This is why I was spared. This is why I am here.
Somewhere beyond this mountain lies what remains of humanity.
My goal is simple.
To keep walking until I find them.
Chapter Six
Lone Survivor of a World in Ruin
The Chosen
I become a nomad, spending unnumbered days traveling, searching for signs of life, and taking in what remains of the world. I study not only what exists now, but also piece together what once was in whatever ways I can manage.
I have a limited memory of what came before. What I know of this world came from books, so there’s no true sense of how life functioned before the Rumbling.
But every place holds fragments of truth, and I search for answers to expand my knowledge beyond what the Grand Minister provided.
Many trees show no sign of recovery. They stand stripped bare, charred spires with broken, finger-like branches rising from drifts of ash. Others lie collapsed in tangled heaps, their roots exposed, as though torn violently from the earth. Even the forests that once covered endless acres exist now as ghastly graveyards, silent and empty of life. The ash and sense of death are thickest there, so I take my time exploring paths that are easier to navigate.
The terrain itself bears the marks of violent upheaval, as if pushed and pulled in every direction. Roads zigzag across long stretches of land, buckled and broken, entire sections missing. Vehicles litter the landscape as discarded relics, their windows shattered, their metal husks scorched down to skeletal remains.
Yesterday, I passed a long line of them lying in a deep trench, likely caused by a sudden rift splitting open during one of the countless earthquakes that reshaped the surface.
Some fissures are narrow and easy to avoid, while others extend for miles. Going around them requires arduous detours, another necessary evil, since the surrounding ground remains largely unstable and threatens to give way without warning.
The largest crack I’ve found held my attention for some time. Not only because I was reasoning out how I might cross it unscathed but because I’d been curious about how deep it went. The shadowing depths seemed to go on forever. A burned-out passenger bus teetering precariously along its edge looked quite capable of toppling forward at any moment, so I tempted fate and pushed it instead of waiting for a single strong gust of wind to do the job for me.
I never did hear the crash when it reached the bottom, which perplexed me greatly.
Such sights, such hazards, are commonplace now.
The old cities, which supposedly once teemed with life, suffered the worst of the devastation. They bear the scars of war—bombs dropped during the conflict that preceded the nuclear fall, information I’ve gleaned from materials found in less damaged areas.
The ground zero of the detonation sites is unmistakable. Giant craters mark the impact sites, pocketing the land, their hollowed interiors now blanketed in ash. And more evidence of mass destruction lingers nearby—twisted metal, scorched and broken buildings, debris scattered across what were once smooth roadways.
Few skyscrapers rise to their full height. Many have crumbled or fallen into ruin. But I’ve seen pictures of what they used to be—great buildings that defied gravity. Though most remain standing where they were built, they are a sad representation of their former glory and stand as fractured monuments to a history long since erased.
During my travels, one thing above all else rings true.
The old world is gone.
And I am the only human left living, the only witness still breathing, to discover what happened after the last bomb fell.
I’ve found no survivors among the fallout. Whether any remain, I do not yet know.
I continue beyond the ruined cities into more rural territory, where distance once promised solitude and safety.
Here, empty farmland is buried beneath layers of pale dust stirred by the wind. Homes and homesteads were destroyed by whatever catastrophes this area faced. None of the barns stand whole. Their parts lay scattered across barren plains, as though the land itself were slowly reclaiming all that had been built upon it.
All the vast fields lie dormant. Their old irrigation lines stand twisted and broken, long abandoned to decay, their purpose rendered meaningless in a world where nothing can grow or be nourished. The only things left standing besides the buildings are the rusted farming machinery, which still marks the landscape, though blackened, burned, and half swallowed by ash. They sit where they were last used, silent memorials to each ranch and whatever final moments unfolded here.
I feel the weight of that loss greatly, even without truly knowing what was taken. The absence lingers with me as I move on.
Further north, the damage changes in ways I had not anticipated. Here, entire valleys have been reshaped, torn apart, and remade. Many rivers have dried up, leaving behind deep scars in the earth. The few that still flow carry the dead with them as they wind back and forth through the land, their color a pale contrast to what they once were.
I come across great bodies of water—lakes, new and old. Some are so enormous that it feels like it takes me a lifetime to navigate around them. The newer ones seem to have been formed where the earth sank inward, and rain was allowed to gather. I test each at various points for toxicity, only to find their waters tainted—enticing to drink from but deadly as they ceaselessly reflect a sky forever veiled in grey.
