They Will Come

Aurelian moved through the wasteland like a dark flame against endless gray.
The night was a bruised sky, the moon a thin shard of bone.
Each step sent a small puff of ash curling upward, ghosts of the dead cities that once stood proud along this scorched stretch of California.

The heat of burning Los Angeles flickered on the horizon—a low, pulsing glow that turned the clouds a sullen red.
He walked toward it without haste, as if the fire itself were a slow-beating heart calling him home.

Wind keened through the ruins, carrying smells of iron and smoke.
Charred signs leaned like broken prayers: EXIT, HOPE ST., 5th.
Aurelian touched none of them.
His staff clicked softly against cracked asphalt, a rhythm older than the road itself.

Memory pressed close.
He saw faces of those who had followed him once—faces twisted in doubt and fear as they turned away.
They had not understood that hope must be carried through darkness like a hidden coal.
Let them doubt.
They would remember when the time came.

He passed the husk of a freeway overpass where vines clawed at concrete.
Far below, black water pooled in the underpass, reflecting firelight in trembling ribbons.
Crows shifted in the rafters above, their eyes tiny embers.

Aurelian paused.
Ahead lay the outer ring of the old city, where towers were now skeletons of glass and steel.
The air shimmered with heat from fires that never seemed to die.

He raised his face to the wind.
Beneath the smoke and ruin he sensed a faint stirring—movement of people who still breathed, still reached for something beyond survival.
Whispers of survivors gathering, of hidden circles waiting for a sign.

He tightened his grip on the staff.

“They will come,” he murmured to the wasteland, voice low but certain.
“They always do.”

The wind carried his words forward, weaving them into the hiss of burning metal and the crackle of distant flames.
And Aurelian stepped on, a solitary figure advancing into the blood-lit night.