** the past**

The world had not always been like this.and she wasn't always like this,always running until she was 5. When the apocalypse happened. Before she was 5 . Before everything happened before her parents suddenly death.

Once, there had been light. Cities that shimmered with golden towers, rivers that ran clear as glass. The sky had stretched wide and endless, untouched by the weight of something unseen. Laughter had carried through the air, music had lived in the streets, and the night had not been something to fear.

Now, the echoes of that world were gone.

The ruins stretched for miles, remnants of steel and stone twisted into grotesque shapes. Shadows crept along the broken streets, clinging to the hollow husks of buildings that had once pulsed with life. The air was thick, heavy, tainted with something unspoken. A scent of burnt earth and old blood. A silence that pressed against the bones, settling deep into the marrow.

No one spoke of how it had happened—not fully.

There were whispers, of course. Tales passed from trembling lips, woven in the dark corners where firelight flickered against cracked walls. Some said it had been a war, one unlike any before it, a clash of forces too great for mortal hands to wield. Others spoke of a curse, something old and forgotten, unearthed from where it should have remained buried. And then there were those who did not speak at all, their silence louder than any story.

But one thing was certain—

It had not been natural.

The sky had burned first.

A rift, they said. A wound torn into the heavens, bleeding light that was not light. The stars had flickered and died, swallowed by something that pulsed, alive and endless. The sun had turned red, then black, casting the world into a dusk that had never lifted.

Then the ground had followed.

Cities crumbled overnight, swallowed whole by darkness that slithered up from beneath the surface. The land cracked, splintered, opened into voids where nothing remained. And the air—thick with screams, with prayers, with the last, desperate breaths of those who had not yet understood what was happening.

And then, the silence.

Not the quiet of peace, but of something unfinished. Something watching.

Those who had survived did not know why. There had been no mercy, no logic, no pattern to who had been left standing and who had been erased. And yet, some remained. Wandering the remnants of a world that no longer felt like their own, searching for answers in the ruins of a forgotten age.

But the past had sharp edges. And the deeper they dug, the more they found pieces that did not fit.

The statues that still stood in places untouched by time, their faces worn smooth but their presence unwavering. The symbols carved into shattered walls, glowing faintly in the dark as though whispering secrets long lost. The bones buried in the dust, untouched by decay, as if time had simply… stopped.

And beneath it all, the feeling.

That they were not alone.

Something had survived the fall. Something that barely breathe, barely speak, barely sleep. It lingered, hidden in the spaces between, waiting. Watching.

And no one knew whether it had caused the end—or if it had simply been born from it.

But one truth remained, heavy in the bones of those who walked this broken land.

The world had ended.

And yet, the worst was still to come.