Hope.
People treat that word like a lifeline, but it's nothing more than a comfortable lie. A wish dressed up as certainty. When the world bares its fangs, you learn the truth fast: there's no such thing as hope. Only what survives, and what doesn't.
It was winter.
A sharp, biting cold swept through the streets, the kind that cut straight through coats and skin. Wind pushed between buildings like a warning, a low howl rolling in from somewhere distant.
The sky promised a snowstorm, but nobody seemed to care. Crowds moved under glittering lights, drowning themselves in the holiday rush. Stores blasted sales pitches from every direction, smothering even the wind.
People laughed. Shopped. Pretended the world wasn't on borrowed time.
They didn't know that this would be the last winter that was normal.
Beneath the decorations and music, someone — something — had already taken root.
And when it finally arrived, the happiest season of the year would become the moment humanity fell into a darkness so deep, it wasn't clear whether anything human would crawl back out again.
Only in the depths of earth itself would our struggle be remembered.