On the Outskirts

The ruins of Los Angeles smoldered in the distance, a jagged silhouette of concrete skeletons and charred steel against the blood-orange dusk. Where towering skyscrapers once stood in defiance of time and nature, there were now only blackened husks—monuments to hubris, to collapse. Smoke still curled from the earth like ghosts refusing to leave, whispering memories of a civilization that had devoured itself.

But just beyond the wasteland, in the thickets of overgrown woodland that had crept back into places once paved over and forgotten, life stirred. Tents patched with tarps and stitched cloth huddled together like survivors of a storm. Makeshift fire pits flickered with stubborn warmth, casting dancing shadows on faces weathered by war and hardened by loss. These were the remnants of the Second American Civil War—soldiers without a nation, fighters with a ragged flag. Yet they were not defeated.

Among them were elders—those who had witnessed the fall firsthand. They bore scars, both seen and unseen, and they carried stories like sacred scripture. They spoke of betrayal by leaders, of freedoms extinguished one by one, of cities burning and neighbors turning on neighbors, all fed by lies and the poisonous drip of control masked as salvation. They had seen what came when people forgot who they were.

But more importantly, they carried hope. A battered hope, yes—but unextinguished.

Their children roamed the woods barefoot and wild, unburdened by the memories of the fallen republic. They listened with wide eyes as tales were passed from tongue to ear beside campfires. They learned not from textbooks but from the living pulse of the earth and the calloused hands of their parents. Where the old world had left them ruins, they saw foundation stones. Where silence reigned, they heard the call to rebuild.

These descendants—born in the ashes, raised in resilience—would inherit more than a broken land. They would inherit a mission. Not just to survive, but to restore. Not merely to remember, but to rebuild a nation worthy of memory.

In the still of the forest, above the distant hum of crickets and the occasional howl from the hills, a promise echoed—unspoken, yet carved into every soul that remained:

Freedom had died once.

It would not die again.