke cleared, only the rain moved.
I looked at them—twelve bodies lying still. Once they'd had homes, families, maybe even children hiding somewhere in this hell. My stomach tightened, but there was no time to grieve.
Lucien checked the civilians—a handful of survivors huddled under a collapsed tram bridge. A woman clutched a child who couldn't have been more than six. When she looked up at us, hope and terror mingled in her eyes.
"Pier Nine?" she asked.
I shook my head. "Gone."
"Then…where?"
I didn't have an answer. None of us did. Kael knelt beside her, voice softer than I'd ever heard. "Stay here. The storm will pass in a few hours. Find shelter underground. Avoid the east sectors—radiation's climbing."
She nodded, trembling. The child looked at me, eyes too old for that face. I turned away before I could see the question forming there.
Lucien rose. "We can't save everyone."
"I know," I said. "But we'll save who we can."
He gave a short, bitter laugh. "Still the soldier."
"Still breathing," I replied.
Kael motioned toward the distant glow where the sea should be. "Let's move. Command's last transmission came from the coastal vaults. If there's anything left worth guarding, it's there."
We set off again, three silhouettes swallowed by rain and ruin. Above us, the clouds split open—not from weather, but from something burning its way through the upper atmosphere. A meteor? A weapon? Hard to tell anymore. The world was ending piece by piece, and none of us knew which piece would fall last.
The descent toward the coast felt endless. The highway had cracked in half years ago; the sea had already swallowed most of it. We followed the broken asphalt down into a basin of fog and twisted metal where the old naval district used to stand. The sound of the waves was wrong now—thick, muffled, as if the ocean itself was choking on what it had eaten.
Kael took point, his movements sharp and deliberate. Lucien walked behind him, murmuring into his wrist mic though we all knew the satellites were gone. Habit dies slower than hope. I watched their silhouettes against the mist and tried to remember the last sunrise I'd seen. I couldn't.
"Radiation's spiking," Lucien said. "Vault's supposed to be under that ridge, about half a klick ahead."
"Let's make it quick," Kael muttered. "Before the tide or the sky decides to finish the job."
The ridge was guarded by what was left of a defense outpost—automated turrets half-melted into slag. I knelt beside one, fingers brushing the metal. It was still warm. Something—or someone—had been here recently.
Lucien crouched next to me, scanning the ground. "Tracks. Boot pattern's military. Large group."
"Survivors?" I asked.
"Or scavengers who killed them." He straightened. "Either way, we're late."
We moved down the slope, weapons drawn. The fog thickened until the world shrank to a circle of twenty meters. Shapes loomed and vanished—pillars, wrecked drones, the ribs of a ship protruding from the soil. I kept my rifle steady, heart ticking like a metronome.
Then we heard it. A low, guttural hum rising from below. The kind of sound machinery makes when it's trying not to die.
Kael gestured us forward. Beneath a fractured hangar door, pale light pulsed. We slipped through a gap and into a cavernous bunker where generators still flickered like exhausted hearts. Rows of pods lined the walls—hundreds of them, each with a human shape inside. Cryostasis chambers.
Lucien exhaled sharply. "So it's true. The Continuity Program."
I stared at the pods. Men, women, children—faces pale and still behind the frost. "They were supposed to be the future," I said.
Kael's voice was a whisper. "Doesn't look like the future made it."
Lucien moved to a terminal. "If I can reroute power, maybe we can keep them stable until extraction—"
"Extraction's not coming," Kael cut in. "We're the last signal on the grid."
"Then we'll be their signal." Lucien's fingers flew across the console. Sparks leapt, and the screens flared to life, scrolling endless warnings: SYSTEM CRITICAL. POWER DEPLETED. REACTOR BREACH IMMINENT.
I crossed to him. "Lucien—"
"I know," he said, jaw tight. "But if I can reroute the coolant lines, maybe—"
A tremor cut him off. Dust fell from the ceiling. Outside, thunder rolled—not weather this time. Orbital strike, close enough to shake the bones of the earth.
Kael drew his sidearm and checked the magazine, though we all knew bullets wouldn't matter soon. "They're targeting the reactors," he said. "Trying to erase whatever's left."
Lucien looked at the pods, then at me. "We can't just leave them."
"We can't save them either," I said quietly. "Not like this."
Silence stretched. The hum of dying machines filled it.
Finally, Kael spoke. "We hold the vault. Buy them a little more time. Maybe that's enough."
I met his eyes, saw the unspoken truth there. We're not walking out of here.
Lucien turned from the console, face pale but steady. "Alright then, Captain. One last stand?"
I almost smiled. "Wouldn't be the first."
We set charges at the entrance—controlled detonations to funnel anything incoming into kill zones. Kael took the left flank, Lucien manned the overwatch perch, and I stayed near the center line. Outside, the fog glowed crimson with reflected fire. The first wave came fast—scavengers, desperate or crazed, drawn by the light and the rumor of life.
