Fragile Beginnings

In the early days of the second civil war, the cities lay broken, hollowed-out remnants of what once pulsed with life. Glass towers stood like fractured bones, smoke curling from their shattered spines. Streets were silent but for the wind and the occasional bark of gunfire echoing between crumbling concrete and rusting metal. The government had long since abandoned these places, leaving them to fester in lawlessness and ruin. Surveillance drones still buzzed overhead, but even they seemed weary—ghosts of a forgotten order.

It was just beyond these skeletal metropolises, in the thickets of dying woodlands and cracked farmlands, that the soldiers began to gather. They were not uniformed in the way armies once were—no polished boots or gleaming medals—just patched-up fatigues, mismatched armor, and eyes hardened by betrayal. They were exiles, volunteers, ghosts of a country that no longer existed.

The camps were rudimentary at first. Canvas tents stitched together from old tarps and salvaged banners. Fires burned low, more for warmth than for light—no one wanted to draw attention. Camouflage nets stretched over makeshift kitchens and comm stations pieced together from scavenged tech. Radios hissed and popped with coded messages from other cells hidden across the country. Leaders walked quietly among their people, not with barking orders, but with shared stories, plans whispered in low tones, and the heavy burden of responsibility etched on their faces.

From these fragile beginnings, a movement grew. Every day brought someone new to the camp: a mechanic from a burned-out town, a medic who had seen too much, a mother with no place left to run. They came not just to fight, but to remember what it meant to choose freedom over fear. The soldiers trained in the clearings at dawn and kept watch through the night, always aware the enemy could be anywhere—even in their midst.

These camps were the embers of something greater, a spark kept alive in the shadows. And though the world around them had fallen to madness, in these ragtag outposts, a quiet defiance took root. It would be from here that the resistance would rise—not with fanfare or glory, but with grit, sacrifice, and the conviction that liberty, even when buried beneath ash and ruin, was still worth fighting for.