Muji hunched over his drawing desk, the dim light of a salvaged desk lamp flickering slightly as the power grid threatened to give up. His pencil scratched rhythmically against the paper, adding precise, clean lines to a dramatic action scene on the latest page of Battle Blade Saga. The protagonist was mid-leap, katana glinting as he prepared to strike down a hulking beast twice his size.

Behind Muji, the real world was not so different.

The earth shuddered as a building-sized colossus, its rocky hide glinting in the pale sun, swung a massive stone hammer into the side of an equally gargantuan, snake-like monstrosity. The impact sent shockwaves rippling through the crumbling street outside, cars flipping like toys and windows shattering in cascading bursts of glittering shards. The crash sent a framed poster of Akira tumbling from the wall above Muji’s workspace, but he caught it mid-fall without even glancing up.

“Hmm. Needs more speed lines,” Muji muttered, returning the poster to its hook before scribbling in some furious, jagged lines around his protagonist’s blade.

The snake-beast hissed, lunging forward to coil itself around the colossus’s legs, squeezing with enough force to topple a nearby water tower. Gallons of water flooded the street in a roaring deluge, sweeping cars and debris in its path. A tide of brackish water lapped at the edge of Muji’s apartment, soaking the legs of a mannequin he used as a reference model.

Muji tilted his chair back slightly, raising his feet onto the desk as the water sloshed past. “Really wish I had that Wacom tablet,” he thought, blowing an eraser shaving off the page.

The colossus let out a guttural bellow as it broke free from the snake’s grip, swinging its hammer down in a blow that cracked the asphalt. The resulting tremor sent a bookshelf toppling over, spilling manga volumes across the floor. Muji clicked his tongue in mild annoyance.

“Not the One Piece shelf,” he said, bending to pick up a few scattered volumes. Setting them back in their place, he resumed sketching, completely indifferent to the carnage outside.

His pencil glided across the paper, sketching the sharp contours of his hero’s face. “If the deadline wasn’t so tight, I’d add more detail to the villain’s armor. Eh, maybe next time,” he mused. The sound of his pencil scratching was calming, drowning out the roars of battle echoing beyond his walls.

With a final stroke, Muji completed the panel and leaned back to admire his work. He felt the faintest twinge of pride as his hero stood triumphant over the monstrous foe, blade raised high, victorious against all odds.

From behind him came a thunderous crash as the snake-beast was hurled through the side of his building, its massive head smashing through the wall. Its glowing yellow eyes flickered as it lay sprawled across his apartment, bleeding and defeated.

Muji sighed, setting his pencil down. He turned, standing up slowly to face the enormous serpent in his living room. “Hey,” he said flatly. “Watch the paint. Landlord’s already mad about the cracks.”

The snake-beast groaned weakly, twitching once before going still. In the distance, the colossus lumbered off, apparently satisfied with its victory. Muji watched it go before shrugging and sitting back down at his desk.

“All right, two more pages before I can call it a night,” he said to himself, flipping to the next blank sheet.

The sound of pencil against paper resumed, a soothing rhythm amid the chaos.

Kallus floated above the shattered ruins of the city, his dark cloak billowing in the howling winds. Below him, his creations roamed freely—mutant abominations of claws and teeth, lumbering giants that crushed anything in their path, and swarms of buzzing horrors that devoured everything in seconds. The once-thriving metropolis now lay in smoldering ruin, its streets cracked and littered with rubble, its skyline reduced to jagged stumps of concrete and steel.

The world was quiet now, save for the occasional shrieks of the dying or the distant rumble of collapsing buildings. This silence, Kallus thought, was beautiful. Humanity had been a stain on the Earth, a parasite feeding on its host until nothing remained. But he had fixed that. He had freed the planet from its tormentors, wiping out nearly all of them with his grand design.

Nearly all.

His glowing eyes scanned the ruins with cold precision, his mind reaching out like a net cast into a dark sea. Among the chaos, he sensed the faint flickers of life—pathetic remnants of humanity clinging to survival in the shadows of their shattered civilization. A waste of effort, really. It was inevitable that he would snuff them out, one by one.

Yet there was one... one that eluded him.

