The city lay shrouded beneath a layer of permanent haze—the war-torn remnants of industrial smog and catastrophic endings. Once a beacon of progress and innovation, Grimspire had now become a crumbling relic, a monument to its own self-destruction, showcasing the downfall of humanity’s inevitable hunger for power.
Towering skyscrapers—whose glass facades were cracked, shattered, and coated in ash—reached up toward the heavens in vain, like broken fingers grasping for a sun that had long since been blotted out by the perpetual gloom.
In the narrow, winding streets below, the bottom-feeders of society moved like shadows, their faces hidden behind gas masks and protective goggles. Gone were the spindly intellects and bustling nurturers; only the sly scavengers and ruthless crooks of the population remained.
The air was thick with the acrid stench of decay, and every breath—even through the best masks available—felt like inhaling a slow death. The sky, once a vast expanse of glittering blue, was now tainted a sickly yellow, streaked with veins of crimson, as if the atmosphere couldn’t help but bleed tears of sadness.
Arin adjusted the mask over his mouth, the rubber straps having worn permanent crevices into his skin, as he navigated through the labyrinth of debris, twisted metal, and dying fires. His boots crunched over pebbled rubble and scattered bones—remnants of the riots that had swept through the city in the early days of the collapse. The sound echoed eerily through the empty alleyways, as though the city itself was whispering to him, urging him to turn back, to abandon hope. But hope, or what little remained of it, was all that kept him moving forward.
He paused at the corner of a building that had once been his regular restaurant, where Sophia, the red-haired waitress he’d lacked the courage to ask out, made his morning coffee. Now, it was a charred husk with only a single, rusted chair standing as a gravestone to what was. Arin leaned against the remains of its cold stone wall, glancing up at the last scraps of a sign that read: _Paradina Diner. _The irony wasn’t lost on him. There was no paradise here anymore.
Arin slipped his hand into his coat pocket, heart racing as his fingers brushed against the smooth surface of the small metal canister hidden there. It was a vial of Dream. He could hardly believe his luck—or tragedy, he wasn’t sure yet—when he’d found it on his hunt the night before. It was the final gift from a world that had long since given up on its inhabitants, a drug that offered a fleeting escape from their grim reality—if only for a moment. It was said to bring visions of the past, glimpses of the world as it once was, before the war, before the fall. People raided and slaughtered one another for Dream until the very last of the wonder drug was drunk dry. But now, with a canister of Dream burning a hole in Arin’s pocket, he didn’t know what to believe anymore.
A sudden movement in the shadows caught his eye. He turned sharply, his hand instinctively reaching for the knife strapped to his thigh. A figure stepped out from behind a pile of discarded barrels, and Arin’s grip on the blade loosened as recognition dawned.
“Lia,” he breathed, the name slipping from his lips like a prayer.
She was a wraith of a girl, her frame thin and fragile beneath layers of torn fabric and scavenged armor. Her hair, once golden, was now a tangled mess streaked with soot and grime. But her eyes, those deep amber eyes, still burned with the same intensity that had captivated him from the moment they’d first met, all those years ago, on the very day that everything had changed.
“There you are,” Lia said, her voice muffled by the mask but still hinting at a mixture of relief and frustration. “You didn’t come back this morning. You know it’s not safe outside in the day.”
“Since when is it ever safe?” Arin replied, his tone more bitter than he intended. The corners of his mouth pulled down into a grimace.
She stepped closer, the dim light of a nearby fire casting flickering shadows across her face. “You know what I mean. They’re getting closer. We have to stick to the schedules we know.”
He knew she was right. The Enforcers, the faceless soldiers of the Regime, had been sweeping through the city more heavily than ever before, hunting down the last pockets of the resistance. Anyone caught was either executed on the spot or dragged away to the processing centers—factories of horror where the unlucky few were subjected to unspeakable experiments in the name of “purification.” But when he’d found that vial, he couldn’t go back to the bunker like he was supposed to. Like they had all agreed too. He didn’t know what it could mean for their group. If one of the others would want it. If he wanted it. He’d been tempted to down it right then and there, but something stopped him.
“Where are the others?” Arin asked, glancing down the alley, half-expecting to see Erin, Kalso, and Trix on their way to give him more grief about his decision.
“They’re gone,” Lia said after a haunted pause, her voice hollow. “No one else came back this morning. That’s why I panicked and went looking. You’re the only one I’ve found so far.”
Arin felt a cold pit open up in his stomach. Felt his heart swallow itself whole. They’d lost so many already, so many friends, so many allies. And now, it was likely just the two of them, standing alone in a city that had long since given up on them.
