I sat by the fire and stared into the flames.
The flames crackled, casting shadows across the broken remnants of the grove. Warmth slowly returned to my body, but with it came thoughts-heavy, viscous, and relentless.
Night.
I won't survive the next night here the way I did this one. That much was clear. I'd just been lucky. The world might not grant me such a reprieve a second time.
I need shelter.
How do you find shelter where there's nothing?
And whatever is there is either dead or out to kill you.
I looked around: wasteland, rubble, silence.
The grove had become a pile of flesh and wood. The spider had left-or vanished-but I had no illusions. If such creatures roamed here, they were hardly a rarity.
I stood up and picked up the hatchet again, chopping wood for the road. And that was when I noticed it.
In one of the organs lying in the snow-shapeless, torn, still oozing that same viscous green liquid-something was glowing. Faintly, but distinctly. A soft, even light, unlike the reflection of a fire.
I shuddered.
It was disgusting to approach. The smell made me wince, and the very thought of rummaging through those remains filled me with revulsion. But curiosity-or, rather, the instinct for survival-compelled me to do it.
I crouched down, trying to breathe more slowly, and carefully cut through the fabric with a knife. Inside, nestled among the unfamiliar flesh, lay a tiny pearl. Smooth, almost perfectly shaped, cold to the touch. It glowed from within, as if a tiny spark were trapped inside it.
I turned it over in my fingers.
No inscriptions.
No sensations.
No understanding of why I needed it.
I wiped the pearl on my sleeve, put it in my pocket, and tried to forget about it.
Then I returned to my thoughts.
Thinking was painful, but inaction was deadly.
In the end, I came to the only decision that made any sense at all.
To keep moving.
I chopped some firewood-just enough to carry without turning myself into a slow-moving target. I strapped it to my backpack, checked the straps, and tightened the suit's fasteners.
I stopped. I listened.
Silence.
I looked in the direction where, judging by the huge indentations in the snow, the spider had gone. The air there still felt heavier, as if space itself was in no hurry to let go of its presence.
"I'm not going there," I said quietly.
I turned in the opposite direction.
Randomly.
But in the other direction.
I cast one last glance at the ravaged grove and moved forward.
Step by step.
Not knowing what lay ahead.
But knowing one thing:
If the world is hunting me, I won't wait for them to find me.
I set off.
I set out on my journey.
I walked for a long time-hours, perhaps longer. The landscape changed barely noticeably: slight changes in elevation, rare cracks in the ice, a different shade of snow. All of this seemed like an insignificant backdrop until the world suddenly decided to change the rules.
A mountain began to rise on the horizon.
Not gradually-it seemed to materialize, becoming clearer with every step. Huge, massive, reaching into the sky. And a road led to it. Long, smooth, perfectly laid out-too convenient for this world. No debris, no ice, no cracks. Just a path.
I had no choice.
I kept going-upward, up the slope, along this strange road that seemed to be waiting for someone to walk it.
Some time passed when I heard a sound that made my heart skip a beat.
Gunshots.
Real. Sharp, painfully familiar. The sound of weapons coming from earth. I paused for a moment, unable to believe my ears, then sprang to my feet and ran toward the sound.
The higher I climbed, the clearer the picture became.
On the hillside, just above the road, a girl lay on her back, firing her gun upward. A wolf-like monster darted back and forth before her-slightly larger than an ordinary wolf, but far more massive. Its body was covered in thick, dark skin, as if clad in armor. Long fangs jutted from its mouth, too large for its skull, and its claws-elongated and sickle-shaped-sliced through the rock as it pushed off the ground.
The bullets bounced off it.
I saw sparks, heard dull thuds-not a single one did any harm. The monster only grew angrier, closing the distance.
For a split second, I hesitated:
Should I intervene? If she has a gun, that means she's one of them.
But the thought vanished as quickly as it had come.
This might be the only person I'd meet in the near future. And if I turned away now-I'd be left alone in a world where I wanted nothing more than to avoid being alone.