He had felt it before, faint and infuriatingly calm—a presence that did not scramble for shelter or fight to survive. It had no fear, no desperation. In fact, it barely reacted at all. It was like a speck of dust on an otherwise flawless canvas: insignificant, yet maddeningly noticeable.

Kallus clenched his fists, his voice a low growl that reverberated through the empty air. “What are you?”

High above the ruins, Kallus extended a hand, his fingers twitching as he summoned his power. A storm began to churn in the sky, dark clouds swirling as lightning crackled within them. He closed his eyes, letting his mind focus on the presence that had lingered in his thoughts for far too long.

His lips curled into a sneer. There it was. That faint, infuriating heartbeat, steady and unbothered, coming from... that crumbling apartment building.

Kallus descended slowly, his feet touching the cracked pavement outside the structure. He raised a hand, and the wall in front of him disintegrated into dust, revealing a cluttered studio apartment. Inside, amidst the chaos of broken furniture and fallen debris, sat the source of his irritation.

A man.

Average in every conceivable way: average height, average build, average face. He sat at a desk, his back turned to the gaping hole in the wall, focused entirely on a piece of paper in front of him. His pencil moved with methodical precision, scratching faintly against the page as he worked on... drawings?

Kallus blinked. “This... is the last remnant of humanity?”

The man did not flinch. He did not even look up. He simply muttered to himself, something about panel spacing and action lines. Kallus stepped forward, his boots crunching over shards of glass and rubble.

“You,” he said, his voice booming with an authority that had made armies tremble. “Do you know who I am?”

The man paused, glancing over his shoulder. His expression was one of mild curiosity, as though Kallus were no more remarkable than a deliveryman at his door.

“Not really,” the man said, turning back to his drawing. “Hey, could you close the hole? I’m getting a draft.”

For the first time in centuries—perhaps in his entire existence—Kallus was stunned into silence. His glowing eyes narrowed as he examined this strange anomaly. This human, this... Muji, as he would later learn his name, was not afraid of him. He was not even annoyed. He simply... did not care.

“Do you have any idea what I’ve done?” Kallus demanded, stepping closer. His voice grew harsher, laced with frustration. “I have destroyed nations. I have unleashed horrors beyond imagining. I have ended humanity. You are the last vestige of a failed species, and I will see you erased.”

Muji scribbled furiously, adding details to a panel before responding. “Huh. Sounds rough, man.” He held the page up to the light, studying it. “Do you think these speed lines are too much? They look a little busy.”

Kallus’s hands twitched, his aura flaring with destructive energy. The temperature in the room dropped sharply, the walls around them creaking under the pressure of his presence. “Are you mocking me?” he hissed, his voice as sharp as shattered glass.

Muji set his pencil down, finally turning to face Kallus fully. “Oh, no, dude. You seem really... passionate. Good for you.” He gestured vaguely at the hole in the wall. “But, like, could you take it outside? I’m kind of on a deadline.”

Kallus’s energy flared, cracking the floor beneath his feet. His fury was like a storm, raw and uncontained, yet it rolled off Muji like a breeze. This was no defiance, no courage in the face of annihilation—it was pure, maddening indifference.

For a moment, Kallus considered obliterating Muji where he sat. One gesture, one thought, and this anomaly would be erased. And yet... something stayed his hand. Something he couldn’t quite name.

“I will return,” Kallus said at last, his voice a low growl. “And when I do, you will understand the futility of your existence.”

Muji shrugged, turning back to his desk. “Cool. See you then.”

Kallus stepped back, his form dissolving into shadow and lightning as he vanished into the storm outside. The wind howled, the ground rumbled, and the world itself seemed to recoil from his departure.

Muji sighed, brushing some dust off his desk. “Weird guy,” he muttered, picking up his pencil. “Now, where was I?”

He resumed drawing, his focus unbroken, even as the apocalypse raged on around him.

Muji hunched over his desk as the first rays of pale, smog-filtered sunlight crept through the tattered curtains of his apartment. His workspace was an oasis of order amid the chaos. His pencils were sharpened to a uniform point, his inking pens laid out in neat rows, and the battered mannequin beside him held a scarf he’d once bought on impulse from a Kyoto street market. Outside, the guttural roars of monsters and the crash of collapsing buildings punctuated the morning.

