Rain fell like guilt.
Kael Rainer stood on the overlook ridge miles west of Central Knot City, his gaze fixed on the distant skyline veiled in low clouds and chiral mist. Even this far away, the tension in the air was sharp enough to slice through skin. The earth felt wrong—dense with vibration, the kind of pressure that came before something broke.
Mire hovered beside him, agitated.
"Yeah," Kael muttered. "I feel it too."
He adjusted the pod on his back. The girl inside hadn't stirred, but the readouts had started flashing inconsistently. Something deep and unseen was twisting the rules. Whatever was about to happen… it was big.
In the distance, lightning arced across the horizon—then again, closer. Then again.
And then the light went out.
For one long, breathless moment, the sky above Central Knot City seemed to collapse in on itself, as if sucked inward by some unseen mouth. A pulse of force rolled across the land like a detonation—quiet, not in sound but in meaning. A ripple of reality bending, and then—
BOOM.
The light returned, but it wasn't sunlight.
It was a bloom of blue-white fire, rising like a tidal wave into the sky. The mushroom cloud twisted in unnatural slow motion, ringed in ghostly shadows and tar. From its heart, black hands clawed upward, BTs screeching and howling in silence.
The shockwave struck two seconds later.
Kael was thrown off his feet.
He hit the ground hard, skidding across gravel. The pod's pulse surged. Mire screamed—not in voice, but in light, her form expanding and fracturing like glass under pressure.
He scrambled to his knees. The skyline of Central Knot City was gone.
Just… gone.
Replaced by a growing crater of chiral energy and oily blackness, a yawning mouth in the world.
"A Voidout," he gasped. "A full collapse."
He wasn't sure if he was trembling from fear or recognition.
Mire hovered closer. She flickered—and then, for a heartbeat, glowed gold. The same vision returned.
That woman.
Dark coat. Rifle across her back. A braid caught in the wind.
Kael's eyes widened.
Samantha.
She was there.
The vision wasn't just a memory. It was now.
He reached into the vision instinctively—but it was gone, like smoke.
---
Two hours later, the news rolled in from fractured UCA signals.
> "Central Knot City has suffered a full Voidout event. No survivors confirmed. Structural collapse complete. Chiral activity off the charts. Proceed with extreme caution. UCA command has gone dark."
Kael stood in the ruins of a weather relay tower just outside Sector W-5. Screens flickered with emergency red. No orders. No network. Just static and one lone tag broadcasting intermittently.
SAMANTHA_BRIDGES // ID ACTIVE // NEAR EVENT EPICENTER
Kael stared at the data stream. Mire hovered above the pod, unusually silent.
She had been there.
She had survived the Voidout.
No one survived Voidouts.
Except maybe someone like Samantha. Someone like him.
Kael moved on instinct, pulling up coordinates and supply routes. There were no direct roads anymore—the crater had swallowed everything.
But that meant he was free.
No routes. No structure. No orders.
Only the way forward.
---
At nightfall, Kael crossed into the charred zone. Mire glowed with sickly light, echoing the death soaked into the ground. The closer they got to the blast site, the worse the terrain became. Trees bent inward like they were ashamed. The ground pulsed beneath his boots, and time itself felt warped.
And then—amid the melted wreckage of what used to be a road—Kael found something.
A broken delivery case.
Marked with her name.
He knelt beside it, brushing the soot away.
The label was barely intact, but the ID tag still pulsed. Faint. Old. But there.
He picked it up.
And heard her voice.
Not in sound. In memory. In resonance.
> "Keep walking."
---
Kael set up a temporary shelter as the Timefall returned. Mire paced like a caged animal, scanning the storm's edge. The pod pulsed—slow and steady now.
He couldn't sleep. Not after what he'd seen.
Not after who he'd seen.
He sat outside the tent, rain pelting the tarp above him.
Somewhere beyond the crater, Samantha Bridges was walking. Alive. Unseen. Just like the stories had whispered.
But now, she wasn't just a myth. She was a beacon.
Kael looked at the pod. The girl inside twitched in her sleep.
"We're not alone anymore," he whispered.
Mire stood next to him, silent and glowing.
Kael stared into the black sky.
The world had ended again.
And somehow… something had begun.