The morning after the breach, the sky was still blue.
Too blue.
As if the night before hadn't happened — as if Jhon hadn't bled out screaming beneath it.
Erwin sat on the edge of the evacuation zone, dust and ash staining his clothes, his hands still caked in dried blood. His ears rang. His body ached.
But worst of all was the silence.
The kind that sinks its claws into your lungs and tells you:
No one is coming.
A news drone hovered above him. Its mechanical eye locked on his face for a moment before it veered off — toward a group of survivors being handed rations by a smiling System-Blessed.
The broadcast lit up every nearby screen:
"Another miracle by Astraeon the Bright!
He cleared the breach in under five minutes!
No fatalities among the valuable sector tiers!"
Erwin's jaw clenched.
No mention of Jhon.
No mention of the children torn apart.
No mention of the delay — of the blood-soaked minutes they watched from above like vultures waiting for their cue.
He wandered through the rubble, passing faces blurred by shock — a woman holding a charred doll, a boy screaming for his parents, a man with no legs crawling toward a collapsed stairwell.
No heroes stayed to help them. Not after the cameras stopped rolling.
Erwin passed a wall where someone had spray-painted a slogan:
"The System protects those it owns."
Underneath it, in fresh blood:
"We are not owned."
He made his way back to the place where Jhon had died.
The street was half-patched now, the city's rapid-response drones already repairing infrastructure. Glass reformed, walls reassembled, advertisements resumed on rebuilt billboards.
But the bloodstains remained.
No cleaners bothered with those.
Erwin stepped onto the spot where Jhon had stood — where he'd told Erwin to run.
He crouched down slowly, hands trembling, and touched the ground.
It was cold.
Just like Jhon's hand had been when it slipped out of his grasp.
He remembered every moment.
Jhon's laugh on the rooftop.
The way he gave Erwin the bigger share of synth-beer without a word.
How he always said things like, "Maybe we're side characters in someone else's plot — but at least we're alive."
Alive.
Erwin screamed.
Not out of rage.
Out of emptiness.
The kind that eats you from the inside. The kind that takes your breath, your name, your meaning — until all you have left is a voice yelling at the sky like it might answer.
But the sky stayed silent.
The gods, the elites, the blessed — they watched from their towers.
They had smiled while Jhon died.
He didn't go home.
He didn't have one anymore.
Instead, he walked to the nearest public interface. The kind used to update IDs, submit job requests, or pay taxes.
The screen flickered to life.
"Welcome, Citizen Erwin Wail. Please authenticate—"
He punched the screen.
It cracked, but still glowed.
He pressed both hands to the base and whispered:
"Erase me."
"Are you sure?" the system asked.
"No one ever was."
Processing... Profile deleted.
He turned and walked away.
No savings.
No home.
No attachments.
Nothing to anchor him to the world that let his best friend die.
"What now?" he heard Jhon's voice say in his memory.
Erwin didn't answer out loud.
But inside, something sparked.
A flicker.
A rage that didn't explode, but burned.
Slow. Controlled.
Refined like poison.
He wouldn't cry anymore.
He wouldn't beg.
He wouldn't even shout.
He would learn everything.
Find everyone responsible.
And show them what a forgotten man could become.
He left the city through its oldest gate — where the cameras didn't reach and the roads turned to dust.
Behind him, the city shone with artificial lights and lies.
Ahead of him… ruin. Exile. Madness. The wild unknown.
But he didn't stop walking.
[End of Chapter 5 – The Spark]