It was just another Tuesday.

Reaching for his eraser, Muji glanced at the empty instant ramen cup perched precariously on the edge of his desk. He sighed, pushing it aside with a practiced flick of his fingers. “Breakfast,” he muttered, standing and stretching as his joints popped like the rusted hinges of a forgotten gate.

He shuffled toward the kitchenette, a small corner of his apartment that remained functional by sheer stubbornness. The fridge hummed faintly, a miracle of survival that Muji suspected involved divine intervention—or whatever passed for divine in the apocalypse. Pulling open the door, he frowned at its barren contents: a half-eaten onigiri, a carton of soy milk past its prime, and a neatly stacked pile of energy drinks labeled in kanji he could not quite decipher.

The floor trembled beneath him as another distant battle raged, but Muji simply poured himself a bowl of cereal, stirring in the soy milk with the detachment of someone who had stopped caring about expiration dates years ago. He carried the bowl back to his desk, setting it down carefully as he resumed his drawing.

Today’s page of Battle Blade Saga was coming together nicely. His protagonist, Ryo, had just landed a devastating blow on the Shadow King, his katana slicing through a cascade of demonic tendrils. Muji tilted his head, squinting at the hero’s expression. It needed more grit, more fury. He reached for his pencil, lost in the process.

The neighborhood surrounding Muji’s apartment had once been a bustling district of Tokyo. Now, it was a graveyard of bent steel and crumbling concrete. Trees, gnarled and twisted by radiation, grew through abandoned cars. Shards of broken glass glittered like morbid confetti beneath the faint glow of neon signs that still sputtered to life at night.

A ramen cart stood defiantly at the end of the street, its proprietor a hulking figure with two extra arms and a face that was more lizard than man. Tsuru, as he called himself, had been a chef before the world ended and had decided to continue serving food even if his clientele had dwindled to desperate scavengers and the occasional mutant.

Muji often stopped by Tsuru’s cart for dinner, the apocalyptic equivalent of dining out. “You’re late today, Muji-san,” Tsuru would grumble, ladling steaming broth into a bowl. Muji would shrug, always bringing a new page to show off, much to Tsuru’s disinterest.

High above the ruins, Kallus stood atop the shattered remains of a skyscraper, his cloak flaring dramatically in the windless air. He gazed down at the city, his glowing eyes narrowing as he tracked the faint signal of Muji’s existence.

The scene before him was everything he had envisioned. Fires burned unchecked, their smoke curling into the atmosphere like offerings to a wrathful god. Mutant beasts roamed the streets, remnants of his unleashed chaos. And yet, in the midst of this perfect destruction, there was him. That maddeningly indifferent artist.

“What compels you to persist?” Kallus murmured, his voice carrying a bitter edge. “What meaning can there be in creation when the world itself is dust?”

For weeks, Kallus had watched Muji from afar, hoping to understand him. Each attempt to provoke him had been met with the same impenetrable apathy. He had destroyed entire city blocks near Muji’s apartment. He had sent swarms of his creatures to surround the building. Once, he had even attempted to personally confront the man—only to leave, humiliated, as Muji dismissed him with a few words and went back to sketching.

Kallus raised a hand, summoning a storm from the broken heavens. Lightning arced down, striking the rubble below with deafening force. A beast, one of his towering creations, lumbered past, letting out a guttural roar that echoed through the streets.

Still, he knew it wouldn’t be enough. Nothing he unleashed seemed to matter to Muji. The thought made Kallus’s hands clench, his aura flickering with restless energy.

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Back in his apartment, Muji finished another panel, holding it up to the light with a satisfied smile. He carefully placed it in a folder, setting it aside with the other pages of his latest chapter. His editor—assuming the man still existed—was likely wondering how Muji was still meeting deadlines when most of their colleagues had been vaporized.

The truth was simple: Muji had decided long ago that the world’s chaos didn’t matter. Life had been messy before the apocalypse, full of deadlines, disappointments, and minor victories. The monsters and destruction were just a louder, more dramatic version of the same noise. Drawing manga grounded him, gave him purpose. It was enough.

