"In the silence of a broken world, the fight is never just against monsters outside—it is against the fear, grief, and darkness within."
The ash hung heavy in the air, a suffocating blanket that swallowed sound and hope alike. Kyle Nickson's lungs burned with every ragged breath, the taste of blood and dust thick on his tongue. His throat felt raw, as if the very air was a punishment meant to remind him how fragile life had become.
Around him, the wasteland stretched in all directions, a shattered skeleton of a world that once was. Collapsed buildings, rusted hulks of machinery, and shards of glass glittered dimly beneath the choked, colorless sky. This place was a graveyard — silent, mournful, endless.
The swarm had passed.
But the screams… the snarls… the sound of tearing flesh and shattering bones… they echoed relentlessly in his mind. A nightmare etched into his memory, refusing to fade no matter how hard he tried to shake it off.
His hands — those trembling hands — hovered before him in disbelief. The eerie green glow pulsed beneath his translucent skin, veins like burning threads of emerald fire crawling and writhing beneath the surface. It was a light that felt at once like a curse and a gift, a beacon of power and a warning of something dark and dangerous inside him.
He swallowed hard, the lump in his throat choking him, and clenched his fists until his knuckles cracked.
What was he becoming?
A weapon forged by fire and blood?
A monster born from the ashes?
Or something… something between humanity and the abyss?
The silence around him was broken only by soft groans and ragged breathing. The survivors stirred.
Aron's heavy frame shifted on the scorched earth, dark hair matted with dried blood and sweat. His forehead was bruised and cut, but alive — still fighting. Rose leaned weakly against a crumbled stone wall, each breath shallow and painful, yet her eyes burned with fierce determination. Theo sat a few feet away, head bowed, quiet for once; his usual sharp humor swallowed by the crushing weight of survival. Emma lay still, her broken leg bound with ragged strips of cloth, pale and trembling but breathing.
Kyle willed himself to move. The pain flared across his bruised ribs and scraped skin like wildfire, but there was no room to hesitate. The wasteland around them was deceptively calm — a stillness that always meant death was waiting nearby.
No help would come. No rescue was coming. No one would find them here.
Only the endless gray dust, the crumbling ruins, and the bitter taste of loss.
"Let's move," Kyle rasped, his voice cracked and rough as gravel.
Aron blinked, eyes bloodshot but steady. Slowly, he nodded and forced himself upright, wincing with every movement. Rose steadied herself, muscles tight with determination despite the pain. Theo and Emma exchanged weary glances before rising, supporting each other as best they could.
They limped forward, broken and bleeding, but alive.
With every step, memories crashed inside Kyle like waves pounding a broken shore: the laughter of their trip, the hum of Solaris Essence powering the rails beneath their feet, the sudden roar — impossible and terrifying — of the Hulk Flare, and then the crash. The world exploding into flame, blood, and crushing silence.
Wayne. Georgia. Jordan.
Names etched with fire and grief in Kyle's heart — lost echoes fading into dust.
He swallowed the rising tide of sorrow and anger. There was no time for despair. Not now. Not here.
The strange green glow inside his veins pulsed again, sharper this time, trembling the earth beneath their feet like a warning.
"What… what is happening to me?" he whispered, voice thin and haunted.
No one answered.
But Kyle knew.
He was changing.
They walked for hours — maybe days. Time lost meaning in the endless gray wasteland. The sun hid behind a choking curtain of radioactive dust, casting everything in a sickly twilight even at midday.
Each step was agony. The group's pace slowed beneath the weight of pain and exhaustion, but Kyle pushed forward, driven by a fierce will to survive — and protect those still alive.
Theo tried to lift spirits with quiet jokes, but his eyes betrayed the fear he buried deep inside. Rose's gaze never wavered from the horizon, always alert for danger. Emma's face remained pale, breaths shallow, but she refused to give in. Aron's wounds throbbed painfully with every step, yet he refused to fall behind.
They stumbled upon relics of the old world — broken patrol drones, rusted signs, shattered remnants of a time before. Kyle knelt beside a twisted machine, eyes narrowing as he noticed a strange greenish residue clinging to its metal surface.
It wasn't solar radiation.
It was something else. Something alien.
Symbols etched deep in the wreckage caught his eye — unfamiliar, otherworldly markings that made his skin crawl.
The terrible truth they had not dared face crept closer.
Kyle's heart thundered in his chest.
Suddenly, guttural snarls echoed from a ruined building ahead.
Without warning, a pack of Normal Black Flares burst forth — pale, twitching, their veins crackling with the same eerie green light that pulsed inside Kyle.
The fight erupted in chaos.
Theo charged, driving a jagged pipe into one snarling beast's jaw. Rose slashed with her knife, Aron swung a crowbar, and Kyle's hands flared bright green as he released bursts of raw energy that threw several Flares back.
But they kept coming. Relentless.
Emma screamed as one lunged for her, and Kyle slammed a fist into the creature's skull just in time. Pain exploded through his ribs, but he stood firm, green light flickering along his skin.
The battle was brutal, messy, and primal — a desperate fight for survival with raw terror driving every strike.
When the last Flare fell, the survivors collapsed against broken walls, gasping, bloodied, barely whole.
Kyle's burning eyes fixed on his glowing hands.
"They're not just monsters," he muttered, voice low and raw. "They're hunting us… tracking us."
Rose nodded fiercely, voice steady.
"Then we don't stop. We keep moving. No rest."
Night fell quickly, swallowing the wasteland in heavy darkness.
Around a small fire, the group gathered in silence. Kyle sat apart, staring into the dying embers as the flickering green light pulsed faintly above in the sky.
A signal.
A warning.
A promise.
His powers surged — stronger, wilder, uncontrollable.
Fear and hope tangled inside him.
What am I?
No answer came.
Only the resolve to fight on.
Because beyond the firelight… the hunt would begin again.