The Tyrants Who Lit the Match

Above them, massive holoscreens flickered faintly, still powered by backup grids. The faces of smiling elites beamed down even as their cities burned—a cruel irony. These were the architects of the downfall.

Men and women who had traded freedom for control, truth for influence, and the public trust for gold-lined vaults in offshore havens. Their lies were poison poured slow over decades, convincing the masses to see neighbors as enemies, to embrace laws that strangled their own liberties in exchange for hollow promises of security.

And when the cities ignited—when the mobs turned on each other and law crumbled—they fled.

Now the people above were trapped in a wasteland of their making. A kingdom of corpses and crumbling concrete. A world they helped create by buying into the deception.