The world had been alive once, loud and restless, like a river rushing endlessly toward tomorrow. Cities pulsed with noise, markets thrived with chatter, schools buzzed with laughter, and the air carried the scent of progress and pride. Then, in the year 2030, silence began to spread like a shadow across the earth. It came not with bombs or fire, not with storms or earthquakes, but with something smaller than dust, invisible yet merciless, a virus that crept into the lungs of men and women and refused to let them breathe again. At first it was dismissed as another seasonal sickness, something manageable, something modern medicine would cage in a week or two, but soon, denial turned to dread. Streets emptied, shops closed, and fear became a living thing, whispering in every corner. Hospitals swelled like swollen rivers, overflowing with coughs, screams, and gasps that no machine could soothe. Death became a neighbor, familiar and unavoidable, walking door to door with cruel patience.
In those first months, twenty percent of the earth's population vanished. Entire neighborhoods fell quiet. Houses once alive with music, arguments, and dreams became tombs of silence. Sirens replaced laughter, and smoke from burning bodies blackened the skies. Families dug shallow graves with trembling hands, not for strangers but for fathers, mothers, and children. Governments staggered like drunks, too slow to act, too blind to see that their systems were nothing against the hunger of the disease. Food became scarce, medicine scarcer. People stopped shaking hands, stopped looking one another in the eyes, as if kindness itself had become dangerous. Masks hid faces, but not fear. The virus did not care if one was rich or poor, saint or sinner. It stripped away arrogance, leaving humanity raw and fragile, a species suddenly aware of its smallness in the vast machinery of existence.
I, Pema, remember it with a clarity that gnaws at my bones. I remember the way my husband's hands shook as he tried to comfort me, promising that it would pass, that the world had seen wars and plagues before, and always endured. His words were strong, but his eyes betrayed him. I remember the nights when I heard coughing in the distance, followed by silence that was heavier than thunder. I remember watching neighbors vanish, their doors sealed with red paint, warnings to all who passed. I remember the fear of touching my own sons, wondering if a mother's embrace could become their death. I remember prayers whispered with cracked lips, prayers that never reached the heavens. And I remember the day I stopped counting the dead because numbers no longer mattered when grief was everywhere.
The first wave did not just take lives; it took the illusion of safety. Humanity had always believed itself untouchable, armored by science, wealth, and civilization. But this sickness did not bend to laws or wealth, it did not stop for borders or kings, it walked freely across oceans, over mountains, into palaces and slums. The great cities became cages, airports graveyards of silent planes, schools deserts of empty desks. For the first time in centuries, humanity learned what helplessness truly meant. The world shrank, not in size but in spirit. It was no longer a planet of ambition, but a planet of survival, where every cough could be a death sentence and every touch a gamble with fate. People forgot birthdays, forgot festivals, forgot the sweetness of gathering, for gathering itself had become dangerous. The virus was not only killing bodies; it was killing memory, culture, and connection.
My husband, Rot, tried to keep hope alive. He lit candles every night, told our sons stories of when the world was bright, of schools filled with books and laughter, of markets where color and noise spilled into the air like music. He told Arin, my eldest, to remember, to hold onto the vision of life before the silence, because memory itself was resistance. But hope is fragile, and fear is sharp. When Rot fell ill, it was not sudden. It was slow, cruel, the kind of suffering that steals dignity one breath at a time. I watched the light in his eyes dim while my boys clung to my sari, asking if their father would survive. I lied to them, because what else could a mother do but lie when truth was unbearable? And then one dawn, he slipped away, leaving me with two children, a mountain of debt, and a heart that would never mend.
The sickness was merciless, but what came after was worse. Fear birthed cruelty. Neighbors locked doors against one another. Families abandoned their own at the first sign of fever. Bodies lay uncollected in streets because no one dared to touch them. The living began to fear the living more than the dead. Humanity fractured under the weight of its own terror. Those who had wealth built walls, hoarded supplies, and hired guards, while those without begged and starved outside their gates. Compassion became rare, kindness dangerous, trust extinct. The virus killed twenty percent of humanity, but fear killed something greater — it killed faith in each other. And without faith, the world was not just dying, it was rotting.
Arin was still a boy then, but already his eyes carried the weight of a man. He did not cry often, though I knew he wanted to. He watched the world with a quiet sharpness, as if he was memorizing every detail, as if knowledge itself might protect him. Blue was younger, softer, still innocent enough to ask why people were not coming back once they went to the hospital. He cried when he was hungry, he cried when he was afraid, and I held him tighter each time, even when I feared my own arms might be unsafe. My sons were my only reason to keep breathing. If not for them, I might have followed Rot into the dark. But children are anchors in the storm; they bind you to the world, even when the world is crumbling.
By the end of the first wave, the earth was quieter than it had ever been. Markets stood abandoned, schools frozen in silence, playgrounds rusted in stillness. Rivers ran clear because factories no longer spewed smoke, skies turned blue again because cars no longer roared, but none of it felt like beauty. It felt like mockery. The world seemed to say: see how quickly I can erase you, how easily I can heal without you. Humanity, once arrogant and loud, had been humbled into whispers. And in those whispers, the seeds of despair and division were planted. We thought we had seen the worst. We thought the shadow had passed. We were wrong. The first wave was only the opening act of a tragedy yet to come.
The chapter ends not with hope but with dread. Pema closes her eyes, her voice trembling as she whispers into the silence: "That was only the beginning. The first shadow. The first cut. The world thought it had survived. But what came next would carve deeper, bleed longer, and change us forever."