The King’s soldiers control the valley. The iron gates lock the boundaries. The yellow water rises inside the limestone basins, choking the weak in mud. Kanata does not carry a sword. He carries a five-pound stone block and a forged iron file. His left arm stays numb against his ribs. He holds...

In the grim bleakness of a world facing its end, society grapples with crumbling normality, accepted apocalypse. In fact, people wrestle with their last decisions — some people try to cling to a certain order of life and some people turn to a sort of anarchic way. As humanity awaits death during ...