It had been fifteen years since the world had changed forever, and Ryu had never witnessed the era before the collapse. The old folks spoke of its beauty, of skies unbroken and lands unscarred, but whether their memories were truth or illusion, he could not be certain. Civilization had crumbled under its own hubris—cities reduced to skeletal remains, forests burned or overrun by decay, machines abandoned to rot in the wastes.
Around him stretched what remained of the old world—a scavenger's graveyard. Rusting drones lay half-buried beside twisted machine parts, scattered like bones across the soil. Shattered concrete blocks, once walls and towers, had sunk into the earth over the years, swallowed by mud and time. People picked through the wreckage daily, stripping wires, bolts, and scraps to sell for a few coins. The acrid smell of corroded metal and rotting weeds clung to the air, seeping into his lungs with every breath.
Ryu kept his head down, the hood of his tattered hoodie pulled low over his face, wary of every shadow. The scavengers around him still spoke of blue skies and green forests, but such things belonged only to fading memory.
Gradually, he raised his gaze to the dimming sun. His eyes caught movement above: a squad of six Watchers patrolling the sky, armed and mobile, looking down with disdain at the squalor below. This was the lowest slum, once called Kawa no Uta, the Land of River and Music. Now it carried a darker name. To the world above, it was Inferno—a place whispered to be the cradle of the damned, where only cursed souls were fated to be born.
With a sharp breath, Ryu pulled his hood tighter and broke into a run, pushing his weary body forward with all his strength. His steps pounded against the broken earth, carrying him toward the only haven he knew—home, where his mother waited.
The crooked door creaked as he pushed it open, the sound swallowed by the stillness within. The air inside was warmer, carrying the faint scent of herbs and worn fabric instead of rust and decay. Here, the noise of the scavengers and the Watchers' hum faded away, as though the world itself had paused at the threshold.
For a moment, the weight of Inferno seemed to lift. His mother's voice, gentle yet tired, called from the small corner that served as their kitchen. This broken shelter, patched with scavenged scraps and dimly lit by a dying lantern, was his heaven. Every coin he earned from scavenging wires and broken parts, he tucked away carefully, saving bit by bit to one day mend its walls and roof. It was slow, almost hopeless work, but it was his way of fighting back—his quiet promise to give his mother a home that felt less like a ruin.
Jāti stepped out of the kitchen as the door closed behind him. Ryu didn't meet her gaze; he simply tried to slip past her toward his room. But a mother's eyes miss nothing. She caught his arm and, with gentle insistence, pulled back the hood that shadowed his face.
Her breath hitched. A thin line of blood trailed from his nose, and a red mark burned across his cheek. Pain flickered in her eyes—pain sharper than if she had been struck herself. Seeing her boy hurt again tore at her heart, yet before she could speak, Ryu forced a smile.
"See, Mom? I'm alright. It doesn't even hurt. I'm strong now."
His voice wavered between defiance and reassurance, a fragile shield meant to protect her more than himself.
Ryu had always been different, ever since the day he was born. Not in ways the world admired, but in ways it scorned. His skin was brown, his features plain in a place where beauty was a shield, and for that alone the other children found endless excuses to bully him. In school, on the streets—anywhere he went—they never missed a chance to remind him of his place, their fists and words branding him as less than human.
She gently applied medicine to his wound, her mind drifting to memories of the time before the Fall—wondering how quickly everything had gone wrong. People had once believed in peace, yet the rulers' greed for power consumed the world.
The victors of that age were no longer called nations, but Echelons—Valeria, Kronis, and Nyxara. They had crushed the world with fire and steel, and in the ashes built empires where freedom was no more than a rumor. Their Watchers still circled the skies, reminders that survival itself was mercy granted by distant masters.
Even now, fifteen years later, the scars of those wars remained. Ryu's world was one of ash, metal, and silence, broken only by the hum of machines overhead.
"Is dinner ready, Mom?" he asked quietly.
She looked up from the small stove and replied gently, "It's almost ready, my boy. Go change and come."
Under the glow of a yellow bulb, with faint music crackling from a battered cassette player in the corner, they sat close together, sharing a simple meal of corn soup and boiled eggs. The cassette player, one of the few relics from the old world that still worked, played the same fading melody—a reminder of a time before the Fall, when music carried hope instead of sorrow. For Ryu and his mother, it was more than music; it was memory, and for a moment, it made their broken home feel alive.
As they ate, his mother's eyes softened, though her tone carried worry.
"Where was your friend when you were being beaten today?"
Takumi Morita—Ryu's one and only friend. The two of them had walked through heaven and hell together, bound by a loyalty few others could understand.
"Takumi left earlier today," Ryu said between sips of soup. "His dad came by to sell some of the scavenged parts." He hesitated, then added with a small spark of excitement, "Oh, and tomorrow… me and Takumi will be going up the hill after class."
The night slowly faded as their little home grew quiet. Ryu lay down on his cot, the dim lantern flickering until it went out. The faint crackle of the cassette player's melody lingered in his mind, drifting with him into dreams where the ruins of the world faded, and for a moment, hope and warmth returned. Before long, sleep claimed him, wrapping him in a rare and fragile peace.