Slow Rot

The rot had not come all at once.
It never does.

Los Angeles—and all of California with it—had not fallen to fire or war first, but to applause.

For years, the city had been ruled by smiles and slogans. Press conferences replaced planning. Committees replaced action. Politicians stood at podiums congratulating one another for progress that existed only on screens, while beneath their feet the real city quietly unraveled.

They praised themselves for compassion while the streets cracked.
They celebrated reform while the power grid failed in rolling waves.
They announced bold visions while water pipes burst, bridges weakened, and emergency systems aged into irrelevance.

Every failure was reframed as success.
Every warning dismissed as fear-mongering.

Money vanished into programs no one could audit. Infrastructure budgets were redirected into endless studies, advisory councils, and public messaging campaigns that promised a better tomorrow—always tomorrow, never now.

And when the lights went out for the first time, people waited.

When the trains stopped running, they adapted.

When food shipments slowed and hospitals overflowed, the city was told it was a temporary inconvenience, a necessary sacrifice for a greater good.

By the time the truth became undeniable, it was already too late.

Those with means fled first.

They packed up quietly, leaving behind empty homes and darkened offices. Private planes lifted off at night. Convoys rolled east. The city barely noticed at first—until entire neighborhoods hollowed out, businesses shuttered, and tax revenue collapsed like a sandcastle at high tide.

The rest were left to fend for themselves.

Scarcity turned neighbor against neighbor.
Fear turned ideology into weaponry.
Every disagreement became existential.

The media—still broadcasting, still smiling—framed the chaos as “growing pains.” But on the ground, it was survival. Lines formed for water. Gangs claimed territory. People barricaded themselves inside apartments that slowly became tombs.

Police response slowed. Then stopped.

When protests erupted, they weren’t about solutions anymore—only rage. Rage at institutions that had failed. Rage at anyone who looked different, thought differently, believed differently. The social fabric, stretched thin for decades, finally tore.

The politicians kept talking.

They patted themselves on the back for resilience, for unity, for leadership—long after their motorcades had stopped driving through the neighborhoods they governed. Long after the city began to burn in earnest.

Los Angeles didn’t collapse in a single night.

It turned inward, devouring itself.

By the time the underground became the only refuge, the city above was no longer a place—it was a warning. A monument not to disaster, but to arrogance. A reminder that civilizations don’t fall because of enemies at the gates, but because of decay at the core.

And now, as hooded figures moved through the tunnels beneath the ruins, as Maren watched from shadows and Silen felt the hum of something older than the city itself, the truth lingered like smoke:

The world hadn’t ended when the infrastructure failed.
It had ended when trust did.

Above ground, Los Angeles smoldered—an empty shell full of echoes.

Below ground, what remained of humanity decided whether it would repeat the cycle…
or finally break it.