The morning sun broke through the clouds with reluctant warmth, casting a silvery glow over the shattered world. Anna led the group forward, her footsteps steady despite the unease crawling beneath her skin. Every building they passed was warped, broken, or buried beneath creeping ivy and tree roots that cracked concrete like brittle eggshells.
Birds cawed in the distance—louder and deeper than any they'd known. Squirrels the size of raccoons darted through the skeletal trees, and strange vines with glowing pods twisted around lamp posts and mailboxes, as if the world had forgotten its past and rewritten the rules of nature in their absence.
"Keep your eyes open," Anna warned, her voice quiet but firm. "We don't know what's out here now."
Annabelle walked beside her, hands twitching slightly as she whispered to a nearby patch of weeds. The plants shifted, curling slightly in her direction, like they were listening. Penelope stuck close to Arthur, the frost around her fingertips more stable now, though she still flinched whenever a gust of wind stirred the ruined street signs.
Gwen blurred ahead in bursts of speed, dashing from corner to corner like a streak of smoke. She always came back with sharp, urgent updates.
"No people. No animals yet," she reported. "But I saw a school building up ahead. Kinda weird, actually."
"Weird how?" Anna asked.
"It's still standing."
That got everyone's attention.
When they reached it—just a few blocks away—they saw exactly what she meant.
The neighborhood around it was a graveyard: collapsed houses, vehicles rusted through to their cores, old stores half-swallowed by trees. But the school sat upright, weathered but intact. The windows were grimy but unbroken. The roof sagged in places but held. The front steps were cracked, but free of vines. The large stone sign out front still read:
WILLOW CREEK COMMUNITY SCHOOL
Est. 2095
Anna swallowed.
"This building's newer than the rest," Arthur muttered, glancing around. "This whole area is from the 2000s. But that… That date means we might be even further in the future than we thought."
Nobody responded.
They didn't want to think about how much time had really passed.
"Let's check it out," Anna said.
The front doors were stuck at first, rusted in place, but Arthur's fire-heated palm made the metal frame expand just enough to pry it open. Inside, the air was stale, but not unbreathable. It smelled like dust, paper, and faintly of old plastic and dried-out wood polish.
They moved in cautiously, shoes echoing across the main lobby.
Everything was still.
Desks, chairs, faded posters. A bulletin board with ancient flyers that crumbled at a touch. The front office door had a sticker on it that read "Welcome Back, Class of 2117!" in bright, cheerful print.
Gwen whistled low. "That's over a hundred years after we fell asleep."
Annabelle picked up a laminated hall pass off the floor. "It's like people just… left. Like they meant to come back and didn't."
The main hall stretched out ahead, long and dark, lockers lining the walls. Many of them were still intact, some even with locks on them. A few classroom doors hung open, revealing overturned desks, dusty whiteboards, and toppled bookshelves.
But it wasn't a ruin.
It was… resting.
Waiting.
Anna turned slowly, taking it all in—the gymnasium to the left, the stairwell leading to an upper level, a locked cafeteria door, and even what looked like a nurse's office. A school like this could have supplies. Shelter. Water access. Maybe even power, if they could find the generator.
"This is it," she said softly. "We're staying."
Arthur raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"
"It's got walls, space, elevation. That second floor is perfect for watch posts. There's classrooms we can turn into bedrooms. The gym for training, the cafeteria for food, and storage closets everywhere. If I can move supplies into my space storage, we can start scavenging from the neighborhood."
Penelope nodded slowly. "Better than sleeping in the basement again."
Annabelle moved to a window and drew back the dusty curtain. Outside, they could see the crumbling city in the distance, but here the building stood tall like a survivor. Like it had been waiting for them.
"This place is... safe," Annabelle whispered. "The plants don't want to break it."
Anna turned to Gwen. "Let's do a full sweep. Make sure we're alone."
Gwen vanished before she finished the sentence, and within ten minutes she returned, out of breath but smiling.
"No one here. I mean it. Just dust and some broken doors. There's even a still-sealed emergency locker upstairs—first aid, blankets, dried food. No signs of recent activity."
"Then it's ours," Anna said. "At least for now."
They got to work.
Annabelle coaxed the vines back from the school's foundation, whispering to them until they unwound and slid back into the soil. Penelope froze rusted locks until they cracked open, revealing storage closets full of ancient supplies. Arthur ignited controlled flames to light up dark corners and incinerate moldy debris. Gwen mapped the layout with quick flashes of speed, memorizing paths between every stairwell, hallway, and emergency exit.
Anna didn't just direct—she acted. She summoned her dimensional space, storing everything they salvaged. Broken furniture, unopened water bottles, battery packs, expired canned goods they'd test later. The space didn't just accept the items—it kept them fresh, suspended in time.
By the time the sun reached its peak, they had cleared two classrooms, aired out a hallway, and claimed the cafeteria as a central gathering point.
They ate what little food they had left in their bags—some crushed granola bars and bottled water—and sat in the empty lunchroom on the floor, legs crisscrossed like students on their first day.
"This place is huge," Gwen said, biting into a protein bar. "We could turn it into a whole base."
Arthur leaned back against the wall. "We'll need to fortify the doors. Build traps, alarms."
"I'll grow a perimeter," Annabelle offered.
"Ice locks on the inside, maybe," Penelope added. "Make it harder to break in."
Anna listened to them speak—her cousins, her team—and felt a strange sense of peace settle over her. They were adapting. Quickly. No panic. No meltdown. Just determination.
They had no idea how long they had slept, how the world had changed, or what was out there now.
But they had this.
A school.
A shelter.
A future.
And it would be the beginning of something new.