The sound of shattering glass interrupted his thoughts. A shadow fell across the apartment, blocking out the dim sunlight. Muji looked up, unsurprised to see Kallus standing in the hole where his window had been.

“Hey, you’re back,” Muji said, grabbing a pencil. “Hold on, I’m working on something. Be right with you.”

Kallus stepped inside, his presence heavy and oppressive. The temperature in the room plummeted, frost creeping along the edges of Muji’s desk. “Do you ever cease?” Kallus growled.

“Cease what?” Muji asked, genuinely puzzled.

“This... this mockery of existence!” Kallus snapped, gesturing to the scattered manga pages. “You persist in your trivial pursuits while the world crumbles around you.”

Muji tilted his head, considering the statement. “I mean, yeah. What else am I gonna do?”

Kallus’s aura flared, his voice shaking the walls. “You are the last remnant of humanity! Your kind is extinct, your cities are ashes, and yet you—you—choose to waste your final days on this meaningless drivel!”

Muji turned back to his desk, casually sketching. “I think it’s pretty good, actually. Want to see?”

For a moment, Kallus faltered. His glowing eyes flickered as he gazed at the page Muji held up. The drawing was rough but vivid: a hero, battered and bloodied, standing against an overwhelming force of darkness. There was something hauntingly familiar about it.

“Why do you continue to create?” Kallus asked, his voice quieter now. “What purpose does it serve?”

Muji shrugged, setting the page down. “It makes me happy. And if the world’s ending, might as well go out doing what I like.”

The simplicity of the answer was infuriating. Kallus, destroyer of worlds, the architect of humanity’s extinction, found himself utterly defeated—not by unwavering defiance or strength, but by Muji’s unwavering indifference. He stepped back, his form dissolving into shadow as he prepared to leave.

“I will return,” Kallus said, his voice cold and distant. “You cannot ignore me forever.”

“Okay. Later,” Muji replied, already reaching for a new sheet of paper.

As the storm outside swallowed Kallus, Muji leaned back in his chair, staring at the blank page before him. The sound of pencil on paper resumed, steady and unbroken, as he sketched the next scene of his story.

The morning was uneventful, by Muji’s standards.

Somewhere in the distance, a skyscraper collapsed, the sound carrying over the ruins in waves. A siren, long automated and long ignored, blared faintly before sputtering into silence. Outside his apartment, the ground shifted slightly—a tremor caused by some titanic creature moving about. Muji barely noticed any of it. His focus remained on the hero of Battle Blade Saga as Ryo stood atop the rubble of a fallen mech, preparing for a dramatic confrontation with the shadowy villain in the next panel.

The details mattered. The intensity in Ryo’s gaze, the slight fray on the edges of his cape, the careful balance of light and shadow in the foreground—each element had to be perfect. Muji worked methodically, his pencil scratching with rhythmic precision.

Behind him, the mannequin wearing the scarf wobbled precariously, its base shifted by the aftershocks of yet another distant explosion. Muji caught it with one hand without looking, returning it to its upright position.

“Stay put, okay?” he murmured to the mannequin as though it could hear him. His pencil didn’t pause.

He paused only when his stomach grumbled. Breakfast had been disappointing—stale cereal with suspicious soy milk. He decided he deserved a proper lunch. With a soft sigh, Muji set his pencil down, carefully stacked the finished panels of his manga, and slid them into a folder labeled with neat kanji: バトルブレードサーガ (Battle Blade Saga). He grabbed his jacket, which was perpetually draped over the back of his chair and made his way to the door.

The streets were a wasteland. Twisted rebar stuck out of piles of rubble like skeletal fingers clawing for escape. Mangled cars, some burned to hollow husks, lined the sidewalks. Here and there, strange, fungal growths sprouted from cracks in the asphalt, emitting faint glows in the dim light.

Muji navigated the terrain with practiced ease. The path to Tsuru’s ramen cart was one he knew by heart, even with new obstacles appearing daily. A toppled billboard now leaned precariously against a half-crushed convenience store. A patch of glowing blue sludge bubbled ominously, and Muji gave it a wide berth.

At last, he arrived. Tsuru’s ramen cart stood defiantly amid the ruins, its red paper lanterns swaying gently in the breeze. The mutant chef—a broad-shouldered man with scaled arms and four eyes—was humming an old enka tune as he ladled broth into bowls.

