The lifting of the infiniti ship

The sewer grates opened like exhausted eyelids and the three boys emerged from the bowels of the city. Korrin, covered in dirt and dried blood, was the first to look up. The breeze outside, though permeated with smoke and ash, tasted like freedom to her. Beside her, Kaito gasped, still holding Yuki in his arms, fragile as a leaf.

Before them loomed an impossible silhouette: a ship. A gigantic silver structure, nearly two kilometers long, resting on retractable legs that stretched like roots over concrete. Its hull was intact, still clean from the creatures' siege, gleaming under a sky that burned.

Kaito: There it is...We made it.

But soon they understood that they had reached the last frontier of human sanity. In front of the entrance to the ship, a crowd was swarming like a desperate swarm. People jostling, shouting, fighting for space on the ramps that had not yet retracted. Armed soldiers were trying to maintain order, but their shouts were swallowed up by the mass hysteria.

Korrin looked around. Fathers throwing their children over other bodies. Mothers crying, pleading with officers. Young men with guns trying to jump across platforms. The heart of humanity had rotted at the most crucial moment.

Kaito shouted while still holding Yuki.

Kaito: Come on, before they close!

They were less than fifty meters from the ship when it happened.

A tremor shook the ground, deep as a roar of the earth. The structures trembled. From the center of the city, as if awakening a forgotten god, the titanic tentacled eye - the one that had remained motionless since the disaster began - turned in on itself.

His pupil contracted.

And he looked directly at the ship.

A shriek pierced the sky like a blade. The creatures, from all points of the city, raised their heads... and ran.

Like a black wave, they began to move toward the ship. Mutated souls, formless masses, giants and swarms that moved with a single purpose: to destroy.

The civilians, seeing them coming, lost all control. They threw themselves against the ship as one body, trampling each other, throwing their belongings, even throwing lifeless bodies in order to climb. 

The soldiers opened fire. Automatic turrets began to fire in bursts. But it was like shooting into the sea with stones. Nothing could stop them.

Korrin, Kaito and Yuki were struggling to stay together, but the chaos was absolute. One man punched Kaito in the face. Another tried to snatch Yuki from his arms. Korrin pushed, she screamed, but it was as if she was caught in a whirlpool.

And then... Kaito made a decision.

She turned just in time to see his face. Dirty, wounded... smiling.

Run...

With a body movement, Kaito pushed her. The force of the momentum threw her against the ship's ramp, just as it began to close. The platform dragged her inward. Korrin screamed, reaching out, but to no avail.

The hatches closed with a thud.

Inside the ship, a vibration ran through the walls. The necklace around his neck began to glow, first with a faint pulse... then brightly. Bluish light coursed through it like a live circuit, lighting up like a star.

The ship's internal lights came on all at once. Screens activated. Engines began to roar, untouched.

Korrin fell to his knees. Tears streamed down his face. He couldn't see anything from the cameras, until one of the screens showed the outside.

Kaito. Still holding Yuki. Looking at her.

And then... fire. Creatures everywhere. Tentacles. Teeth. Explosions. The end of the world reduced to seconds.

The ship ascended. The ground receded. The larger city-states, one by one, covered by the same slimy shadow that devoured Utopia 7.

But the eye. The eye never stopped looking at Korrin.

Why, why her, why this obsession with her city?

There were no answers. Only silence.

Empty only.

The ship was leaving behind a planet in ruins, a planet that was the pinnacle of humanity.

And at that, some last words came from the depths of his mind.

"We thought we were gods. The pinnacle of evolution, masters of the stars... How arrogant we were.

Now I know: we are just stardust. A mistake that the universe tries to erase.

And me...the girl who survived to carry every broken memory.