"Sin begets Sin"
They say dying is peaceful.
But I don't remember peace.
I remember regret.
My name was Icaris. Not that it mattered in the end.
I wasn't a hero. I wasn't a soldier. I wasn't anyone you'd remember. Just another young man who thought the world was something to explore, not endure. I'd seen enough postcards and pixels to know no place was truly untouched anymore.
But I went anyway.
While others posted photos, I chased the wind. I spent the last years of Earth backpacking across its last frontiers—alone. Not to escape, not really. Maybe I was looking for something to hold on to, or maybe I just didn't know how to stop moving.
I told myself I was free.
But even freedom feels fake when the world starts dying around you.
It didn't happen in a day. The war built itself quietly, like a noose pulling tighter with each political thread.
Operation Clean Slate—the first domino.
Scourge Protocol—retaliation disguised as justice.
By the third year, no one knew who started it or why. The goal stopped being peace—it was survival wrapped in pride.
They called the final strike Heaven's Mirror—rods from orbit, silent and divine in how final they were.
Earth cracked like an egg under a god's thumb.
And then the moon.
They said it shattered from gravitational trauma.
I didn't need science to understand what I saw: our last dream dying in the sky.
I stood on a frozen peak when it happened. The wind tore at my coat, my skin. The sky turned red. The clouds caught fire. The ground trembled beneath my boots.
I didn't scream. Didn't pray.
Just… watched.
Ash fell like snow.
And in that moment, the only thing I felt was unfinished. Not scared.
Just not done.
I had always wanted to go farther. Deeper. Higher. To escape the noise. The rules. The weight.
"If I had wings," I whispered, "I'd fly past the end."
That was my last thought.
And somewhere, beyond the veil of our world, something heard it.
Not a god.
Not salvation.
Something older.
A moth, ancient and vast, drifting in the folds between what is and what's forgotten, watched Earth's last breath.
It did not mourn the bombs, or the kings, or the cities.
It mourned the dreams—the quiet, nameless hopes of billions that never got the chance to become.
And it wept.
Its tears, bright and silver, drifted through the void. They clung to pieces of the moon's shattered soul. To memories left behind. To the spirits who still wanted.
And from them, something bloomed.
Not Heaven. Not Hell.
A new world.
Woven from grief, soul, and unspoken dreams.
Aetheryn.