“Ah, Muji-san,” Tsuru greeted without looking up. “You’re late today.”

“I had work,” Muji replied, taking a seat on one of the rickety stools. “The deadline’s coming up.”

“Always the same with you.” Tsuru let out a huff that sounded more like a growl. “One of these days, you’ll have to admit the apocalypse is more important than your silly stories.”

“You know I won’t,” Muji said with a faint smile.

Tsuru set a steaming bowl of ramen in front of him. The broth was rich and fragrant, the noodles perfectly cooked despite the limited resources. Muji took a moment to appreciate it before picking up his chopsticks. He ate in silence, the world’s chaos reduced to a background hum.

A shadow passed over them, and both men glanced up. High above, a colossal beast stalked across the skyline, its insectoid limbs tearing through the remnants of a once-proud tower. Muji watched it for a moment before returning to his ramen.

“New monster,” Tsuru said gruffly.

“Mm,” Muji replied, slurping noodles. “Looks like it.”

“You don’t care?”

“Not really.”

Tsuru shook his head. “You’re a strange one, Muji-san.”

Muji returned to his apartment to find it mostly intact, which was a relief. A few of his Naruto volumes had fallen from their shelves again, but he quickly picked them up and rearranged them in chronological order. As he did so, a faint rumble in the distance grew steadily louder.

He glanced out the shattered window and frowned. The sky was darkening unnaturally fast, the clouds swirling in a tight, ominous spiral. Lightning crackled within, illuminating a figure at the storm’s epicenter. Muji sighed, rubbing the back of his neck.

Kallus was back.

The self-proclaimed destroyer descended from the storm like an angel of wrath, his cloak billowing dramatically as he landed on the cracked pavement outside. His glowing eyes swept the building, fixing on Muji’s window.

“Human!” Kallus bellowed, his voice shaking the very air. “Face me!”

Muji gave him a flat look, then turned away from the window. He grabbed his sketchpad, returned to his desk, and resumed drawing. He wasn’t going to stop for a man who shouted like he was in a bad tokusatsu drama.

“Do not ignore me!” Kallus roared. With a gesture, he unleashed a bolt of energy that struck the building’s facade, sending chunks of concrete raining to the ground.

Muji glanced over his shoulder, annoyed. “You’re gonna break my bookshelf,” he muttered, then returned to his work.

Kallus stormed into the apartment moments later, his aura crackling with power. The room grew colder as frost spread across the walls and floor. He loomed over Muji, the shadows around him writhing like living things.

“You mock me with your indifference,” Kallus hissed. “Do you not understand? I am the end of humanity! The harbinger of extinction!”

“Uh-huh,” Muji replied without looking up. “Cool story.”

Kallus’s glowing eyes narrowed. “Why do you persist? What drives you to continue your meaningless pursuits in the face of annihilation?”

Muji paused, setting his pencil down. He turned in his chair to face Kallus fully, his expression calm but serious. “You think it’s meaningless?”

“Of course it is!” Kallus snapped. “Your species is finished. Your world is ruined. What could possibly matter now?”

Muji leaned back, folding his arms. “You ever read manga?”

Kallus blinked, momentarily thrown off. “What?”

“Manga. Comics. Stories. You ever read one?”

Kallus scowled. “Why would I waste my time on such frivolities?”

Muji nodded as though he had expected that answer. “Figures. See, that’s your problem. You’re so obsessed with destroying things, you don’t get why people create. Stories aren’t just entertainment—they’re hope. They’re meaning. They’re everything you can’t take away, no matter how much you destroy.”

For a moment, Kallus was silent. The shadows around him stilled, and his glowing eyes dimmed slightly. “Hope,” he repeated, his tone dripping with disdain. “What good is hope in a world reduced to ashes?”

Muji shrugged. “Good enough for me.”

Kallus stared at him, the weight of his gaze almost tangible. Then, with a snarl, he turned and vanished into a swirl of shadows, leaving the apartment as abruptly as he had entered. The room warmed slightly, and the frost began to melt.

Muji let out a long breath, shaking his head. “Dramatic much?” he muttered, picking up his pencil. “Some people just don’t get it.”

