The earth had mourned for humanity long before it learned how to bury the dead.
The world existed beneath a sky that no longer remembered light—clouds stretched endlessly, heavy with ash and grief, sealing the land in a perpetual dusk. From afar, some claimed it was mercy. A paradise where humans no longer aged, where time itself seemed to hesitate.
Others whispered of a far crueler fate: a sea that would one day rise without warning, swallowing continents whole, lifting humanity above the waters only to drown them slowly beneath an unfamiliar sky. Some spoke of another world entirely. A land across the seas, where night never slept, where the horizon bent inward and reality folded upon itself.
The girl had heard all of it.
More than that—she had seen it.
She had watched the world burn.
The sky had not fallen in a single moment. It broke.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the heavens, light bleeding through like open wounds, before collapsing onto roads once worn smooth by mortal feet. Cities had screamed as stone turned to dust, as towers folded into themselves, as prayers were buried beneath rubble and fire.
Now, the world sang only for the dead—its voice low and trembling, a dirge carried by the wind through ruins that no longer remembered laughter.
Children no longer ran through open streets. No songs rose at dusk. No human eyes would ever again behold a place where imagination alone was enough to survive.
The wildflowers were gone. Once, they had painted the land in reckless color. Now, only traces remained—crimson petals crushed into the soil, scattered and carried away by the wind like forgotten offerings.
Beneath her feet, hands reached upward, fingers digging into her ankles, voices breaking as they begged for mercy. She did not look down for long.
She learned, early on, how to shut the world out.
She blocked the sounds. The pleas. The choking cries of those already claimed by the earth. She stood still and waited, breath shallow, as if the ground might open and take her too—if only she stayed quiet enough.
Because she was human.
She had been born among them. Walked beside them. Bled with them. She had followed the same paths, fought the same wars, carried the same fragile hopes. Yet when the unknown crept too close, when fear outweighed familiarity, they were the ones who turned away.
Curiosity had never been a blessing to humanity.
So they clung to what they understood and cast aside everything else.
The world fell silent.
And yet, it continued.
She moved through it like a ghost long before she ever learned the word. From stone to broken stone, she followed the language of the land—the way the wind curled around fallen pillars, the way rivers still flowed as if nothing had ended. The air welcomed her with a stillness so complete it roared in her ears. Muted colors stretched across the landscape, dull and bruised, mirroring the quiet unrest that settled deep within her chest.
She walked carefully, always observant.
Every step felt like a negotiation between what still lived and what refused to rest. There was a strange grace to her movements—not practiced, not intentional, but necessary. As though the world itself required balance, and she had been placed there to maintain it.
"Will you welcome them as kindly as you did me?"
The question left her lips barely louder than a breath. She did not know who she was asking—only that the world listened better than people ever had.
She did not cry.
There was no point in shouting into a land that no longer answered. She did not run, either. Battles fought in desperation left wounds no one could see, and she already carried enough of those. Her strength lay in her stillness, in the way she endured without demanding to be witnessed.
Under the watchful eye of the night, she whispered instead.
Her voice slipped into the dark like a gentle current, brushing against the edges of something unseen. In the spaces between light and shadow, something stirred—beings who existed beyond the reach of ordinary sight. They answered not with words, but with presence.
Above her, wings spread across the sky.
They were not the monsters of old tales, nor the beasts that humans warned their children about. They did not belong to the forests or the laws that governed magic and mana. They resembled humans closely enough to unsettle her, yet their forms shimmered with an unfamiliar freedom.
Spirits of the dead.
Cold to the touch, yet radiant in ways the living no longer were.
They did not judge her.
They did not recoil.
In them, she found a strange kindness—one that felt more human than anything she had been offered while alive. Unburdened by expectations, untouched by fear, they drifted freely through the ruins of a world that had rejected her.
She did not belong to them.
But she was not rejected either.
Apparitions lingered along riverbanks. Spirits nested within broken statues. Humanoid shapes emerged from shadows where objects had long since lost their purpose. None of them belonged to the world she had been born into. They came from elsewhere—from a realm across the seas, where death no longer held dominion, where the line between beginning and end blurred into something endless.
A world where immortality was not a gift, but a state of being.
Can one still be human, she wondered, when life and death stand this close together?
The question followed her into her dreams.
Whispers clung to her like smoke—longing, regret, voices heavy with lives unfinished. They were not cruel. They did not condemn her. If anything, they prayed for the living more fervently than she ever had.
They were her companions.
Her family.
Yet even their presence could not erase the ache of exile. She stood between two worlds, belonging fully to neither. The living feared her. The dead welcomed her—but could not replace what she had lost.
The demons noticed.
They circled her thoughts like vultures.
Give in, Whisperer.
Wage war.
Spill blood.
Kill them all.
Leave nothing alive.
Their voices were venomous, tempting her with certainty where the world had given her none. Humans, demons, beasts—what difference did it make anymore? Warmth faded from the living, while the dead—always cold—became her only source of light.
Still, she prayed.
For the souls that walked.
For the ones already lost.
"In this world of darkness," she murmured, "may you learn to see."
"In lands without color, may you find wonder."
"And among the dead, may you remember the miracle of a human life."
Even beyond death, the world welcomed her.
So she welcomed them in return.
Humanity had fallen—time and time again.
They waged wars and built nations, destroyed and created in equal measure. Demons and angels, bound together by contradiction. They lived. They died. And in between, they endured—forever unfinished, yet achingly beautiful.
They were human.
And so, the demons listened.
Perhaps that was why her words carried weight.
Perhaps that was why, somewhere far from ruined lands and whispering dead, a boy born beneath the clover sky would one day feel her presence without knowing her name.
"I will protect them all," she vowed. "Even if my body turns to dust, and my soul scatters to the wind. Nothing will stand in the way of this promise."
And somewhere beyond her sight—
Fate listened.