'Holy…'
The metal dome had shattered. It now lay in broken pieces, cracked and curled like the husk of a dead beetle. Shards of metal stuck out from the earth like splinters.
Simon stood among the wreckage, still holding Anya. He couldn't speak. The world didn't make sense anymore.
District 6 was… gone.
Skyscrapers lay broken like snapped ribs. Fires crackled through collapsed homes, devouring entire histories. Blood painted the streets in heavy strokes. The air reeked of charred flesh, melted iron, and despair, while ashes drifted down like snow.
As he looked around at the way the skyline had been sheared in half, at the scorched bodies, the crumbling facades, and the flickering flames, something sank deep into his gut and refused to leave.
He swallowed hard.
"What in God's name happened…" he whispered, stumbling forward. His legs carried him numbly through the nightmare, each step weighted with disbelief.
Behind him, Ren was also struggling to stay in place. When Ren regained his balance, Simon passed Anya, limp and fragile, into his arms. He needed to clear the rubble for them.
Ren stood still, as if gravity had doubled. He too could not speak and simply stared at his surroundings. The earlier nausea had dulled, replaced by a cold that numbed him from within. He had stopped wondering about anything, because the more he wondered, the more questions came up.
Simon placed a hand on Ren's shoulder. He tried to smile, but his lips would not move.
"We have to find your mom…" he muttered, almost to himself. "Please, Lord… let her be okay."
Then he was gone again, clearing rubble with his bare hands, slashing open his palms on jagged stone. Blood smeared the ruins as he dug through them, piece by piece.
Ren followed silently behind, still holding Anya. Then, after a few meters, he saw him.
At the heart of the destruction, Anele stood alone in the clearing, breathing in the unnervingly calm and quiet air, with a severed head swinging lightly from his grip.
Ren's breath hitched as his gaze drifted from the head in Anele's hand to the woman's body lying at the man's feet, limp and headless.
'Mom…?'
Ren felt his knees weaken.
Beside him, Simon froze, his soul shattering at the sight.
"…No," he whispered at first.
It didn't sound like a protest. It sounded like a child begging the world to take it back.
"…No… you motherfucker!! I'll kill you!!"
Something primal broke loose inside him, and he screamed. He sprinted toward Anele, lungs burning and heart hammering against his chest.
Anele turned slowly, almost tired, as if this was not worth the effort. He raised a single finger.
And a bead of blood floated from the severed head to the tip of his finger. It hung there, silent and weightless, and then it fired in a red streak that tore through Simon's skull like paper.
Simon's body collapsed mid-stride, dead before it touched the ground, like a puppet whose strings had been sliced.
"What?…"
Ren took a step back. His body felt too heavy, as if it were not his. He had seen his mother's head in Anele's hand, a single green eye open, glassy, and lifeless. Then, a few seconds later, he saw his father fall to the floor, dead.
He could not breathe or think. His knees buckled and his arms trembled, locked around his sister as if she were the only thing anchoring him to reality.
There was pain in his chest, but even more confusion in his mind. His chest felt tight, his throat raw, as though he had screamed for hours even though no sound had come out.
But inside, there was nothing. No rage, no scream rising. Just a vast emptiness, as if the space where his mother and father should have been had been scooped out with a dull knife. He did not understand any of it, because this was not normal.
Across from him, Anele exhaled, tiredly.
"Humans…" he muttered. "Always reaching above their place."
He raised another finger, and another orb of blood formed, aimed directly at Ren.
But he did not fire immediately. He stared at the boy kneeling in the ash, his sister cradled in his arms.
Then Anele sighed and lowered his hand, and the orb of blood fell, splashing softly into the ash.
He walked up to Ren slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. He stopped in front of him and studied him, and Ren lifted his tear-streaked eyes to meet his gaze.
After a moment, Anele clicked his tongue and muttered,
"Tsk. So... you are like me. Born with affinity to water."
Ren did not understand. He did not know who this man was or why his voice sounded so calm, as if none of this mattered.
'What the fuck is he rambling on about now?'
Anele tilted his head, as if reading Ren's thoughts.
Then, calmly, he reached forward and seized Ren by the hair. With one brutal motion, he slammed Ren's head into the ground.
CRACK.
"Kneel lower," Anele said.
Pain exploded through Ren's skull. His jaw clacked, his vision blurred, and something deep in his neck popped.
Then Anele yanked him upright by the same handful of hair. He closed his fingers around Ren's throat and lifted him into the air.
Ren's feet left the ground. Anya slipped from his arms and fell gently, limp, into the ash.