“We can’t stay here,” Lia said, her eyes scanning the darkness around them. “We need to get to the safehouse.”
Arin nodded, pushing down on the rising tide of despair which wanted to claw it’s way right up his throat. There was no time for grief, no time for fear. They could possibly be the last of the resistance, the last flicker of defiance in a world that had been consumed by darkness. If they gave up now, there would be nothing left.
They moved swiftly, sticking to the shadows, avoiding the open streets where the Enforcers patrolled. The city was a maze of destruction, every turn revealing new horrors—collapsed buildings, burned-out vehicles, the skeletal remains of those who had been too slow to escape the bombings. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the occasional distant gunshot or the rumble of machinery from the processing centers.
As they approached the edge of the city, the buildings gave way to a vast wasteland, a barren expanse of cracked earth and toxic sludge. The air grew thicker, heavier, with the foul stench of chemicals and rot.
In the distance, the looming silhouette of the Outer Wall rose like a monolith, its surface slick with grime, topped with razor wire and automated turrets. Beyond it lay the Deadlands, where nothing grew, and the very air was so poisonous that no mask could effectively filter it.
Taking a well-worn track, occasionally hidden from junk they’d collected, they arrived at the safehouse. It was little more than a small bunker, hidden beneath a pile of rubble at the base of the Outer Wall. Lia found the entrance, a narrow hatch concealed by a rusted sheet of metal, and pulled it open with a grunt of effort. They slipped inside, the heavy door clanging shut behind them, sealing out the toxic air of the city.
The bunker was dark and cramped, the only light coming from a single, flickering bulb hanging from the ceiling. The walls were lined with shelves stocked with canned food, water, and medical supplies—enough to last them a few more weeks at most. Arin slumped against the wall, the weight of exhaustion crashing down on him like a tidal wave. He ignored the urge to look at the three piles of old, tattered blankets that marked his lost friends’ beds. Lia slid down the wall opposite him, rummaging through her backpack.
“I found this,” she said, pulling out a small radio, its surface scratched and dented. “It’s not much, but it might be enough to find anyone that might be left. The Enforcers don’t use prehistoric tech like this anymore.”
Arin stared at the radio, his mind numb. _Anyone left._ The dregs of the resistance, scattered across the ruins of what had once been the nation’s capital. They had all been fighting for the same cause, clinging to the hope that somehow, against all odds, they could bring down the Regime and restore some semblance of the world they’d lost. But now, with the city in ruins, with so few of them left—or possibly no one left at all—that hope seemed more like a cruel joke than anything else.
“Do you think anyone is still out there?” he asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.
Lia didn’t answer right away. She turned the radio over in her hands, her brow furrowed in concentration. Finally, she looked up at him, her eyes filled with that same defiance, that same fire that had kept them going for so long.
“There has to be,” she said firmly. “We’re not alone, Arin. We can’t be. Not after everything we’ve been through.”
He wanted to believe her, wanted to cling to that last shred of hope, but the darkness, the overwhelming sense of despair that hung over the city like a curse, made it hard to hold onto anything. He reached into his pocket, fingers closing around the cold metal of the canister.
“Lia,” he began hesitantly, “what if…what if we’re the last ones? What if there’s nothing left to fight for?”
She stared at him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then, without a word, she crossed the room and knelt beside him, her hand grasping the edge of his jaw. The contact was a shock, a rare moment of warmth in a world that had grown so cold.
“There’s always something left to fight for,” she said softly. “As long as we’re still breathing, as long as we’re still standing, we fight. Because if we give up now, if we let them win, then everything we’ve lost, everything we’ve sacrificed, will have been for nothing.”
Arin looked into her eyes, searching for some sign, some flicker of hope to hold onto. And there, in the depths of those amber eyes, he found it. It was faint, fragile, but it was something. It was enough.
He slowly withdrew his hand from his pocket, leaving the canister a silent secret, and nodded. “You’re right,” he said, his voice stronger now. “We fight.”
Lia smiled, a small, tired smile, but it was real, and for the first time in what felt like forever, Arin felt a glimmer of something other than despair. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
She turned back to the radio, adjusting the dials, the static crackling to life as she searched for a signal. Arin watched her, the sound of the static filling the small space, a background hum to his thoughts. The city was dying, the world was dying, but they were still here. They were still fighting. And as long as they were, there was still a chance, however slim, that they could make things right.
Outside, the city groaned and creaked, the distant sounds of explosions and gunfire echoing through the streets. But inside the bunker, there was only the faint glow of the flickering light, the hum of the radio, and the unspoken promise between them—that they would keep fighting, no matter what.
So his secret vial of Dream would remain untouched for now, because the real battle was just beginning.