They came screaming, weapons cobbled together from scrap. We answered with precision. The air turned to thunder, muzzle flashes painting the bunker mouth in strobing bursts of orange. Bodies fell, vanished into smoke. Still they came.
My arms ached; my lungs burned. Kael moved like a ghost, blades slicing through the haze. Lucien's shots were measured, perfect. Every time one of us stumbled, another filled the gap. We'd fought together too long for anything else.
After the third wave, there was quiet. Only the rain and the soft crackle of fires outside.
Lucien leaned against the wall, reloading. "They'll just keep coming."
"Then we keep stopping them," Kael said.
I looked at both of them—the last soldiers of a dead world. "You ever think what comes after this?" I asked.
Kael shook his head. "There is no after."
Lucien gave a thin smile. "Maybe there's something beyond after."
The bunker lights flickered, then steadied, casting long shadows across the steel floor. The humming of machinery deepened into a low roar — the reactors were destabilizing. Time, already thin, began to tear.
Kael's comm crackled. Motion. Large. Very large.
We took our positions again. But this time, it wasn't scavengers stepping into the fog. It was silence — a silence that had mass. Then the mist peeled open like curtains around a shape too tall to be human.
An exo—military grade. Old world tech, rebuilt with barbaric hands. A titan of rust and teeth.
Lucien cursed under his breath. "Someone woke up a monster."
The mech's spotlight snapped on, slicing through the haze. Its gun arm spun up with a predatory whine.
"Adrian!" Kael shouted. "Take its flank!"
I sprinted, boots pounding thunder into the ground. The mech fired, and chunks of concrete exploded behind me, the heat searing my back. I dove behind a support pillar and rolled, firing at exposed joints. Sparks, but nothing vital. The plating was too thick.
Kael charged head-on, blade glowing from reactive heat cells. He leapt, slashing at hydraulic cables. Fluid sprayed black across his armor, but the mech caught him midair and hurled him against the far wall with bone-shaking force.
He didn't get back up.
"Kael!" Lucien's voice cracked.
Something inside me snapped loose.
I rose from cover and sprinted again — faster, closer. The mech adjusted, targeting systems predicting my steps. I dropped into a slide beneath it, fired point-blank into a maintenance hatch I'd spotted earlier. Metal ruptured. The mech staggered, motors grinding.
Lucien didn't waste the opening. He vaulted from his perch and slammed a magnetic charge onto its spine.
Beep… beep…
We dove as the explosion tore the giant in half. Pieces rained like burning snow.
Silence returned — not peaceful, but hollow, trembling. We crawled to Kael as he forced himself upright, blood running down his temple.
"You good?" I asked.
He spat red, then grinned crookedly. "Hurts like hell. Must mean I'm alive."
Lucien laughed — breathless, almost hysterical. "Barely."
We leaned on each other. Three brothers holding up the weight of a falling world.
And then the ceiling split with a scream of metal.
A shockwave followed — pressure slamming us flat. The air lit white. The orbital strike.
The earth itself groaned.
Kael looked to the cryostasis pods — the last sparks of humanity. "We failed them," he whispered. Not anger. Not despair. Just truth.
Lucien grasped his shoulder. "Not yet."
He stared upward — toward the collapsing sky — and shouted with the raw fury of someone who refuses to be finished:
"Is anyone still listening?!"
He didn't know who he was calling to. Maybe no one. Maybe everything.
And something answered.
A vibration passed through the floor — not physical. Inside the chest. Inside the skull. The bunker dissolved into a soft void of endless blue and drifting light.
Our wounds vanished. Our weapons disappeared. We stood unarmored before the impossible.
A voice — neither male nor female — wrapped around us like a thought made of mercy.
{Do not fear. The final moment of your world has passed.
Yet your story has not finished.}
Kael stepped forward, fists clenched. "Who are you?"
{A steward of a distant world — Novum principium.
A realm threatened by calamities it cannot withstand.
I seek those who have seen the end and still fight.}
Lucien swallowed. "You want soldiers."
{I want potential.}
The void swirled. Fragmented visions flickered: a vast empire with spires of crystal and steel, beasts made of shadow, armies marching beneath fractured moons. People kneeling not in worship, but in fear.
Adrian — my own voice sounded small. "Why us?"
{Because you know what collapse looks like.
Because you know the cost of failure.
Because you choose life until there is none left to give.}
Kael's jaw hardened. "What happens if we say no?"
{Then you return to the bunker.
To die as your world does.}
"And if we say yes?" Lucien asked.
Light folded inward like a closing hand.
Then you begin again.
In a new kingdom.
With power yet unrealized.
With enemies yet unborn.
With time… to build something worthy of survival.
Kael turned to us. "We've lost everything here."
Lucien nodded. "Maybe we can build something better."
I looked into the blue, into the unknown. Into the chance we should never have had.
"We accept," I said.
The voice pulsed — approval.
{Then rise — as chosen sons of a world yet unmade.}
The darkness of death enveloped us…
…and then light.