In the outskirts of one of the last remaining human cities, a forgotten park rested beneath a canopy of broken stars. Time had carved silence into this place—rusted swings hung crookedly from fractured chains, stone paths lay cracked like dried riverbeds, and brittle trees stretched their withered arms toward a sky that no longer wept for the world below.
Beneath one of those dying trees sat a boy—not a child, not yet a man. A flicker of life in a place long dead. His name was Noah.
He didn't move. He barely breathed. Just sat, spine bent forward, elbows on his knees as if gravity itself had grown cruel. His hands hung between his legs, loose and empty. Shadows clung to his face, pooling under his eyes like bruises etched in permanence. His dark hair, messy and uneven, fell over golden eyes that caught the moonlight like candlelight in glass—fragile, flickering, but still burning.
He wasn't beautiful. Not in the way of stories or heroes. But there was something tragic in his stillness. Something delicate in the way he existed, like an old painting left to fade in the sun—still intact, but slowly disappearing.
Noah's lips parted. A slow, bitter exhale left him like smoke from a dying fire.
"…Haaa."
He stared into the sky as if searching for something. Or someone.
"I'm tired," he whispered. Not just physically—no, this was deeper. Bone-deep. Soul-deep. The kind of tired that had no end.
He ran a hand through his hair, fingers snagging on knots. His shoulders slumped lower.
"...Guess my birthday's tomorrow."
Another breath. Longer. Hollow.
"...I'm going to die tomorrow."
The words didn't carry panic. No dread. Just truth. Cold and matter-of-fact, as if he were announcing the weather.
The silence that followed was suffocating. Even the wind had nothing to say.
His eyes closed. His lips moved again.
"Mom… Dad… I miss you."
On the back of his right hand, a faint glow pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat. A symbol—clean, sharp, surreal. A floating island. The mark of the Chosen. Branded not by choice, but by fate.
Noah didn't know when it had appeared. Just woke up one morning, and it was there. Like a sentence already passed.
No one knew how the Trial to Awaken worked. The mark appeared, and within days, they came. The ones in black. Silent, faceless, efficient. They would take you to Anubis.
An island in the sky. A place no satellite could reach. No scout drone returned from. No human escaped.
It wasn't training. It wasn't war.
It was a graveyard.
They called it Anubis. Not officially, but the name stuck. The god of death. It fit.
Opening his eyes, Noah looked toward the city, to the lights flickering on the horizon like a heartbeat too weak to sustain life.
"The world abandoned us," he murmured. "Tomorrow's my last day."
His voice broke. Just for a second. He swallowed hard.
"Mom… Dad… I'm coming home."
He tried to smile.
He failed.
What came out instead was a brittle laugh—dry, sharp, and filled with something he couldn't name. Anger? Grief? Emptiness? It all blurred together. Something inside him cracked, and he let it happen.
In this part of the city, time crawled. Suffering was slow. The outskirts weren't bombed or burned—they were starved. Bit by bit. A slow erasure.
His parents had lived here. Fought here. Endured. His father worked the walls, sealing gaps against beasts and weather alike. His mother nurtured roots in artificial soil, growing crops too weak to taste of anything but water.
They'd died not from war, not from monsters—but from work. From being forgotten. Used up and discarded.
All that was left of them were ghosts and echoes in Noah's head.
A sudden sound. Footsteps. Laughter.
A family walked past. A mother, a father, a child clutching a ragged bear.
Noah froze.
The image stabbed through his chest, sharp and sudden.
And from the wound, a memory bled free.
---
Years Ago
"Noah! Noah! Food's ready!"
His mother's voice. Soft, full of life. Full of her.
"Coming, Mom!"
His younger voice rang out, warm and unguarded. That version of him still smiled with his whole face.
He set aside an old manga, its spine barely holding together, pages torn and water-stained. A treasure in their world.
Their home had been small—three rooms, one window—but there had been warmth. Laughter. He stepped into the kitchen, where the table was set with care. His mother stood by the counter, sleeves rolled up, face smudged with dust, eyes shining.
His father looked up from an old newspaper. "How are you, Noah?"
"I'm good, Dad."
His mother smiled. "Why are you two grinning like that?"
Then—
"Happy birthday!"
He remembered how she blinked, surprised—then smiled so wide it made everything else in the world disappear.
That night, they went for a walk.
He remembered the stars. The way the swings creaked. The way his mother's hand felt wrapped around his.
For a moment, it had all been perfect.
---
The memory faded. The present returned like a cold wind.
Noah stood from the bench. His joints protested. He was only fifteen—but he felt much older.
Tomorrow, he'd be sixteen.
The age when the mark activated.
The age when you were taken.
He began walking. Slowly. Through streets half-lit and broken. Neon signs flickered, casting sickly colors on shattered concrete. A place where rats and children competed for warmth.
The closer he got to home, the more the world decayed. Towering walls loomed in the distance—cold, steel boundaries meant to keep the beasts out and the poor in. The inner city glowed in the distance, untouched. Safe.
But out here, death was ordinary.
Noah stopped in front of a crooked house. Roof caved in. One window boarded. It wasn't much.
But it was his.
He stepped inside. The air was stale, touched by mold and time. He closed the door behind him, the sound echoing too loudly in the quiet.
The house didn't greet him. No voices. No warmth.
Just silence.
He moved to the cabinet. Opened it. Inside were government-issued energy bars stacked like bricks—survival, not sustenance.
He bit into one. It crumbled into dust in his mouth.
He sat.
Waited.
His watch ticked.
"Six minutes," he whispered.
His gaze drifted again to the mark on his hand. It pulsed faintly. Beckoning.
Another memory.
"People struggle because they believe in something better," his father had once said.
"Hope," his mother had added. "Noah, no matter what… survive."
His hands clenched.
The tremble faded.
Resolve took its place.
He looked up, golden eyes sharp.
"…It's time."
He stood.
Straightened his spine.
A breath. Slow. Final.
He looked around the room one last time.
"Happy birthd—"
The mark flared.
The air shimmered.
The light died.
And Noah was gone.
Just like that.
Like a whisper lost in the wind.