I met her when the world had already begun to rot.
The air still carried the illusion of spring—honeysuckle and smoke—but beneath it, you could smell it. The end. Like the Earth herself had given up and decided to exhale one last breath before she turned cold and still.
Her name was Raynie.
She smiled like death was an old friend, and she laughed like tomorrow was a fable whispered by children too naive to know better. When she touched me, it felt like being set on fire—not violently, not painfully—but like a candle quietly admitting its purpose was to burn.
I was a soldier in a war that had no purpose. A weapon designed to protect ashes. Every day we walked farther into the decay, watching buildings fold into themselves, watching people scream and vanish, swallowed by silence. They called it the Collapse.
We didn't run. *We danced.*
We danced across rooftops that overlooked cities gasping their last breaths. We made love beneath broken neon signs. We carved poetry into the walls of underground bunkers. We played pretend. Pretended the sun was just late, not dead. Pretended the stars still watched us.
One night, we found ourselves on the edge of the last hill, where the wind carried the echoes of those already gone.
"What would you do," I asked her, "if the sky began to fall?"
She looked up, that smile etched in the dusk. "I'd find you."
She meant it.
Not the way people promise forever while knowing they mean until the end of comfort. She meant it with the weight of someone who had already buried dreams and kept breathing anyway.
"Nobody's promised tomorrow," she said, "but if I die, I'll die with a smile. And you."
I wanted to believe her. I wanted to carve that moment into stone and hide it from Time. But truth doesn't care for our wants.
The sirens came at dawn.
The sky cracked—not metaphorically. Literally. A jagged scar of red split it apart, and the stars began to drip like spilled ink. Some called it divine punishment. Others, science run amok. I just called it real.
Raynie held my hand.
Her fingers were shaking, but she smiled.
"Promise me," she whispered. "Even when it ends, you'll be beside me."
I didn't answer. I didn't need to.
We ran.
The streets were chaos—fire blooming like flowers, screams dancing between buildings like orchestras playing their final symphony. And still, we ran. Past broken glass that reflected our faces like funhouse mirrors. Past bodies who'd forgotten how to keep breathing.
And then the tower collapsed.
Steel, stone, gravity.
I don't remember the pain. Just the sound of her voice screaming my name like it was a spell.
I woke up in the ruins. Dust blanketed the world like snow, my leg was shattered, my lungs begging. But she was there.
Bloody, broken, beautiful.
She was crying.
"I thought I lost you," she said.
"You did," I replied.
And we laughed.
There, at the edge of the world, beneath a bleeding sky and beside a dying flame, we laughed like gods who had nothing left to lose.
"I love you," she said.
"I love you," I lied.
Because I knew I wouldn't survive the night.
But I held her. Close. Tight. One last time.
If I was going to die, it would be like this—with the echo of her breath in my ear, with her heartbeat trembling against mine.
With a smile.