The sirens had been screaming for so long that most people no longer reacted to them.
Their sound had become part of the atmosphere—like wind or distant thunder.
Achen stood near the broken window of an abandoned office building, looking down at the ruined street below. The glass had shattered hours ago when the first shockwave rolled through the city, and cold air carried the smell of burning metal into the room.
The city had once been alive.
Traffic lights.
Crowds.
The constant noise of millions of people moving through their daily routines.
Now there was almost nothing.
Cars sat abandoned in crooked lines along the street, some burned black, others crushed beneath collapsed concrete. Fires flickered inside broken buildings, painting the smoke-filled sky in dull shades of orange.
Another siren wailed somewhere in the distance.
Achen barely noticed.
He leaned slightly against the window frame, his eyes scanning the skyline.
Missiles were visible even from here.
Thin streaks of white fire cutting across the sky like unnatural comets.
Some traveled upward.
Some fell downward.
All of them meant destruction.
The war had begun only eight months ago.
At first people called it a political crisis.
Then a military conflict.
Then the Third World War.
By the time the name changed, it was already too late.
Nations had mobilized everything they possessed.
Conventional weapons were only the beginning.
Cyber attacks collapsed financial systems within days. Power grids failed. Satellites were destroyed. Communication networks died one after another.
Then came the weapons that governments had hidden for decades.
Hypersonic missiles.
Orbital strike systems.
Autonomous war drones.
Entire cities vanished in minutes.
Achen watched the sky quietly.
Another bright streak appeared above the clouds.
This one was larger.
Much larger.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"Intercontinental," he muttered to himself.
The missile cut through the cloud layer like a blade.
Several smaller lights detached from it as it descended.
Multiple warheads.
Cluster deployment.
Achen exhaled slowly.
The government evacuation broadcasts had stopped three days ago.
Not because the situation improved.
Because there was no longer any point.
The city had already lost electricity, water supply, and organized defense.
Most people had fled weeks ago.
Those who remained were either trapped…
Or waiting.
Achen turned away from the window and walked across the dusty office floor.
His footsteps echoed faintly in the empty room.
The building had once belonged to a financial company. Broken desks and overturned chairs were scattered everywhere, covered in grey dust and fragments of ceiling plaster.
He moved toward a table near the center of the room where a small radio sat beside an empty bottle of water.
The radio was silent now.
It had been silent for almost twelve hours.
Achen picked it up anyway and adjusted the dial slowly.
Static crackled through the speaker.
Nothing else.
He placed the radio back down.
For a moment he stood there quietly, listening to the distant explosions rolling across the city like slow thunder.
Then another sound reached him.
A deep rumbling vibration.
Different from the others.
He walked back toward the broken window.
The missile was closer now.
The warheads had already separated.
Several glowing points of light descended toward the city.
One of them was heading directly toward his district.
Achen studied its trajectory carefully.
His expression remained calm.
No panic.
No sudden movements.
Just observation.
"Approximately thirty seconds," he murmured.
The light grew brighter as it fell.
The air outside began to tremble.
Somewhere in the distance a building collapsed with a long grinding roar.
Dust clouds rose between the streets.
Achen rested his hands on the edge of the shattered window frame.
For a brief moment he closed his eyes.
Not in fear.
Simply thinking.
The human race had spent thousands of years building civilization.
Empires.
Technology.
Cities stretching across continents.
All of it had required enormous effort.
Generations of work.
And yet destruction required almost nothing.
Just a few decisions made by powerful people sitting in distant rooms.
A handful of missiles.
Achen opened his eyes again.
The warhead was very close now.
The sky had become intensely bright.
The light reflected off broken glass and metal surfaces across the ruined city.
Strangely beautiful.
He tilted his head slightly, analyzing the falling object.
"Thermonuclear," he concluded quietly.
His mind continued working automatically, even now.
Yield estimate.
Blast radius.
Heat wave projection.
Escape probability.
Zero.
The building beneath him trembled slightly.
People often imagined their final moments would be filled with powerful emotions.
Fear.
Regret.
Desperation.
Achen felt none of those things.
Instead he found himself studying the situation with detached curiosity.
Humanity had reached extraordinary technological heights.
