Volume 4 – Chapter 24: When the Sky Falls

Date: October 1

The day the world will end.

The ground trembled before anything had happened in the sky.

It was initially a very low groaning sound; almost like the earth itself had breathed for too long without exhaling. Dust rose from the crazed ground. Trees trembled. Somewhere else in the distance, an old transmission tower crumpled in on itself with a metallic scream.

Kaito tightened his arms around Rika and Kanna. The three of them huddled together under the battered structure, wrapped in blankets, breathing in time with each other.

Above them the sky fractured.

First, a thin scar across heaven formed, almost beautiful in its violence. Then another one, wider and brighter, until the entire sky looked like it was breaking apart at the seams.

And from those fractures, the first pieces of the meteor storm began to fall.

Not fireballs. Not comets. Shards-glowing, molten, hissing as they tore through the atmosphere.

Churning ground sending the circulating proximate impacts thrumming beyond. Roared the world-or rather a sound something deeper, more ancient than that. Like the sound of everything unraveling as one.

People screamed, scattered, ran for cover. But many stayed. Many stood their ground just as they had promised.

Kaito did not move.

Not Rika. Not Kanna.

"We're together," Rika said, voice shaking but certain.

"Together," Kaito echoed.

A great explosion detonated beyond the hills and transformed the horizon into a inferno wall. The pressure wave hit them seconds later and flattened their frail shelter around them while it hurled hot, dusty wind across their faces.

And still, they held on.

Still, they refused to let go.

Kanna buried her head against Kaito's side, trembling. He wrapped both arms around her and Rika, shielding them from the rain of ash that began to fall like gray snow.

Time warped, stretched, collapsed.

Minutes or hours could have passed.

The only thing Kaito knew was the very heavy weight of Rika's hand in his palm, the fierce pressure of Kanna's fingers on his shirt, and the sound of their heartbeats rocketing from the conclusion.

The sky burned.

The earth broke.

And yet, they still loved. Still, they lived-in the only way that mattered.

There was a still moment, just before the last wave hit.

The wind stopped. The fire dimmed. The stars above them were so broken and scattered they seemed to twinkle one last time.

In that suspended breath of the world, Kaito looked at Rika.

She smiled. Tired, tear-streaked, radiant.

"So am I," she said.

He crushed her lips beneath his, all caring and compassion, as if the world had ceased to exist.

And as the final light washed over them, there was no fear.

Only love. Only memory. Only the unbreakable, beautiful truth of who they had been.

Even if the stars themselves vanished, even if history forgot them — they had existed. They had mattered.

And in the end, that was enough.