Prolog

The world humanity once knew is dead and gone. But it did not die in a single blow. It died from a thousand small cuts — changes that at first looked like anomalies, then became commonplace, until at last the world was uninhabitable. The treachery of it was that nothing ever felt large enough until it was already too late. A species here, a handful of plants there — mass die-offs, failed harvests, famine, water that slowly vanished as generation after generation passed. Regions that could no longer feed their people were emptied as those people searched, in vain, for somewhere new to live. In the long run it meant more deaths, more disasters, more suffering. Those fleeing were pitted against those who could still live off what their homeland gave them, and when strangers began to press in, the result was explosive. Regions drained of people one by one stopped functioning, which only accelerated the downward spiral. Roads went unmaintained and crumbled apart, news of the world grew shorter and shorter until it stopped altogether. Then the power grid failed, water stopped running through the pipes, and food vanished from the shelves. Laws dissolved into meaningless words, and those once tasked with protection became predators.

When the smoke from the last burning cities finally cleared, only ash remained — and those who still refused to give up.

There were those who held out to the very end. In practice, these were also the ones who bore the blame for the state the world had fallen into. Their cities stood as the last few bastions as everything else collapsed. But their very size made them incapable of changing course, even had the will been there, and when nothing remained but these few giants, they began to cast covetous glances at one another. In the end came what, under the circumstances, was inevitable — the Last War.

Even that did not begin at any single moment; it started as minor skirmishes over territory and resources and slowly grew worse and worse. By the end it was everyone against everyone, with no possibility of crowning a victor. Just as it had begun, the war did not end outright either — the fight simply drained out of the combatants, who withdrew to lick their wounds.

The ground, once lush, was now cracked and hard, a vast wasteland where only the most stubborn plants still clung on. Rusted skeletons of vehicles and war machines lay scattered like relics from a time when humanity still believed itself immortal. The roads that had once bound nations together were now nothing but cracked wounds cutting through a dying land. The weather was merciless, with days of searing heat followed by the freezing cold of night. The combination turned the landscape into a place where nothing living could remain under the open sky by day. No birds, no animals, no people. Everything withdrew, hid, and waited. Underground, the remnants of what had once been still endured — tunnels, old facilities, and forgotten systems that had once connected the heart of the world. Down there, footsteps echoed between bare walls; whispers of an uncertain future mixed with the sound of water seeping through stone. Down there, life still existed. What could not survive the sun's wrath or the ice's grip stayed hidden in the dark. They ate what remained, lived on memories of a lost world, and the hope of a future they might never live to see.