I don't know much. Never had a proper teacher. Books were expensive, and the ones I found had pages missing or mold crawling over the ink. The few I read made my head hurt. Big words. Fancy names. It's not like I needed them. Books don't feed you. Stories don't bring your family back. Letters don't stop the cold.
But I've seen the world. I've breathed it. Felt its teeth. That teaches more than any school could.
They say we live in the end times. Not just some bad season or a few years of drought. No. The world's dying. It's been dying for a long time. Long before I was born. Long before my mother. Maybe even before her mother.
I remember my brother once said, "The world ain't ending fast. It's rotting." He was older, smarter. He could read a bit. He'd tell me things he heard from the grown-ups, the guards, the wandering traders. Things like how the air didn't always sting your lungs, or how water didn't taste like metal. How the sky used to be blue every day, not this sick gray-yellow that makes you wonder if the sun's even real.
Back then — I mean way, way back — they say there were five big lands. Continents, they called them. Like five giant plates holding up all the people and cities and farms. Each one had its own kingdoms and ways of living. They traded, they fought, they built towers so tall they touched clouds.
Only one of those lands still works, kind of. The Blood Kingdom.
Yeah, that's where we live. Sounds scary, right? "Blood" in the name and all. People say it's called that because its soil ran red in some ancient war. Others think it's just because we're the last survivors — clinging on by skin and bone, bleeding out slowly while pretending we're still alive.
The other continents? Gone. Not like exploded or swallowed whole. No, worse. They twisted.
One of them — the First Kingdom — fell 500 years ago. That's what people say, anyway. Nobody really remembers. Nobody cares much either. All we know is, it used to be rich. Gold roads, clear rivers, music in every home. Then it went silent. The ships that came from it stopped arriving. The traders vanished. Folks who tried going there never came back. Now it's just... gone. A name in a faded book, maybe.
Another land, to the far south, turned into something they call the Glass Waste. The sand there turned to sharp glass after a thousand storms. Some say the sky burned for a decade. Some say a god got angry. Don't know which story's true. Doesn't matter. What matters is no one comes from there anymore. Nothing lives there except screams on the wind.
The third continent is worse — the Maw Lands. No one even tries going near them now. They say it breathes. That the land has veins, and mouths, and it eats people. That's what the old madwoman in the village used to say. "Don't stray too far," she'd whisper. "The ground has a heartbeat."
She died when the food riots began.
The fourth one? Frozen. Not in a normal way. Not snow and chill. No, the sky itself froze. Birds hung midair like paintings. People stopped moving in the middle of steps. Everything locked in time and cold. It's called the Stillwhite now. Just ice, statues, and silence.
We're the fifth. The Blood Kingdom. Still moving. Still dying.
The people in charge — the royals, the lords, whatever they call themselves — they try to act like things are normal. They hold parades, force people to clap. They print posters saying, "Victory is near" and "Rebirth begins with us." Lies. We're not blind. We can smell the rot.
Half the cities have collapsed. The ones left are crowded, filled with hunger and disease. Food grows only in government farms now. Most of the soil's poisoned or dry. Rain barely comes. When it does, it's black and smells like metal.
I remember once, when I was seven, my brother tried to grow a flower in a tin can. He said it was for our mother. But the soil he stole from the edge of the market was gray, and the seed just withered before it even opened. He cried that night. Not because of the flower, I think. But because we both knew what it meant.
Nothing grows anymore.
Some people still talk about magic. Not like stories. Real magic. They say there are soldiers who fight with fire in their hands, or healers who can stitch wounds with a touch. I've never seen it. Just whispers, rumors. Maybe they're real. Maybe they're just the ones who were lucky enough to be born with something different.
Me? I had nothing. Just hunger. Just the stink of wet stone and smoke. That was my magic — surviving another day.
After the quake took my house, I didn't cry. I just stared. That was all I could do. The building groaned and split like a broken spine. The floor cracked open and swallowed my bed. The fire took the rest. It was the last thing tying me to anything. My brother's blanket, my mother's wooden comb — all gone.
Relatives? I had a few. A bitter uncle. A cousin with shifty eyes. None of them came. Not even once. I know why. They think I'm cursed. Born in ash. Lived through plague. Watched my family drop one by one. "He's not right," they'd mutter. "He draws death like a storm draws lightning."
They might be right.
I didn't ask to be here. Didn't ask to be born when the world was ending. Didn't ask for gods, if they exist, to ignore me.
But I am here.
And I've learned some things — not from books, but from life.
One: the world ended before it ever exploded. It ended when people stopped caring. When rich men built walls instead of wells. When kings burned crops to keep control. When the ones who could've helped turned their backs. That's when it ended.
Two: the world doesn't need monsters to fall apart. Just people doing nothing.
Three: the ones who survive aren't the strongest. Just the most stubborn.
I met a man once — tall, gray cloak, eyes like he saw everything and still didn't blink. He gave me food. Not much. Just a crust and a bottle. But he looked at me like he knew something I didn't. Like I was part of some plan.
He told me there was still a war going on — not between kingdoms, but something deeper. Against something no one talks about. A being, maybe. A force. A hunger that began the rot.
He asked me to join the military. Said I'd find answers there. I didn't believe him. But I followed. Not because I wanted glory. I wanted to matter. Even just once.
That's where I found the weapon. Not made — given. A shard of something old. It called to me, like a memory I never had. Not magic in the way people think. Something deeper. Older. Like it remembered the world before all this.
I don't know what it is. But when I hold it, I feel like I'm not alone anymore.
Maybe the forgotten god they whisper about — the one of memory — left something behind. Not a temple. Not a prayer. Just a will. A pull. A spark.
Maybe that spark found me.
I'm just a boy. Sixteen. No schooling. No fancy words. But I've lived. I've watched the world breathe its last. I've seen what people become when they lose hope.
And now, for the first time, I think something's watching back.
Not to save.
Not to punish.
But to remember