The night carried a heavy stillness, the kind that settled on the skin like cold dust. Han Islat sat on the crumbling staircase outside an abandoned apartment block, watching the horizon. The cracks in the sky glowed faintly, releasing threads of violet light that drifted like quiet flames.
Anyone else would have called it beautiful.
To Han, it resembled a wound the world refused to close.
The air held the faint smell of rust and old rain. Papers fluttered across the street in the wind, scraping softly against the empty road. The city had forgotten voices long ago; all that remained were echoes and ruins.
Behind Han, inside the building, Ruen slept. She had cried herself into exhaustion after the divine fragment incident. The fear in her eyes earlier had struck him with an unexpected weight. She was young, frightened, and desperately holding on to anything warm in a world that had grown too cold.
Han wished he could sleep as easily as she did.
But sleep had never been kind to him.
A faint disturbance rippled across the street. Han straightened immediately. Something crawled out from beneath an overturned bus, its shape twisting like liquid shadow. It paused, sensing him.
The creature's hollow face tilted.
Han silently raised his hand. A broken metal rod near his feet rose into the air, wrapped in the weak glow of his first divine spark.
The monster hesitated. Its voice escaped as a faint whisper.
"Survivor."
Han's eyes narrowed.
The creature inched closer, sniffing the air. Its posture stiffened when it sensed Ruen inside the building. It moved toward her.
Han stepped in its way.
The monster's head twitched in confusion before it murmured again.
"You always survive."
Something cold pressed into Han's spine. The tone carried no malice, just observation, yet the words felt too familiar. Too accurate.
The creature lunged.
The metal rod shot forward, pinning it against the bus. The monster shrieked, its form crumbling into dust. A faint blue shard emerged from the remains. Han caught it and turned it in his palm. Another fragment. Another reminder of the world's broken laws.
Ruen's voice reached him from the doorway.
"Han?"
She stood barefoot, hugging her arms, her eyes swollen from tears. She looked so small against the vast emptiness of the ruined city.
"You're still awake," she said.
"I couldn't sleep."
"Because you're scared too?"
Han paused. "That's not why."
She walked closer. Her expression wavered, unsure. "Do you regret saving me? Tell me honestly."
He didn't answer immediately. The wind moved between them, carrying the smell of dust and rust.
"Saving you isn't the problem," he said.
"Then what is?"
Han looked at the shard in his hand. Its glow pulsed, reflecting in his eyes.
"My existence."
Ruen stared at him, startled.
"I always survive," Han said quietly. "It doesn't matter what happens. It doesn't matter who's with me. Every time something breaks, every time something ends, I'm the one who walks away."
He lowered his gaze.
"Sometimes I think someone else should have lived instead of me."
Ruen shook her head. "Don't say that."
"You don't understand."
"Then help me understand," she whispered. "Why is living a burden to you?"
He didn't reply.
He didn't know how to.
He had no past to reflect on, no memories to explain why survival felt like a chain rather than a gift. He had only instinct, only the sense that something in him should not exist, yet kept existing anyway.
Above them, the cracks in the sky brightened suddenly. Violet light spread across the clouds. A voice drifted from the heavens, impossibly distant yet unmistakably clear.
"The Awakened One moves again."
Ruen stumbled back. Han felt his heartbeat spike, not with fear, but recognition. He had heard this voice once before, the day he woke in the silent city. The world had whispered to him, acknowledging him without reason.
Ruen grabbed his hand.
"Han, what was that?"
"I don't know."
But deep inside, something stirred. A presence. A watcher. Something far away, observing him through the cracks in reality itself.
Ruen squeezed his hand tighter.
"Don't leave me," she said. "Everyone leaves. Everyone dies. But you… you're the only one who doesn't."
Han hesitated. The truth felt sharp in his mouth.
"I don't know why I'm still alive."
"You being alive is enough," she said, voice trembling.
Han didn't answer.
Because in the deepest part of him, something whispered.
You survive because you must.
You survive because your existence feeds a greater design.
You survive because someone needs you alive.
The whisper felt wrong. Too familiar. Too intimate.
As if spoken by someone who knew him before he existed.
Han Islat closed his fist around the glowing shard, feeling its fragile warmth.
Survival had never felt heavier.