Volume 4 – Chapter 22: Fragments of a Fading Dawn

Date: September 28

Last 3 Days.

The wind nipped with an unforgiving chill when they left abandoned town remnants behind. The once familiar streets now just echoes of yesterday, broken windows and crumbling buildings standing silent witnesses to what had been lost.

Somehow, Kaito seemed to walk ahead of them. His feet strode purposefully, but his mind dwelt far beyond the road they traveled. Each step felt heavier like the weight of the world was upon him more and more with each hour. He could perceive Rika close behind, her steps not totally lost, yet following in pattern with his own silent understanding.

However, Kanna hasn't worded herself with them. Her face seemed preoccupied as if it had begun to let her fade away from the journey. She had always been the strongest of them, the one who vised through chaos with a quiet strength. But she seemed to have sunk her shoulders, and empty were her eyes with the dormant suffering of one long reconciled to coming fate.

Once again, they left graffiti behind them - their last words to the world. Now they had really nothing to say - just their steps and the howling wind.

Rika opened her mouth to say, "Do you ever wonder", right there in the silence, "if we're only running from something that we can't escape?"

SShe huffed as her shoulders slouched; Kanna's burdened voice seemed to recede with them, dark and heavy with something Kaito just could not place. "We can't run away forever." Sooner or later, we will have to run into it. We cannot run from the end.

The words bit into Kaito like a slap across the face. "We'll figure out how," he said to himself more than anyone else. "There has to be a way."

But deep inside, the man had long begun doubting the very idea of it. For how much longer could the group pretend that survival was still possible when the whole world had fallen apart?

Decrease the sun, and this attains the outer limit of the town where the last of the buildings gave way to wide-open fields. It was cracked and dry here; the earth was as desolate and empty as the future stretched out before them.

There, in the distance, a faint light flickered.

It was not much champion of the horizon but enough to send Kaito's heart racing all the same.

"Look," Rika said, motioning to the light. "Is that...?"

Kaito's breath caught in his throat. "A settlement," he choked, swelling disbelief into the words. "It has to be."

With newly ignited urgency, they quickened their pace seeking out the light. It was almost unreal, this idea that there was still something-someone-out somewhere still clinging to hope.

But the very neared that distance, the more he began to feel the ash of doubt settle in his chest. What were they walking toward? What if it was just another illusion, another empty promise of survival?

September 29 - Last 2 Days

The settlement, when they finally found it, was not what they had imagined.

The houses were makeshift and composed of scraps of metals and woods. But here were people. Real people. They tended their fires, mended burnt cars, and shared their meager food supply. They were not thriving, just surviving.

Kaito and the others were greeted by a woman whose hard features softened in her eyes. She was Nora, and she took them to a small hut on the periphery of the settlement.

"None too much, really," she said hoarsely from all the days of trying to survive. "But you can stay. For as long as you are able to st."

That night when they sat around a fire, Kaito was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of strange peace. Here, among not yet given into chaos, among people still fighting, he clearly felt.

Under the quiet hood of night, Kaito thought of Rika, Kanna, what life had been to them all. Perhaps it was the last place they would find, but at least it was something. It was small victory in a world where so much had been lost.

Tomorrow would be, he did not know. The future appeared as fragile as firelight dancing before him.

But they were alive now, and that was enough.