The years passed.
Not many.
Just enough.
---
The world healed slowly, like a patient who had been cut open and left to bleed.
Forests crept back across the blackened wastelands.
Oceans calmed.
The sky no longer wept blood.
Cities rose again — small, fragile — stitched from scavenged memories and stubborn hope.
Children laughed again in the rubble.
Old songs were sung — not of war, but of life.
Humanity remembered how to live.
And in the quiet places, people whispered a name:
> "Kaela Wong."
> "The Last Flame."
> "The Savior Who Never Returned."
---
She watched from a distance.
A ghost wrapped in a tattered coat, her hair silvering, her steps slow.
She never approached the cities.
Never let them see her.
They deserved a world free of the past.
A world she no longer belonged to.
---
One cold morning, Kaela stood on a hill overlooking one of the new settlements.
Smoke curled from chimneys.
Children ran laughing between wooden houses.
Mothers called after them.
Soldiers, once killers, now built walls and schools.
It was not perfect.
It was not paradise.
But it was alive.
And that was enough.
Kaela smiled — a real, small, aching smile.
She could feel it now.
The Genesis Core — dead for so long — pulsing faintly against her chest.
Calling her home.
She sank to her knees in the cold grass.
The wind stirred around her.
She looked up at the sky.
For the first time in what felt like a thousand lifetimes,
it was blue.
Not bleeding.
Not broken.
Just blue.
---
Her last thought was simple.
> "It's enough."
And then —
like a candle flickering out —
Kaela Wong vanished.
No sound.
No struggle.
Just gone.
Carried into the earth, into the air, into the dream she had fought so hard to save.
---
Some said she died there, on that hill.
Others swore they sometimes saw her figure, far away, watching over the settlements like a silent guardian.
But in truth —
Kaela's story ended the way it had always been written:
Not with glory.
Not with fanfare.
But with quiet sacrifice.
A single spark, burning against the dark.
Until the end.
And even after.
Memorial of the Last Flame
Here lies the Spark who would not fade.
The hand that held the sky from breaking.
The heart that bled, so the world might dream.
She did not ask for songs.
She did not ask for thanks.
She asked only that we live.
And so we do.
Sleep well, Kaela Wong.
The stars remember you.
And we will, too.
The Stone of Memory
[Years Later]
[Location: Reclaimed Fields, near the ruins of the Wounded Wastes]
The fields had grown green again.
It wasn't the lush, untouched wildness of old Earth — scars still marred the landscape, black glass where firestorms once raged, strange flowers where reality had torn and healed crooked — but life had stubbornly returned.
At the center of it all stood a single stone.
Uncarved except for a spiral mark — Chains, Ash, Stars — worn smooth by rain and time.
At its base, someone had once scratched a few words:
"For the One Who Chose."
A small group gathered there under the wide, open sky. Survivors, farmers, soldiers-turned-healers, the descendants of those who had fought and bled in the final days.
Among them was a little girl with tangled black hair and bright, curious eyes.
She tugged on her grandmother's coat.
"Grandma," she asked softly, "who was she?"
The old woman smiled — a sad, faraway smile. Her face was lined with years, but her hands were strong, steady.
She knelt beside the girl, brushing her hair back.
"She was a spark," the old woman said. "A little one. Small enough to be blown out a thousand times."
She placed her hand on the stone, reverent.
"But she burned anyway. Burned against the dark. Burned when the world screamed at her to fall."
The little girl frowned, thoughtful.
"Did she win?"
The old woman chuckled quietly, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes.
"She didn't win the way you think. The world didn't go back to the way it was. It never could. Too much was broken."
She paused, her voice growing thick.
"But we're here, aren't we?"
The girl looked around — at the fields, the scattered towns, the sky slowly clearing of its old bruises.
She nodded.
The old woman smiled again — a small, proud smile — and pressed her palm against the spiral on the stone.
"Because of her. Because she didn't give up. Not even when everything was lost."
The wind stirred, whispering through the grass, carrying the scents of life — soil, water, growth.
And somewhere in that wind, if one listened closely — if one truly believed —
A voice could almost be heard:
"Keep going."
"It's your world now."
The little girl stood straighter, eyes shining.
The old woman took her hand.
Together, they left a small offering at the base of the stone — a handful of wildflowers, gathered from a broken world healing slowly under a new sun.
And they walked away, hand in hand, toward the future Kaela had bought for them.
[End.]