He woke before the fires died.
The air was cold enough to sting his lungs. Ash drifted in thin veils through the half-collapsed roof, pale as dusted snow. The camp slept around him — a tangle of breaths and small sounds. Someone murmured in a dream; a child whimpered and was soothed. The kind of quiet that only existed between disasters.
Junius sat up slowly, careful not to disturb the others near the embers. He listened for footsteps, for the scrape of Rio's spear — nothing.
He'd been thinking about this for days, maybe since the night they'd let him stay. The idea grew in him like a fever: you don't belong here. Every smile, every shared bowl of stew, every time Lilia said his name — his false name — it clawed at his ribs until breathing felt like lying.
He rose and gathered what little he had: a half-empty canteen, a strip of dried meat, a piece of tarp folded twice. His hands trembled as he tied them with cord.
Someone coughed softly in a nearby tent. He froze, heart hammering, but the sound faded back into sleep.
He waited another long minute before moving.
The perimeter wasn't guarded this early. The fires had burned low, leaving only faint rings of warmth on the ground. He slipped through the narrow gap between two overturned trucks — their rusted bodies forming the camp's wall — and emerged into the open ruins.
The wind hit him immediately. It carried the scent of smoke and iron and the faraway sweetness of decay. He hadn't noticed how warm the camp had been until now.
He turned once, looking back.
From this distance, the camp looked almost peaceful. Little dots of orange glowed where the fires still lived. Somewhere inside, people were dreaming — about food, maybe, or sunlight that didn't burn.
Lilia would wake soon. She'd notice the empty spot by the fire, the canteen missing, the quiet where he used to be.
He imagined her face: not angry, just tired. Maybe she'd call for him once. Maybe Rio would laugh, say he told her so. Then they'd move on.
That was how it should be.
He adjusted the tarp over his shoulder and started walking.
The city was quieter than usual. The sky had taken on a faint green tint, like the color of old copper. The world didn't look alive or dead — just waiting.
His boots scraped over cracked concrete. With each step, the distance between him and the camp grew heavier, not lighter.
He told himself he was doing the right thing. They didn't know who he was — what he'd done. If they ever found out, their safety would die with their trust.
Leaving was mercy.
That was the story he told himself.
He followed a street lined with skeletons of buildings, their windows blown out. Somewhere in the distance, metal groaned — the voice of the ruins shifting in their sleep.
He thought of the others, of their quiet rituals and soft laughter. Of Rio's suspicion, of Lilia's stubborn calm. Of the boy who'd offered him stew without asking a thing in return.
He wanted to forget them. But the harder he tried, the clearer they became.
He stopped walking. The horizon glowed faintly — not with dawn yet, but with the pale ghost of it.
He whispered to no one, "You'll be better off."
The wind didn't answer.
The Bracelet under his skin warmed slightly, as if reacting to the lie. He ignored it, tightening the strap around his wrist.
He turned toward the light and kept moving.
Behind him, the camp stayed small and silent. In the distance, one of the fires flickered — the last he'd ever see of it.
He didn't look back again.
The first line of dawn crept over the broken skyline, pale and cold, catching the edges of ruined glass. It wasn't beautiful. It wasn't kind.
But it was enough to see the road.
And enough to keep walking.
The world outside the camp was quieter than he remembered.
He'd thought distance might bring relief — that once the murmurs and firelight faded, the guilt would too. But the silence pressed harder now, heavy as stone.
The first light of morning stretched long across the ruins, pale and brittle. He walked through it until his legs ached. His shadow looked thin and unfamiliar against the cracked pavement, like it belonged to someone else.
The city stretched endlessly behind him, broken towers leaning like old gravestones. Ahead lay the unknown — hills of dust, roads swallowed by vines and shattered bridges that went nowhere.
He told himself there had to be something beyond it. Someone.
He needed to believe that.
"Maybe they made it out," he said aloud, just to hear the sound of a voice. "Betty, Liam… maybe they ran before it reached them."
The names burned his throat, but speaking them felt like oxygen.
He pictured them walking ahead of him — small, distant shapes he could almost see if he squinted against the haze.
Every time he stumbled, he imagined they were just over the next ridge.
