CHAPTER I: THE ARCHITECTURE OF EMPTINESSSCENE I: THE CONDITION OF DRAKA
The world did not succumb to a sudden cataclysm of fire or a dramatic descent into absolute silence; it ended through a slow, agonizing process of stabilization. After the "War of the Living"—the final, desperate spasm of violence that the planet could physically and socially sustain—what emerged was not a period of peace, but a permanent state of continuity. The nation of Pragna emerged from the cooling ash of the old world, assuming power not as a heroic savior or a bringer of light, but as a cold, administrative machine designed to manage the remaining rubble. They offered no visionary future, no cultural renewal, and no promises of restorative justice. Instead, they provided the only thing a shattered populace could still process: an end to chaotic movement. They established a static solution, a global order defined by a permanent and unwavering shade of grey.
The sky above this new world no longer carried weather in any traditional or recognizable sense. The clouds did not drift with the seasons; they lingered in thick, unmoving banks of charcoal and slate, as if the atmosphere itself had finally accepted inertia as its terminal state. When light managed to filter through these heavy layers, it arrived without warmth or vitality. The sun existed only as a pale, bleached disc behind the smog, stripped of its ancient symbolism of hope and life. Beneath this stagnant canopy, the cities did not fall in a single night; they dissolved over decades of neglect. Their grand outlines faded slowly, bleeding into a background of endless repetition until destruction was no longer viewed as a tragic event, but as the primary form of architecture. Steel and concrete, warped by heat and time, rearranged themselves into new, meaningless geometries that spanned the horizons.
In this environment, time lost its linearity. There was no "after the war" because there was no longer a recognizable "before" to which anyone could return. History had been flattened into a singular, ongoing present where the only metric of change was decay. Genocide, once a word that could freeze the blood of nations, became nothing more than administrative language used in the daily reports of the order. Numbers and casualty figures replaced the weight of grief, and death became a metric rather than a tragedy. It was no longer shocking enough to interrupt the daily routine of the survivors. Most people adapted to this grey existence out of necessity. They stood in long, silent queues for rations, they followed the strict instructions of the military, and they learned through trial and error which ruined streets remained safe during the enforced hours of the night. For the majority, survival became purely procedural, a series of mechanical tasks performed without the spark of ambition.
However, beneath this surface of broken and managed humanity, a smaller, far more dangerous anomaly began to manifest. There were individuals who had not only lost the will to fight against the order, but had lost the fundamental biological need to live at all. In these people, the primitive instinct of fear ceased to register. Physical pain no longer served as a deterrent to action, and inner agony became a distant, muffled memory. Attachment to others, to places, or to the self dissolved into a void of indifference. These people were called Pikas. The term meant a "dot"—a singular, isolated point in space that lacked any connection to a larger shape or a broader meaning. The Pikas were not an ideology, they were not a political movement, and they were not a unified faction. Fewer than a thousand of them existed across the entire planet, walking through the ruins without banners, without slogans, and without any discernable objectives. They lived by a single sentence, repeated without the fervor of belief or the comfort of ritual: "The ones who live the sword way, die in the sword way."
After the conclusion of the War of the Living, Pragna officially declared the Pikas to be the final, poisonous remnant of global violence. They became a necessary enemy for the new order—tangible evidence that disorder still existed in the world, which in turn justified the continued and total militarization of society. The hunting of Pikas was treated as an efficient, quiet, and legally sanctioned process of sanitation. To identify a Pika, the soldiers of the order looked for the dots. These were small, dark marks that appeared on the Pika's skin. Cruelly, each new dot appeared only after a Pika killed another of their own kind. These marks were not trophies of war; they carried no pride or sense of accomplishment. They simply accumulated on the body as a silent tally of the emptiness that defined their lives.
And then there was Draka. Draka was not a city in any functional sense of the word; it was a grave scaled to planetary proportions. It was the land where the final convergence of global destruction had taken place, and where more than one hundred and one million people had died. The soil of Draka was no longer composed of organic matter. It had been transformed into a thick layer of bone powder, twisted rebar fragments, and irradiated stone dust. When the final echoes of the fighting died away, three million soldiers remained alive amidst the carnage. They belonged to Pragna, the only country left with the sheer mass of soldiers required to establish the New World Order. Draka was left untouched by the reconstructive efforts of the new regime. It was not left in ruins because Pragna lacked the resources to clear it, but because it served as a permanent, horrific instruction. It was a warning preserved in ash, a reminder to the world of what total defiance looked like and the price that had been paid for the "War of the Living."
SCENE II: THE DYING BUILDING
Voi Dione stood in the hollowed remains of a skyscraper at the center of Draka. The building leaned at an angle that seemed to defy the local laws of physics, a jagged monument of cracked concrete and rusted rebar. Cracks spider-webbed across the floor, following the deep, structural traumas of the final war. Dust, fine as silt and grey as a winter morning, covered every surface, disturbed only by the slow, rhythmic movement of Voi's hands as he worked. He sat on a pile of pulverized masonry, his white clothes blending into the pervasive pallor of the environment. His white hair, stark against the dark blue void of his eyes, remained motionless in the stagnant air.