I grabbed my knife and lunged forward.
The girl had run out of ammunition-I could tell by the dry click and her desperate look. Not that it had done any good anyway.
I struck.
The blade met the monster's skin-and bounced off as if I'd struck a rock. The wolf turned toward me, growled, and in that moment, I realized: the weapon was useless.
I threw the knife away.
And I lunged at it with my bare hands.
I clamped my hands around its neck as if it were an ordinary dog. The monster thrashed about, slashing at the air with its claws, trying to grab me with its jaws, but I held on. I don't know where the strength came from-or rather, the confidence that I could do it.
I pinned it to the ground, leaning my full weight on it, squeezing tighter and tighter.
It twitched.
It weakened.
And finally went limp.
The wolf fell asleep. Forever.
Then an inexplicable voice in my head, which seemed to be my own, whispered to me:
You killed a newborn minion.
I was breathing heavily as I knelt there, my hands trembling. Then I stood up and walked over to the girl.
She was… beautiful-naturally beautiful.
Not pretentious, not flashy. Without a single flaw, as if the world had decided, for a moment, to remind us of what a human being can be. Her medium-length red hair was scattered across the snow; her skin was pale from the cold, with traces of blood on her face, but her eyes-alive, alert, piercing, an unnaturally white color-showed no panic, only weariness and wariness.
"You…" she began, then let out a sigh. "Thank you."
I nodded, struggling to find the right words.
"Are you okay?"
"I don't think so," she replied and tried to sit up, pointing to her leg, which appeared to be broken.
We looked at each other for a few seconds-long enough to grasp the most important thing:
we were real. Not illusions. Not figments of this place. And also, I knew this girl-in fact, I knew her all too well, even though her appearance was slightly different from the Scarlettt who had been on Earth. Apparently, our appearances had been altered during the transition, and she hadn't recognized me yet.
"My name is Scarlettt," she said first.
I wondered what to say, but I didn't have to think long before I replied.
"I'm Oscar. It's ironic that, of all people, we've run into you. Don't you think?"
And at that moment, the loneliness that had followed me since my days at the academy
began to crack for the first time.
----------------------------------------------------------
…Two years ago.
I was fourteen.
I still remember that day all too clearly-as if it were seared into my memory. A gray morning, cold air, and identical black cars bearing the government emblem. They arrived without haste. Without shouting. Without explanation.
As if everything had been decided long before we came along.
My parents were taken to the Spire when I was seven. Back then, they told me they were heroes. That they'd gone willingly. That I should be proud of them. I believed it for a long time. And then I stopped waiting.
Only my sister and I were left. The same age. Painfully alike. We were sent to a shelter.
The conditions there were… unpleasant, but bearable. Cold walls, thin gruel, strict caretakers. No one hit us for no reason, no one bullied us openly-but there was no warmth there either. We learned to survive. To stick together. To share everything equally.
Until that day.
When they came for us, they separated us immediately. No questions asked. No explanations. Different lists. Different destinations.
I screamed. My sister screamed too. I tried to break free, holding her hand until they tore us apart by force. Someone said that resistance was a crime. Someone else said that resistance meant being shot.
I don't know if that was true.
But I knew that testing it out was a bad idea.
So I ended up at the academy for training researchers.
And the first thing that struck me was that it was… beautiful.
Not a cold barracks, not a gray complex. Spacious buildings made of light-colored stone, wide courtyards, neat paths, flags fluttering in the wind. In the center-a huge dome of glass and metal, beneath which real trees grew.
I remember thinking then:
maybe things aren't so bad after all.
They put us up in dorms. Clean. Warm. With real beds. They gave us uniforms-neat and comfortable. For the first time in a long while, I felt… not abandoned.
And then there was the induction ceremony.
We were led out onto a huge plaza in front of the main building. Hundreds of teenagers-just like me. Lost, tense, trying to look brave. We stood in neat rows while the academy director ascended the podium.
Tall. Confident. With a voice that didn't waver.
"Today," he said, "you are taking your first step toward greatness."
