The world had stopped spinning long before it collapsed. By the time the last resources ran dry, by the time the air grew thick with desperation and the water ran red with the weight of forgotten promises, the people had already lost. The illusion of control, the fragile thread they had clung to for so long, snapped like brittle wire, unraveling civilization in a deafening silence.
Ethan had always believed there would be a moment—a final stand, a spark—that would ignite the change. He had been wrong. The change came not with a roar, but with a whisper, as the last generation faded away, leaving nothing behind but the remnants of their greed, their hubris. In the end, it wasn’t the governments, the corporations, or the rebels who controlled the world. It was something far darker: the collective fear that bound everyone together in a fragile dance of survival.
But what if that fear could be shattered? What if, instead of succumbing to the dark tide, someone stood tall and looked the dying world in the face?
Ethan was no hero. He wasn’t born to lead. He wasn’t even meant to survive. He was one of the broken, one of the failed experiments—a product of a world that had tried to manipulate its future, only to find it had doomed itself in the process. But as the walls closed in, and the last traces of humanity clung to the edges of extinction, Ethan had a choice: to accept the inevitable, or to burn everything down, to take control of his own fate—no matter the cost.