He was sharpening his red sword. The sound was a harsh, repetitive rasp—the friction of metal against stone—that served as the only metronome for the silence of Draka. Each stroke was identical to the last: a long, dragging pull of the blade across a slab of exposed basalt, followed by a momentary lift, then the repetition. The sound echoed upward through the open elevator shafts and shattered windows, ringing out over the miles of surrounding ruins. Small flakes of red metal, as fine as salt, drifted down onto Voi's white boots, mingling with the grey soot. He did not look at the blade. His dark blue eyes—sclera and iris fused into a single depthless shade—were fixed on the sagging ceiling.
A low, resonant groan vibrated through the structure. The building was shifting, its metal skeleton protesting against the pull of gravity. Dust shook loose from the rafters, falling in thin, shimmering curtains through the dim light. Voi paused, the sharpening stone held mid-air. He did not blink. He simply listened to the building's labored respiration.
"It is strange," Voi said, his voice a flat, uninflected monotone that carried no more emotion than the wind. "That I am in a building which is on the verge of death, like me."
He waited. The only response was a sharp, crystalline crack from somewhere deep in the basement as another support beam failed. Voi resumed his sharpening, the rasping sound returning to its mechanical rhythm.
"Who will outrun whom, old building?" Voi continued, his gaze drifting across the scorched walls. "I have fought more than seven wars. What about you?"
Silence resumed, heavy and absolute. Voi stood up in a single, fluid motion. The white cloth of his trousers brushed against the rubble, kicking up a small cloud of ash. He gripped the hilt of the red sword, the weight of it familiar and meaningless. He looked at the primary support pillar, a thick column of concrete that was the only thing preventing the top ten floors from pancaking into the earth.
"I see you cannot match me," Voi said softly. "I will end your pain, old building."
He stepped toward the pillar. His movement was precise, devoid of the frantic energy of the living. He raised the red sword.
"It was an honor to meet you," he said.
The sword moved in a horizontal blur. The strike was silent, the edge passing through the concrete and steel as if they possessed no more density than air. For a fraction of a second, the pillar remained whole. Then, a thin line of red light appeared across the grey surface. The concrete groaned, then shrieked.
The collapse began with a roar. The floor beneath Voi's feet buckled. Thousands of tons of stone and metal surrendered to the inevitable. Voi did not run. He stood amidst the falling debris as the floors above began to pancake down. The sound was deafening, a cacophony of shattering glass and twisting steel that lasted for nearly a minute. A massive plume of dust erupted, billowing outward in a grey tidal wave that swallowed the street and the surrounding blocks.
When the roar finally subsided and the dust began to settle into the silence of a grave, Voi Dione was still standing. He was positioned in the center of the fresh crater, his white clothes now thoroughly coated in the grey remnants of the skyscraper. He looked around at the leveled site. Not a single wall remained upright. The horizon of Draka was now slightly flatter than it had been minutes before.
"Again I am alone," Voi whispered, the words lost in the settling silt. "Again on this thing called life."
He began to walk, his white boots crunching over the new rubble, moving toward the deeper silence of the ruins.
SCENE III: THE OBSERVATION OF INNOCENCE
The silence that followed the collapse of the building was profound, but it was not absolute. From fifty meters away, a sound drifted through the grey haze—a sound that was an anomaly in the dead landscape of Draka. It was laughter.
Voi Dione stopped. He turned his head slowly, his dark blue eyes tracking the source. Two girls were playing in a relatively clear section of a street where the asphalt had been blasted smooth. They were throwing a red ball between them. Their movements were uncoordinated and light, their small voices echoing off the charred skeletons of surrounding structures. They seemed oblivious to the bone dust beneath their feet or the grey sky above them.
Voi watched them. He stood as still as the rubble, his white clothes making him nearly invisible against the dust-choked air. He observed the arc of the red ball as it rose and fell.
"You smile," Voi observed, though his voice was too quiet to reach them. "What function does it serve? Where is the meaning?"
He tilted his head. "No meaning for me, but why for you? Is life so good that you can play on a battlefield?"
He began to move toward them. His approach was ghost-like, his white boots making no sound on the scorched pavement. He closed the distance with a predatory lack of urgency. The girls continued their game, the red ball bouncing once, twice, before Julia caught it and prepared to throw it back to Jeila.
Voi reached them just as the ball left Julia's hands. The red sword flashed in a vertical arc. There was no sound of impact, only the sight of the red ball splitting into two perfect hemispheres in mid-air. The pieces fell into the dust, rolling a few inches before coming to a rest.
The laughter stopped instantly. The world became very quiet.
Jeila reacted first. She turned and began to run, her small legs pumping as she vanished into a nearby alleyway. Julia, however, remained frozen. She stood where she was, her chest heaving as she struggled for breath. Her eyes were wide, fixed on the tall man in white whose dark blue gaze seemed to swallow the light.
"Sister, run!" Jeila's scream echoed from the alley. She stopped at the corner, looking back at Voi. Her voice dropped to a terrified whisper. "We can't outrun him, sister."
