The Year the Truth Died

It began quietly, the way all great collapses do — not with an explosion, but with a whisper.

Screens flickered in every home, offices buzzed with news feeds, and people scrolled endlessly through streams of stories that contradicted one another yet all claimed to be the truth. The media had long since ceased to report; now it performed. Anchors smiled as the world burned, reading scripts handed to them by unseen sponsors and party loyalists.

The lines between reality and fiction blurred until no one could tell the difference anymore. Every crisis was spun into a weapon. Every tragedy, a stage.

“Trust us,” they said. “We are the guardians of democracy.”

But democracy had already been sold. Corporations had merged with politicians, and politicians had merged with their public image. The press became their sword, shaping narratives to crush dissent, rewrite facts, and brand those who questioned as enemies of the state.

When the markets crashed and food shortages began, the blame didn’t fall on policy or greed—it was turned inward. Neighbors accused neighbors. Families divided. Entire communities fractured under the constant drone of us versus them.

And in the cities, where the screens glowed brightest, the people were hypnotized. They marched not for freedom, but for vengeance—against each other, against ghosts conjured by their own outrage.

By the time anyone realized what had been done, it was too late.

The politicians, drunk on power, weaponized fear. “For your safety,” they said as surveillance expanded. “For unity,” they said as speech was censored. “For peace,” they said as the first shots were fired in what would become the Second Civil War.

The old republic fell in silence, replaced not by kings, but by bureaucrats and talking heads. The media became the throne, and those who controlled it—the new gods of perception.

And the people?

They clapped.
They cheered.
They shared their own chains online.

No one noticed the lights of the cities dimming. No one questioned when the water stopped running, when police vanished, when law turned into decree. They’d been told it was necessary—the price of progress.

By the end of that first winter, the Western world had eaten itself alive. Power grids collapsed. Trade ceased. Governments fractured. And amid the ruins of once-great cities, mobs ruled by the slogans they’d been taught to chant.

Those who remembered truth went into hiding. Some underground. Some into exile. Some, like Silen, carried with them fragments of old ideals, waiting for a time when the lies would no longer hold sway.

The world above forgot history. The world below remembered.