Weight of Corruption

The unraveling of their empire was slow at first, almost imperceptible—like the first cracks in a dam long overdue to burst. The corrupt clung to their illusion of control, convinced that if they could just manipulate one more election, silence one more dissenter, or manufacture one more crisis, they could hold on. But the people had passed the point of no return. They had seen the truth, and once seen, it could not be unseen.

The cities were the first to fall. Once vibrant, now little more than decayed monuments to greed and incompetence, they became battlegrounds between a desperate regime and an ungovernable people. The media still called it “civil unrest,” still pushed the narrative of ungrateful citizens lashing out irrationally. But the people knew better. They had watched their savings vanish, their communities crumble, their freedoms stripped away under the guise of safety. There was nothing left to lose.

At first, the exodus was slow—families slipping away in the dead of night, heading for the countryside, seeking a life beyond the reach of tyrants. Then it became a flood. Towns emptied, businesses shuttered, and once-bustling metropolises became hollowed-out ruins. The corrupt, still clinging to power, sent their enforcers to maintain control, but it was like trying to hold onto sand. The more force they used, the more the people resisted. And soon, the enforcers themselves began to question who they were truly serving.

Governments collapsed under their own weight, their laws and decrees meaningless in a land where no one followed them. What remained were pockets of survivors, scattered across the land, forging a new existence from the ruins of the old. It was not easy—nothing worth rebuilding ever was—but the process had already begun.

In the abandoned towns and shattered cities, nature began to reclaim what had been stolen from it. Vine-covered buildings stood as silent tombs to a fallen order, their broken glass and crumbling walls reminders of a past no one would mourn. But in the countryside, in the hidden valleys and distant mountains, something new was being built. Not a return to the past, but a future forged by those who had endured the worst and refused to be broken.

It would take decades before all could be rebuilt. Before new towns rose where old ones had fallen. Before roads and bridges were restored, not by corrupt hands seeking profit, but by those who would walk them freely.

But make no mistake—it had begun.