He spoke of duty.
Of destiny.
Of how we would be the generation to conquer the Spire.
"You are the heroes of the future," echoed across the square. "Those who will go down in history. Those who will bring humanity answers, victory, and hope."
I listened.
And I wanted to believe.
I wanted to believe that my parents hadn't been taken away for nothing.
That my sister hadn't been taken away for no reason.
That if I became strong enough, useful enough-we would meet again.
Back then, I didn't yet know
that the academy doesn't teach heroism.
It teaches acceptance.
Acceptance of the fact that you no longer have a choice.
The next day… The first history class.
They seated us in a spacious lecture hall with panoramic windows. The light was soft, almost warm-too serene for the subject we were about to hear. I sat up straight, hands on my knees, trying to look attentive. Back then, I still thought that if I listened closely enough, I could understand what was really going on in this world.
The instructor entered the classroom.
She was a woman of medium height with a straight posture and dark hair pulled back into a neat bun. Her gaze was calm, almost weary. She introduced herself:
"My name is Irina Keller. I will be teaching your course on world history after the advent of spires."
She didn't smile.
Nor did she try to soften her voice.
"You've probably already heard a lot," she began. "But today we'll separate the myths from the facts."
An image of Earth appeared on the wall behind her.
"In the early 2050s," she continued, "spires appeared out of nowhere all over the world. Without warning. Without any energy surges that could have been detected in advance. They just… appeared."
The images on the screen changed: cities torn in half by giant columns, flashes, destruction.
"Millions died even then. Not because of what was inside the spires," she emphasized, "but because of the very fact of their appearance. Entire neighborhoods were destroyed, ecosystems-disrupted forever."
The auditorium fell silent.
"But that was only the beginning," Keller said. "It very quickly became clear that the spires had… an effect. People began to hear the call. Not everyone. But enough of them for it to become a problem."
She paused.
"They went inside. Voluntarily. Unresponsive to threats, pleas, orders. None of them ever returned."
I felt my fingers clench.
"The governments acted quickly," she continued. "The areas around the spires were immediately occupied and declared restricted zones. The military, scientists, evacuations. After that… everything went quiet."
A timeline appeared on the screen.
200 years of silence.
"For two centuries, humanity simply watched. Studied. Feared. And pretended the problem was under control."
She turned her gaze toward us.
"And then scientists discovered an alarming pattern."
The image of Earth had changed. Dark-colored zones had appeared.
"The spires weren't just standing there. They were draining the planet. Natural resources. Water. Minerals. Energy. The land around them gradually became uninhabitable. And these zones grew."
Someone let out a quiet sigh.
"Another twenty years passed. By this point, the world had already changed" she said. "Resources began to run short. A clear division began."
The next slide was extremely simple:
The elite and the rest of the world.
"The former received everything that was left. The latter-only the scraps. At that time, the world's elites united into a single government. Not for the sake of peace. For the sake of control."
That was when I first felt a strange sensation-
as if I were being prepared not for the future, but for a sentence.
"About two hundred years ago," Keller continued, "the government came to the conclusion that we couldn't just sit idly by. That's how the campaign to conquer the spires began."
She didn't soften her wording.
"Millions of people a year. Different spires. Different countries. One result."
No one has returned.
The air in the auditorium grew heavy.
"Forty years ago, they began building academies," she said, looking straight at us. "Like this one. Their purpose is to increase your chances."
She slightly emphasized the word "chances."
"We still don't know what happens inside the Spire. Whether there is a world there. Creatures. Laws. Or whether a person simply disintegrates into particles of light upon touching the seal. But if there is something there… this two-year course should give you the chance to live longer than those who are mobilized just like that."
She turned off the screen.
"Actually, this isn't a story of heroism," Keller said in closing. "It's a story of survival. And now you're part of it."
At that moment, sitting in the beautiful auditorium, wearing my new uniform, surrounded by other fourteen-year-olds, I realized:
the academy isn't preparing us for victory.