But its psychology had never evolved beyond tribal competition.
That contradiction had finally destroyed everything.
The descending light grew blinding.
The air pressure began to shift violently.
Windows across nearby buildings shattered outward.
Achen watched the sky until the final moment.
Then he spoke softly.
"So this is how the world ends."
The light consumed the city.
And everything disappeared.
The light swallowed the sky.
For a fraction of a second, the entire world became white.
Achen's eyes narrowed slightly as the brightness expanded outward, devouring the clouds, the ruined skyline, the distant fires.
Then the shockwave arrived.
The air struck the building like a massive invisible hammer.
Glass exploded outward from every remaining window. Walls cracked as the pressure surged through the structure, tearing metal beams loose from their joints.
The floor beneath Achen's feet jolted violently.
He felt the impact before he heard it.
The roar followed an instant later—an enormous, rolling thunder that seemed to shake the atmosphere itself.
Concrete fractured around him.
The office building began collapsing in sections as the blast wave pushed through it.
But Achen's attention was not on the falling walls.
His mind was still working.
Still calculating.
Even now.
His brain instinctively tracked the sequence of events.
Flash.
Thermal radiation.
Shockwave.
Structural failure.
The heat reached him next.
It was not like normal fire.
It felt like standing inside the sun.
The air itself burned.
His skin blistered instantly as the thermal pulse swept across the building's interior.
For the first time, his body reacted.
Pain surged through his nerves.
But his thoughts remained strangely clear.
"Interesting," he murmured.
The words barely escaped his lips before the floor beneath him collapsed.
The world tilted suddenly.
Gravity pulled him downward as the structure around him disintegrated.
Chunks of concrete and twisted steel fell alongside him into a storm of dust and fire.
For a brief moment, Achen was weightless.
The sky spun above him.
Orange fire filled the horizon.
Debris rained through the air like a violent meteor shower.
Time seemed to stretch.
Humans often imagined death as a sudden end.
But the brain rarely shut down immediately.
There were still seconds.
Fragments of awareness.
Achen watched a burning piece of metal tumble slowly through the air beside him.
His thoughts continued moving with quiet precision.
So this is the final stage.
Total system failure.
Civilization collapse.
Human extinction probability… extremely high.
The ground rushed upward.
His body struck the rubble.
The impact crushed the air from his lungs.
Something cracked sharply in his chest.
Pain exploded through his body.
Dust and smoke filled the air around him.
For several seconds he could not see anything.
The heat was still rising.
The nuclear fireball was expanding across the city, swallowing entire districts beneath a growing sphere of destruction.
Achen lay half-buried beneath broken concrete.
His vision blurred.
His breathing became shallow.
Each inhale burned his lungs.
Blood filled his mouth with a metallic taste.
He attempted to move his arm.
Nothing happened.
His nervous system was failing.
The realization came instantly.
Spinal damage.
Internal bleeding.
Severe burns.
Survival probability… effectively zero.
Strangely, the thought did not disturb him.
He stared upward through the swirling dust clouds.
The sky was still glowing from the explosion.
For the first time since the war began, the constant sirens had finally stopped.
The city was silent.
His body grew colder as his circulation slowed.
The pain began fading.
Not because the injuries had healed.
Because his nerves were shutting down.
His heartbeat weakened.
Each pulse slower than the last.
Achen observed the process with quiet curiosity.
So this is how the brain shuts down.
Gradual loss of sensory input.
Motor failure.
Then consciousness termination.
His thoughts were becoming harder to maintain.
Memories flickered through his mind.
Childhood.
School.
The early years before the war.
All of it seemed distant now.
Like watching someone else's life.
The glow of the fireball dimmed behind the rising smoke clouds.
Darkness slowly returned to the sky.
Achen's vision narrowed.
Blackness crept inward from the edges of his sight.
The world became smaller.
Quieter.
His final thought formed slowly.
Not regret.
Not fear.
Just a simple observation.
"Humanity destroyed itself."
The darkness closed completely.
His heartbeat stopped.
And the world disappeared.
Then—
Something strange happened.
There was no pain.
No sound.
No weight.
No heat.
Achen opened his eyes.
And found himself standing in an endless white void.