For All Its Ruin

The memory of 2020 still clung to the land like an old scar. What began as a single virus had unraveled more than health—it frayed trust itself. Lockdowns bled into bitter arguments, neighbors split along invisible lines, and each new year brought a deeper sense that the world would not knit back together.
Economies shuddered. Faith in leaders cracked. By the mid-2030s, tension finally ignited into open conflict, a civil war fought in shadows and sudden bursts of fire that left cities hollowed and silent.

Now, decades later, the echoes of those years lingered in every ruined treeline. The few who survived had scattered to remote hollows and wind-blown plains, wary of one another yet aching for connection they barely remembered.

Along a lonely dirt road, a single traveler moved through the amber light of late afternoon. Dust rose around their boots as the horizon revealed the faint silhouette of what had once been a city—broken spires and leaning towers, etched dark against a copper sky. A small pack rode their shoulders; a canteen swung at their hip. Each step was slow, deliberate, as though the weight of history pressed on every footprint.

The road was quiet but not lifeless. Wind stirred weeds through cracked pavement at the road’s edge.
Far off, the cry of a hawk cut the silence, a reminder that the world, for all its ruin, still breathed.

The traveler paused, gazing toward the skeletal skyline. Rebuilding would be brutal. Old rivalries still simmered beneath the ash, and trust—once so easily spoken of—would take years to earn.
But someone had to walk first. Someone had to reach the remnants and begin.

With a steady breath, the traveler shifted the pack higher and continued on, a solitary figure carrying the quiet resolve of those who choose to begin again when everything else has fallen away.