"It is true," Voi said, his dark blue eyes never leaving Julia. "In this life you cannot. Perhaps in another."
Julia looked up at him, her lips trembling. She spoke her name: "Julia."
Voi looked down at her. "It was an honor, little girl," he said. "Should I end your pain now?"
Jeila scrambled back out of the shadows, her face streaked with tears as she ran to her sister's side. "No!" she shouted, her voice high and desperate. "She isn't in pain! She is sick!"
Julia reached out and touched Jeila's arm. Her breathing was a series of wet, ragged rasps, her lungs struggling against the heavy dust of the city. "I might not live longer than a year, Jeila," Julia whispered. "I am in pain. I would be relieved if you can live longer than me."
Voi watched the exchange, his face as static as a mask. "Who knows," he said. "The ones who claimed to know the future died and became the past."
The red sword moved in a precise, horizontal thrust. The blade entered Julia's chest and exited through her back without the slightest resistance. There was no scream. Julia simply looked at Voi with an expression of profound confusion before her eyes clouded over. Voi waited as her knees buckled and she collapsed into the dust.
"Jeila... Jeila..." she whispered, her voice fading into the silence as she repeated her sister's name one final time.
On Voi's arm, a small, sharp sensation occurred as a new dot manifested on his skin.
Jeila collapsed beside the body, her hands clutching at Julia's cooling shirt. Her cries were jagged and loud. "You killed her! My twin sister! Why?"
"Who knows?" Voi said, turning his back on them. "Perspective varies. I ended her pain."
"Why are you so evil?" Jeila sobbed, unable to find other words.
Voi continued to walk away. "Life is simple," he said over his shoulder. "It is not understandable, but simple. We live to die. I live to not be empty."
He vanished into the grey distance, leaving the girl alone with the dead.
SCENE IV: THE ENCOUNTER WITH ORDER
Voi Dione walked out from the inner ruins of Draka and reached the grey, flat expanse of the outer wasteland. The road here was a straight line of cracked asphalt, disappearing into a horizon of unmoving charcoal clouds. He stopped and looked back at the shattered skyline of the grave-city.
"Was it like this every time?" Voi asked the stillness. "Time to leave. Ten years since the War of the Living."
He resumed his walk, his pace steady and rhythmic. The only sound was the crunch of his boots on the grit. Then, a low vibration began to rattle the air. From the haze ahead, a massive shape emerged—a military armored car of the Pragna army. It was a block of heavy steel, bristling with weaponry and painted in the drab colors of the Order. It slowed to a crawl and then stopped directly in Voi's path.
Voi continued walking until he was only a few feet from the vehicle's reinforced front bumper. He did not reach for his red sword. Inside the car, the air was thick with a different kind of silence—the silence of fear.
"You represent the order," Voi said, his voice easily penetrating the armored hull. "Those who command the world as winners of the war. The shepherds of the frightened."
Inside the vehicle, Sorro, the driver, sat with his hands frozen on the wheel, his forehead beaded with sweat. Beside him, Leik was hunched over, his lips moving in a frantic, silent prayer.
"Praying isn't going to work on him, Leik," Sorro whispered, his voice trembling. "He is blue-eyed Voi."
"Call for backup," Leik hissed, his eyes fixed on the man in white through the viewing slit. "We can't outrun a Pika in this car. It is too heavy."
In the back, Trom grabbed the radio headset with a shaking hand. "This is unit 32. We have faced a Pika. We have faced blue-eyed Voi," he shouted into the transmitter. "Requesting backup."
The fourth soldier, Rahs, sat with his jaw clenched, staring at the back of Sorro's head. "We could take him," Rahs said, his voice a low growl. "We have heavy artillery and machine guns."
"Rahs, he is one of the most dangerous," Leik snapped back. "He stays on the battlefield just to let others know his location."
Outside, Voi observed the vehicle with the same clinical indifference he showed the ruins. "A machine of war," he noted. "Full of people who call us evil. What will you do?"
Sorro slammed the car into reverse gear. The engine roared, tires spinning on the grey dust as the massive vehicle lurched backward. Sorro spun the wheel, and the car roared away from Voi, heading toward the distant Pragna base.
Voi began to walk toward them, his pace never changing. "You cannot outrun me, Pragna soldiers," he said softly.
The vehicle continued its retreat, a cloud of grey dust rising behind it to swallow Voi's white figure. Inside, Rahs watched the Pika through the rear slit. He saw the tall man in white simply walking, closing the distance despite their speed.
"He has lost the will to live," Trom whispered, watching his comrade.
Rahs stood up, grabbing a machine gun and a pistol from the rack. "Living in fear serves no purpose," Rahs said, his eyes hard. "I am a soldier. I fight for safety. I will not let a Pika disrupt our peace."
He pounded on the driver's partition. "Stop the car! I am getting out."
The armored car slowed for only a second as Rahs jumped from the rear hatch. It then accelerated again, fleeing into the haze. Rahs stood on the road, the dust settling around him as he waited for the man with the red sword to emerge from the grey. Voi continued to walk forward, a white dot moving through a world of ash.