The city was unrecognizable.
By morning, the sky was thick with smoke, a dim red glow where the sun should've been. The streets below roared with chaos — sirens blaring, drones circling like vultures, and the screams of a people who no longer believed the lies.
Mara moved through the shadows, the heat of burning buildings licking at her skin.
Everywhere she looked, the illusion was gone.
Billboards that once flashed UNITY IS STRENGTH now flickered with static.
Government broadcasts played on loop, voices cracking through the interference —
"STAY CALM… SYSTEM STABLE… DO NOT—"
Then silence.
She passed a market in ruins — stalls overturned, food scattered and trampled underfoot. A mother clutched a crying child, begging soldiers for help. They didn't stop. They didn't even look.
The streets were filled with people running in every direction, shouting names, carrying what little they could. The ground shook with distant explosions. Somewhere in the distance, a tower crumbled, the sound rolling across the city like thunder.
Mara should have turned back.
But she couldn't.
Eli was out there.
She remembered the way he'd looked before walking away — calm, certain, almost serene in a world collapsing.
She didn't understand him. But she couldn't let him vanish into the fire.
A woman grabbed her arm as she tried to cross an intersection. "Don't go that way!" the stranger cried. Her eyes were wild with fear. "They're bombing the south blocks! The government's lost control — they're shooting anyone on the streets!"
Mara pulled free. "I have to."
"There's nothing left there!" the woman shouted after her. "It's all gone!"
But Mara kept walking. Not out of hope — she still didn't believe in that — but something else. Something stubborn and quiet, the same thing that had kept her alive all these years: the refusal to give in.
She passed bodies in the road, covered in ash and dust. A drone hovered overhead, announcing evacuation zones that didn't exist.
"CITIZENS: RETURN TO SHELTER. ALL IS UNDER CONTROL."
The voice was flat, mechanical — the sound of a lie that no one believed anymore.
At the edge of the district, the air burned with heat. Fires crawled up the sides of buildings. Sirens wailed and died. The sky itself seemed to scream.
Mara stumbled into an alley to catch her breath. Her hands shook. The ground trembled with another blast.
She pressed her back to the wall and closed her eyes.
This was the end.
Not the quiet collapse she'd always feared — but a violent one.
The world tearing itself apart.
And still… Eli had walked into it.
She pushed herself forward, moving toward the center of the chaos. Toward the square where the protests had begun days ago. She could hear it now — the sound of hundreds shouting, chanting, demanding truth.
And above them, the crack of gunfire.
Mara froze at the edge of the square.
The scene before her was a nightmare — banners burning, people scattering, soldiers firing into the crowd. Bodies lay sprawled across the pavement, their signs trampled:
WE REMEMBER.
NO MORE LIES.
FREEDOM.
And in the smoke, she saw him.
Eli stood on the steps of a shattered monument, voice hoarse but steady as he shouted above the chaos:
"You don't have to be afraid! They've already lost — the lies are dead! The truth is all that's left!"
People were screaming, running — but some turned to look at him. Even in the firelight, his eyes shone with something fierce and unbroken.
Mara's breath caught in her throat.
A soldier raised a rifle.
Eli didn't flinch.
Mara screamed his name — "ELI!" — but the noise swallowed her voice.
The world exploded in light and sound.
She was thrown backward by the blast, her ears ringing, her vision burning white. The square disappeared in smoke and flame. People scattered like shadows.
When the dust cleared, she crawled toward where he had stood. The steps were scorched, rubble falling in every direction.
But Eli was gone.
The fires raged. The city screamed.
And Mara knelt in the ruins, surrounded by everything she had always feared — the truth, stripped bare:
There were no saviors.
No systems.
No promises left.
Just the wreckage of a world built on lies.
She stared into the flames and whispered, more to herself than anyone else:
"You were wrong, Eli… there is no light at the end."
But even as she said it, part of her hated the sound.
Because in the echo of her voice, buried deep under the smoke and the silence,
she thought she heard him still.