Memory was slow to return. At first, there was only heat.
The smell of burning hair, charred skin. His throat was raw, his lips cracked. A scream had lived there once, but it had died sometime in the night. Maybe the day before. Maybe longer.
Gabe forced his eyes open. The sky was the color of old bruises, a heavy, rotting purple. Smoke coiled in thick ribbons, swallowing the world.
They came at dusk. They always did. Flashing eyes behind black visors. Boots that crushed bones like dry twigs. A voice, flat and metallic, reading sentences that had already been written. “By order of the Dominion…” The rest didn’t matter. Nothing did.
He had run. So had the others. Some faster. Some slower. Some screamed when the air split apart, when red light turned bodies to dust. He didn’t. He had stopped screaming long ago.
Now, he stood alone in the ruins of yesterday. A child’s shoe, too small, half-buried in soot. A hand, blackened, reaching from the rubble. The last prayers of the nameless.
He wiped blood from his eyes. There was no one left to bury, no one left to mourn.
Except him.
The sky rumbled, distant thunder rolling closer.
They were coming back.
Gabe exhaled. Then he ran.
