‘The world has fallen into a new war. All is now wastelands and fog. The world is dead.’

A blizzard raged on before me. Sat on my perch, high in one of the buildings of the desolate city, occasionally sipping from a hot mug, I repeated the events again in my head that led up to me being here.

It was supposed to be a war to end all wars, and certainly, it accomplished that task, at least for a while. There wasn’t any war for a long time after, because most people were dead, and the world was left a hellscape, filled with monsters and entities. The few humans left hid underground, to escape it all. Despite such a traumatic period, I know that there’s probably still wars being fought now. Outside of this snowscape I call home, where life thrives, war continues on. I wonder if one day the entire world will look like this, painted over in a coat of still lifelessness.

Sidonia, how I detest you. Hating someone can’t begin to explain how much I detest that woman; no, that being. It’s because of how much I owe to her, how much my people owe to her, how much I want to trust her, to follow behind her; but I know where that leads.

But what is better? Taking part in a terrible fate, or having no fate at all? This stillness, this inability to change anything, do anything, is it really better? I’m left to wonder here, for the rest of my life, wonder if the rest of the world will end up this way, or if something will change. For something to change the course of the world, a someone needs to be involved. That someone, must not be Sidonia. No, that someone must have some humanity, that glowing bright, squishy part of a soul, still intact, still innocent. People like this however, tend to be the weak among society with no agency to them. A person who possesses both, a just soul and ample agency, is the kind of material legends are cut from.

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Thinking of worldly, ideal people, can be so depressing. Because after all that fantasizing, comes the crushing realization that someone like that would never exist.

In the winds of the blizzard before me, I caught a glance of a figure moving slowly through the snow. Twin needles of purple extended from my temples, glowing brightly. I squinted, before sighing.

Another one of those monsters. Products of where, I couldn’t answer. Humanity? Through either direct or indirect means? It could be the case. Or perhaps God has sent down a new form of life, to punish man, or perhaps as his real image, an image tainted by what humanity has done.

Shrugging, the needles faded away, and my sudden clarity through the kilometers of blizzard winds faded with them.

Just over the drone of the blizzard, I could hear a crescendo of piano notes. The same eleven notes that have repeating for the past ten thousand years. However, on occasion, every thousand or so years, an additional few notes would be appended to that melody. Now, was one of those times. I look out across the city, still unsure of where that song came from, and took a sip from my mug.

“Perhaps somewhere in the world…A curtain rises.”