It prepares us
not to ask unnecessary questions.
The days at the academy quickly merged into one endless schedule.
Wake up.
Classes.
Training.
Sleep.
They taught us everything-and nothing at the same time.
Cooking with whatever we could find in the barren land.
Survival in the wilderness, where there are no roads or people.
Navigation, first aid, and water collection.
Physical training until our muscles trembled.
Close combat with all kinds of weapons.
Archery.
Even then, it became clear: the academy was not a unified whole.
The student body was… diverse.
There were outright bastards. Even by fourteen-year-old standards-cruel, vicious, reveling in others' weakness. I tried not to notice those types. At the orphanage, I'd learned one simple rule: if they don't mess with you, don't mess with them.
But they were there.
The "elite."
The children of those who still had a choice.
You could spot them right away. Confident movements. Loud laughter. Expensive gear, uniforms that fit just a little better. And most importantly-the look on their faces.
Contempt.
They didn't just act like they owned the place. They bragged about the fact that they were here voluntarily.
But in my eyes, they were just idiots who had traded a normal life for something dubious.
"We chose this ourselves," they said.
"Unlike you rats, who were herded here by force."
"We are the heroes of the future. And you are expendable."
And for that…
I hated them more than anything.
Not for their arrogance.
Not for their rudeness.
But for the fact that they had a choice-which I didn't.
Maybe my hatred isn't entirely fair, but then again, what in this world is fair?
That's exactly how I first met Scarlettt.
I was walking down the hallway after class, tired, angry, and with a pounding headache. I had almost passed a group of people when I accidentally bumped into one of the "elite," and a voice snapped at my back:
"Hey, rat, looks like someone isn't watching where they're going… it's disgusting just to touch you."
I stopped.
I slowly turned around.
Anger washed over me instantly-hot, searing. Yeah… restraint was definitely not my strong suit.
"Listen, you fucker," I said, not caring about propriety, "unlike you, at least I know how to use my brain. Oh, sorry, I didn't realize your dumb head is only good for ogling girls and eating, you piece of shit."
"Are you off 'in search of adventure' because your life is boring?" Do you think the spire is an amusement park ride? Although maybe you didn't think at all, not even about the fact that you'd just be blown to smithereens, and instead of heroes, you'd become "nothing"-but by your own choice, ha-ha, how cool, a bunch of ducks went on a suicide mission believing in a noble cause, just unbelievable.
For a second, everything went quiet.
And then I took a punch to the stomach.
It was sharp and precise. It knocked the wind out of me instantly; I doubled over but didn't fall. And in that moment, something inside me just snapped.
I wasn't going to take it anymore.
The next blow was mine.
My fist landed squarely-a crunch, a scream, blood. A tooth flew to the floor with a nasty sound.
A fight would have broken out.
If not for her.
"Enough."
Her voice was firm. Calm.
Scarlett stepped forward, standing between us.
"Just a reminder," she said, glancing at everyone with a cold stare, "unprovoked physical altercations here result in a reprimand. And if it happens again-disciplinary action."
They listened to her.
Reluctantly. Resentfully. But they listened. They left, and I stood there, clutching my stomach; as she walked away, she gave me a mysterious look.
So the conflict didn't end there.
It just… moved to the next level.
A few days later-a hand-to-hand combat class.
The instructor, making no secret of his interest, announced:
"Exhibition match.
Oscar. Scarlettt. To the center."
I didn't know anything back then.
No technique.
No stance.
No breath control.
I was driven by pure rage.
And it wasn't enough.
She moved with precision. Quickly. Coolly. She anticipated every one of my attacks. I fell time and again, taking blows before I could even figure out where they came from.
The fight was over quickly.
Too quickly.
She stood over me, barely out of breath.
Looking down at me.
"I agree with you about those idiots," she said quietly, so only I could hear.
"But I'm not like that. Get that through your head.
And watch your mouth when you talk about me."
Then she walked away.
And I stayed lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling and remembering one simple thing:
How fucking much I hate this world.