Ren could not breathe. His mouth opened, gasping, but nothing came. His ribs spasmed, his legs kicked, and his throat burned. A scream tried to rise but choked into silence. His hands clawed at Anele's wrist, but it was futile.
"You're Rhesa's spawn," Anele growled. "I should kill you right now."
Ren's body twitched as red exploded behind his eyes. He felt something tearing inside.
Then Anele threw him, and his body smashed into a mound of jagged debris.
His back arched as pain carved down his spine. A shout rose but never escaped. His limbs seized, and his ribs screamed.
'Anya…'
The thought was faint and fragile. His fingers stretched toward her but barely moved.
Then everything faded to black.
He didn't hear Anele's last words:
"It's no fun killing you now. Your life belongs to me anyway…"
He waved a hand, already turning away.
"I'll claim it when you're old enough to make it interesting."
Anele looked down at the girl in the ash. She lay crumpled, small and silent, her limbs curled inward like something discarded.
His face twisted, not with pity but with disgust, as if the very sight of her offended something in him. He said nothing, just turned and walked away from the ruins of District 6, the head still dripping blood in his hand.
***
Minutes later, the ash still drifted, no longer like snow but like dust shaken from something ancient.
Then sirens howled in the distance, thin at first but then grew louder. A soft blue light blinked through the smoke as the Department of Civil Recovery arrived, their armored vans skidding into the ruins and kicking up clouds of soot and bone dust. Behind them, two black patrol units rolled in, each marked with the sigil of District 4's emergency task force.
"Sweet god…" a voice murmured as the doors opened.
Boots crunched against scorched gravel as uniformed responders fanned out, clutching scanners, med packs, and oxygen tanks. One of them, a woman with short black braids and a medic badge on her vest, stepped forward, hand to her comms.
"This can't be District 6. What the hell happened here?"
They didn't move quickly because the wreckage didn't feel safe yet.
Buildings leaned like drunks on shattered knees. The roads were torn apart, veins of broken steel and melted glass spreading like exposed nerves.
An officer in his thirties stared at the twisted remnants of a playground. His voice came out low, stunned. "No way anyone survived that…"
"Check anyway," the woman snapped. "Breathers, heat traces, anything. Just go."
They moved carefully, hesitant, eyes wide with disbelief.
None of them had ever seen a disaster like this. In fact, none of them knew Virans could do this. Sure, a few of them had worked with Virans before, seen them move concrete, bend infrastructure. But this? This was beyond anything the world knew.
"Base, this is R-2," someone spoke into their mic. "Confirming total destruction. The eastern dome is obliterated, nothing left but cratered steel. Visual confirmation of at least twenty corpses in the immediate radius. Smoke is too thick to get an accurate count, but it is bad. Real bad."
A different officer, older and lean with a streak of gray in his beard, stopped suddenly near a collapsed stairwell. "Over here!" he called.
The woman was already sprinting toward him.
Half-buried in ash and rubble lay two figures: a boy and a girl.
The girl was crumpled, pale as chalk, her limbs folded awkwardly beneath her.
The boy was barely breathing. There was blood in his hair, smeared across his temple. His face was swollen and bruised, but his chest rose and his fingers twitched. He was still alive.
"Get me a stretcher!" the woman barked. "I've got two juveniles, one conscious and one unconscious. Possible spinal trauma on the male."
Two responders rushed in with a collapsible stretcher and neck brace. As they lifted Ren, the girl was gently secured in a thermal wrap and placed beside him.
A moment passed as the woman crouched, peering at the boy's face. His expression was more than pain; it was emptiness, hollowed out.
His lips were parted as if he had tried to scream but forgot how. His lashes trembled, and his skin was cold.
His eyes opened briefly, then saw nothing, only the sky, the smoke, and the flashing light.
Finally, he slipped back into darkness.
"Where's the closest hospital?" one of the responders asked.
"District 4," the woman replied. "It is just across the ridge. The bridge to District 5 is still under quarantine, and it would take twice the time."
"But this is a District 6 case. Shouldn't we—?"
"I said District 4." Her voice didn't waver. "If we wait, we'll lose them."
She placed a firm hand on the boy's shoulder as the stretcher rose.
"He's got maybe minutes."
The responders moved quickly now, urgency setting in. Ren and Anya were loaded into the back of the van. A technician applied a pulse patch to Ren's wrist while another adjusted Anya's oxygen mask. Her chest rose weakly and slowly, but steadily.
The door shut and the engine roared.
And just like that, the only survivors of District 6 vanished into the smoke, carried toward the Platinum City, toward District 4.