He returned to his work, the sound of pencil on paper a soothing rhythm amid the lingering chaos.

Days turned into weeks, and the strange interactions between Muji and Kallus continued. The destroyer would appear, each time more determined to break the mangaka’s resolve, and each time he would leave, frustrated and defeated. Muji remained unshaken, his world revolving around his art and the simple pleasures of daily life.

Meanwhile, the city outside shifted and evolved. Mutant creatures established territories, scavengers formed makeshift communities, and the remnants of humanity clung to whatever scraps of normalcy they could find. Amid it all, Muji continued his routine, a quiet constant in a world of chaos.

Muji’s days were predictable. Every morning began with a quick sketch of the rising sun, though most days the smog swallowed it entirely. His sketches weren’t meant for anyone but himself—little warmups to get the pencil moving, the lines loose. Afterward, he brewed coffee over a small gas burner, sipping slowly as he reviewed the previous day’s work on Battle Blade Saga. He didn’t edit his art often—he trusted his instincts—but the small ritual of flipping through the pages helped him focus.

The apocalypse had done nothing to change his routine. If anything, the end of the world had freed him from distractions. No more social obligations. No one demanding meetings or complaining about deadlines. No neighbors hosting karaoke parties at two in the morning. The silence was, for the most part, a gift.

Until Kallus showed up.

The first tremor hit at exactly noon. Muji’s teacup rattled slightly, the ripples in the liquid forming concentric circles. He sighed, setting it aside just as the second tremor came, this one stronger. A framed illustration of Ryo toppled from the wall, and Muji caught it with one hand, his other still holding a pencil.

He didn’t even look up when the window exploded inward.

Shards of glass rained over his workspace as Kallus descended in a swirl of lightning and shadow. His armored boots struck the ground with enough force to crack the floorboards, and his presence filled the room like a choking fog.

Muji carefully set the framed illustration back on its hook, brushing off a bit of dust. “You again?”

“You will answer me this time!” Kallus bellowed. His cloak flared dramatically, though there was no wind to catch it. “I will no longer be ignored!”

“Uh-huh,” Muji replied, returning to his desk. “Hang on, let me just finish this shading.”

Kallus’s glowing eyes narrowed. “You mock me.”

“I don’t mock you,” Muji said, not looking up. “I just don’t care.”

This was the truth. Muji didn’t dislike Kallus. He didn’t fear him. He didn’t even find him particularly annoying, though the man had a habit of breaking windows. Kallus, in Muji’s mind, was just another part of the scenery—a particularly noisy storm that passed through every few days.

The destroyer of humanity, however, couldn’t fathom such indifference. Kallus leaned forward, his voice a low growl. “I have ended civilizations. I have brought the mighty to their knees. And yet you—you, a mere worm of a man—sit here, doodling as if none of it matters.”

Muji finally looked up, his pencil hovering mid-stroke. “First of all, they’re not doodles. They’re manga. Second...” He set the pencil down, folding his arms. “What do you want from me, exactly?”

“I want you to acknowledge me!” Kallus roared, the room shaking with his fury. “I am the architect of this world’s end. Your existence is an insult to my work!”

Muji raised an eyebrow. “You think the apocalypse is art?”

“It is perfection,” Kallus replied, his voice quieter now but no less intense. “A symphony of destruction. Humanity was a plague, and I cleansed it. I have given the Earth peace.”

“Doesn’t seem peaceful to me,” Muji said, gesturing vaguely toward the smashed window. Outside, two mutant creatures the size of buses were engaged in a brutal, snarling battle over a pile of garbage.

Kallus bristled. “The remnants are... imperfections. But they will be purged in time.”

Muji leaned back in his chair, considering this. “So why are you here? You’ve got your apocalypse. Shouldn’t you be off purging imperfections or whatever?”

Kallus didn’t respond immediately. His gaze swept the room, lingering on Muji’s drawings, the cluttered desk, the carefully arranged manga shelves. His aura pulsed faintly, a ripple of power that made the lightbulb above them flicker.

“You...” he said at last, “...are an anomaly.”

“Cool,” Muji replied, picking up his pencil.

