PROLOGUE
Humanity has always had that damned habit of survival. It didn’t matter how fucked up everything was—world wars, pandemics, catastrophes that wiped entire cities off the map—the species always found a crack to squeeze through. Crawling through the mud, resisting with fingernails, swallowing ash and dust until lungs were full, insisting on thriving even in the bowels of the deepest hell. An almost absurd stubbornness.
And when the true end of the world finally arrived… it was no different.
Today, most of those who still walk the earth prefer to live with heads buried in the past. They cling desperately to memories of what they now call the “good times”—a distant era when the biggest problem consisted of getting to work on time, paying bills at the end of the month, complaining about evening traffic, or letting themselves be lulled by the blue glow of the television while a phone blinked on the nightstand. Daydreaming about that before.
Before reality itself tore apart. Before the night sky fractured into cracks of incandescent purple—an electric, sickly light that seemed to bleed the universe onto Earth. Before the planet’s geography collapsed upon itself, making long-forgotten mountains and prehistoric jungles from other eras emerge in the middle of urban centers, swallowing avenues, buildings, memories… and entire families.
But the worst part wasn’t watching Earth rewrite its own skin. The worst part was what emerged from those depths along with the wild vegetation.
A cold wind whistled through cracks in the broken masonry. Inside the abandoned structure, Arthur stood motionless, leaning against cold concrete while observing the gloom outside. Everything that had once meant something to him had dissolved in the chaos of the early years. Now he was nothing more than a ghost among the ruins—a shadow that shot when necessary, ate when lucky enough to find something, and walked without a clear destination.
Releasing a dense sigh that turned to vapor in the freezing air, he leaned his old Winchester against the stone wall. The brush of fingers against icy metal brought back a glimpse of reality. It was his only faithful companion in that wasteland, though with each passing day the stock weighed a little heavier on his back.
Arthur feared the night. He hated the precise moment when exhaustion overcame guard duty and eyelids closed, knowing exactly what nightmare awaited on the other side of darkness: the indelible memory of his mother. He could feel again the warmth of blood slipping between his fingers, the stabbing pain of despair while trying to press the wound to keep life in her body—uselessly—as the world fell apart around them. Her last words had not been a lament, but a promise branded like fire into his soul. Then there had only been her inert weight in his arms, and the gleam of her eyes fading forever under that relentless purple sky.
From that day on, the calendar ceased to exist. Dates, months, and years lost all meaning. Existence was reduced to basic, brutal arithmetic: a sip of clean water, a saved bullet, a found ration. Surviving one more day.
Holding his breath, Arthur slid a hand inside his torn canvas backpack. His fingers felt the misery of his equipment: a pair of spent cartridges echoing with a metallic clatter, a piece of bandage turned stiff by accumulated grime, and a dented can whose broken seal still retained the phantom smell of old preserves.
At the bottom of the bag, fingertips brushed against something cold and polished.
Pulling it out delicately, he held a small, heart-shaped metal locket, its edges worn by the almost obsessive habit of caressing it in the gloom. It opened with a soft click that barely interrupted the silence of the refuge. Inside, protected behind scratched glass, his mother’s photograph looked blurry and faded by moisture. Yet Arthur didn’t need to see it clearly; he could reconstruct every trace of her face just by closing his eyes. It was his only dose of anesthesia, the sole anchor keeping him sane before surrendering to the night.
Outside, the darkness came alive. The distant echo of rusted engines reverberated among the ravines, mingling with the guttural roars of beasts human history had thought long extinct. The rules in this new world left no room for interpretation: cling to a dry ration, chew the bitter mushrooms sprouting from concrete, or rummage through the pockets of fresh corpses. Hunter or prey. There was no middle ground.
Yet the noise outside compared to nothing against the silent storm inside him. It was the emptiness of his stomach, the accumulated fatigue in his joints, and that crushing silence reminding him, every second, that he had no one left. In this new order, the only possible luck was not seeing anyone else you loved die… simply because there was no one left to lose.
Arthur closed the locket, tucking it away in the pocket closest to his chest.
Tomorrow he would have to set out early. He needed to get something warm if he expected his lungs to keep working. Maybe the old farmer at the nearby settlement still needed a hand with perimeter surveillance; maybe a couple of provisions could be squeezed out of him in exchange for hunting down the damned lizard prowling the corrals and keeping everyone awake.
And if it didn’t go well… well.
At least he would stop waking up with those damn migraines every time the sky pulsed on the horizon with that purple shade once again.