The sun climbed higher. Heat shimmered off the road. His canteen was almost empty before noon.
He followed what might have been an old highway, its signs melted into unreadable shapes. Along the sides, trees had started to grow again — not normal trees, but things with bark like bone and leaves too dark to be green. They whispered in the wind like soft voices.
The air smelled different here — faintly sweet, faintly wrong.
After hours of walking, he stopped to rest near the skeleton of a bus. Inside, the seats were torn and filled with ash. He sat and leaned his head against the window frame. The glass had bubbled, but through it he could still see the road stretching endlessly forward.
For a moment, the sunlight through the haze turned the world almost gold.
He imagined Betty sitting beside him, kicking her legs, teasing him for getting lost again. Liam arguing about music. His mother humming.
He smiled — a strange, fragile reflex.
The Bracelet pulsed once, faintly, under his skin.
He froze.
The warmth spread up his arm, slow and steady, like a heartbeat waking after sleep.
He pulled back the sleeve. His veins were glowing again — soft, white, rhythmic.
The same light that had destroyed everything.
But now it didn't burn. It hummed quietly, almost… alive.
He stared at it, unsure whether to feel hope or terror.
"Show me," he whispered.
The light flickered once, then steadied.
He stood, chest tight, eyes fixed on the horizon. The Bracelet's pulse seemed to align with something in the distance — faint vibrations in the ground, a subtle direction only he could feel.
Maybe it was guiding him. Maybe it was a trap.
He didn't care which.
He started walking again, following that rhythm.
Hours passed. The sun dipped, then returned, though he could no longer tell how much time had gone.
The thought that kept him moving wasn't logic or even faith — it was the unbearable image of what might happen if he didn't follow it.
If they were alive somewhere and he stopped here, in this nowhere, what would that make him?
He'd already destroyed them once. He couldn't fail them again by giving up.
As he climbed a small rise, the air shimmered differently — thicker, warmer. His breath came shallow, but the Bracelet's glow grew stronger, pulsing faster now, insistent.
He broke into a run, heart hammering, hope flaring sharp and painful.
At the top of the rise, he stopped short.
The plain beyond stretched empty. No buildings. No figures. Just wind moving through fields of gray grass that bent in perfect rhythm with the pulse on his wrist.
He stood there until his knees buckled, until the illusion of direction shattered.
The light dimmed.
He whispered, almost pleading, "Don't stop. Please."
The Bracelet stayed dark.
And in that stillness, he understood: hope was just another name for punishment.
The days bled together again.
He no longer counted them. The sun rose, fell, and rose the same shade of gray, and the wind carried nothing but dust. His footprints vanished almost as soon as he made them.
The Bracelet stayed cold.
He walked because stopping felt like dying, and maybe it was. Hunger came in waves; thirst became a steady ache. When he found water in the hollow of a rusted pipe, he drank without caring that it tasted of metal and rot.
Sometimes he thought he heard voices.
Lilia's sharp tone. Rio's muttered insults. Betty's laugh.
He'd turn, expecting to see them — but the world behind him stayed empty.
At night, he built small fires that burned too fast. The silence pressed close, wrapping around him until he could almost feel it breathing.
He missed the camp. The sound of people. The weight of eyes that meant he existed.
But he couldn't go back.
If they ever learned who he was — what he'd done — the quiet mercy of isolation would seem like heaven.
He walked along a stretch of cracked highway and caught his reflection in a sheet of standing water.
For a moment, he didn't recognize the face staring back.
The eyes glowed faintly — not bright, but enough. The skin beneath looked thinner, veins tracing light just under the surface.
He crouched closer. The reflection rippled, distorting into something almost inhuman.
He hit the water with his fist, scattering it into the dust.
"Not yet," he whispered. "I'm still me."
The wind carried no answer, just a soft rustle through the brittle weeds.
When dawn finally came, it wasn't warm. The light was pale and sharp, washing the land in white.
He stood on a ridge, the horizon endless ahead.
The world looked hollow, stripped bare — the kind of place where even ghosts would starve.
Junius tightened the tarp around his shoulders and started walking again, one foot dragging in front of the other.
The sky brightened behind him, thin and cold.
A coward's dawn.