Kallus’s hands twitched, as though he were resisting the urge to obliterate the man on the spot. He turned sharply, his cloak swirling around him as he moved toward the window.

“This is not over,” he said, his voice a low growl. “You will see the futility of your existence, Muji.”

With that, he vanished in a burst of shadow, leaving the apartment silent once more.

Muji sighed, brushing some broken glass off his desk. “Weird guy.”

Later that afternoon, Muji ventured out to restock his supplies. The small convenience store down the street had been reduced to rubble months ago, but the owner—a grizzled old man who somehow survived the initial apocalypse—still ran a makeshift stall amid the debris.

“Muji-kun,” the old man greeted, his voice raspy but warm. “Back for more pencils?”

“And ramen,” Muji replied, handing over a stack of scavenged batteries as payment. “You got any left?”

The old man nodded, digging through a crate and producing two instant ramen cups. “Last ones for today. Those mutants cleared out my last delivery truck.”

“Thanks,” Muji said, tucking the supplies into his bag.

As he walked back to his apartment, he passed a group of scavengers huddled around a fire. They were an odd mix—two humans, a mutant with insect-like mandibles, and what appeared to be a sentient blob of goo. They glanced at Muji as he passed but said nothing.

The city was full of such strange sights now. Where once there had been uniformity—suits and ties, office workers rushing to catch trains—there was now a patchwork of humanity and monstrosity, cobbled together in the shadow of the end.

Muji didn’t mind it. He had never been fond of crowds.

In a crumbling tower on the outskirts of the city, Kallus brooded. The room was bare, save for a single jagged throne carved from obsidian. He sat motionless, his hands resting on the armrests, his glowing eyes fixed on a distant point.

“What drives him?” he muttered to himself. “What gives him purpose when all else is ash?”

Kallus had seen many kinds of people in his time. The desperate survivors, scavenging for food and safety. The fools who tried to fight back, clutching their weapons with trembling hands. The zealots, who worshipped him as a god and begged for his mercy.

But Muji was none of these. He didn’t fear Kallus. He didn’t worship him. He didn’t fight or flee or grovel.

He simply... existed.

It was maddening.

Muji sat cross-legged on the floor of his apartment, sorting through his collection of manga. Each volume had survived the apocalypse in its own way—some with torn covers, others stained by water or ash. He handled them carefully, as though they were fragile treasures.

The stories mattered.

Muji had always loved manga. As a child, he’d spent hours lost in fantastical worlds, following heroes on their journeys and villains on their downfalls. The medium had shaped him, taught him how to see the world not just as it was, but as it could be.

The apocalypse hadn’t changed that. If anything, it had made the stories more important.

Because what was a story, if not proof that humanity had existed?

It was evening when Kallus appeared again, his form materializing in the center of Muji’s apartment with a crackle of energy. This time, he wasted no words. His hand shot out, and the sketch Muji had been working on flew across the room, torn to shreds by an invisible force.

Muji frowned, standing slowly. “Okay, now you’re just being rude.”

“You will stop this!” Kallus shouted, his voice shaking the walls. “Your art is meaningless in the face of my power!”

Muji didn’t flinch. He crossed the room calmly, stepping over the scattered pieces of paper, and picked up his pencil from where it had fallen.

“You can destroy my pages,” he said quietly. “But you can’t stop me from creating.”

Kallus froze.

For a moment, the room was silent, the air thick with tension. Then, slowly, Kallus’s aura began to dim. His shoulders slumped, the glow in his eyes fading slightly.

“Why?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper. “Why do you continue?”

Muji met his gaze, his expression calm. “Because I like it.”

Kallus stared at him, his mind racing. This man, this insignificant human, had no weapons, no allies, no hope of survival. And yet he stood here, unbroken.

Perhaps Muji wasn’t an anomaly after all.

Perhaps he was something greater.

Kallus left that night without another word, and for the first time, Muji wondered if he would return. The thought didn’t bother him. He had work to do.

Sitting at his desk, he began a new page of Battle Blade Saga. Ryo stood once again, facing down an overwhelming force of darkness. His expression was fierce, unyielding.

Muji smiled faintly, his pencil gliding across the paper.

Outside, the world remained a wasteland. But here, in this small apartment, stories still thrived.

And that was enough.