Rain whispered gently across the deserted bus station, cloaking everything in a melancholy mist. Overhead, the sky—a deep, brooding blue-black—rumbled softly, like a predator purring in amusement. The ground was a fractured patchwork of tiles and worn cement, littered with puddles born from both neglect and decay, each a quiet testament to what had been lost.
"Hah." The low exhale slipped from the lips of a young man slouched in a rusting chair beneath the station's cracked awning. Rain streamed through the broken roof, soaking his long black hair until it clung to his pale face like mourning veils. He wore a tattered brown leather shirt and mismatched trousers, riddled with holes like forgotten memories. Around his neck hung a tarnished silver necklace, and resting on his narrow lap was a dull silver helmet—its gleam long since devoured by time.
He slowly tilted his head upward, eyes the color of midnight, vacant and listless. His face bore the hollow expression of someone long acquainted with despair—drawn, fatigued, untouched by hope. After a moment, he lowered his gaze to his torn blue sneakers, toes poking through like exiled fragments of dignity. His lips parted, barely above a whisper. "So this is it... Is this where I die?"
"Is this where my story ends? In a forsaken bus station, soaked in sorrow and silence?" His laugh came soft—bitter, broken—as quiet tears carved unseen paths down his cheeks. This was him. Stripped bare. A failure. A forgotten whisper in the storm. A hollow shell, shaped by disappointment, sculpted by regret. Even if he could turn back time—no, he wouldn't. What would change? Nothing. Fate, once sealed, does not bargain. It does not listen to pleading. It merely watches, patient and cruel, as hope withers to dust.
"Looking back, perhaps I should've died back then. Maybe clinging to everything—to the illusion of purpose, of meaning—was what led me here. Maybe if I'd followed Jack's path, done what he had done, I wouldn't be rotting at the edge of my story. But what could a man do? So little, really. I had swallowed the tales, devoured the movies, clung to the sermons of heroes, philosophers, and kings. So when the apocalypse began, I welcomed it. My life before had been colorless—wretched, really. But when the world fell apart, I felt... something. Hope, perhaps. A purpose carved from chaos. When I awakened my first ability, I thought I'd ascended. I truly believed I mattered. That I'd touched happiness for the first time.
But life is cruel—merciless and impassive.
Suddenly a flash split the sky, carving a jagged streak of cobalt across the heavens. Thunder murmured in its wake, like distant drums heralding an unseen legion. The ground before him trembled, loose stones leaping ever so slightly, as though sensing the inevitable charge.
The young man lifted his head. He could do nothing but watch as they approached—his eyes now void, stripped of purpose, emptied of hope.
Then, a laugh. Raw, ragged, tinged with madness. "Hahaha... Even now, I am still thinking of that. Am I truly insane?"
Saying so he rose. Slowly, deliberately. The silver helmet found its place atop his soaked hair, its weight familiar. His hands searched beside him, fumbling until they found the worn hilt of his sword. He drew it free—the blade rusted, the edge dulled by time, yet it still held a quiet strength, a silent defiance.
One last glance.
Then he stepped forward into the storm, fingers tightening around the hilt, eyes flickering with a faint yet fierce fire as he slowly said-
"Even if I die a piece of shit" he murmured, "at least I'll die a defiant one."