The sea had long since calmed, but its scars remained carved into the bones of those who once drifted upon it. Salt air still haunted the lungs of survivors. Even now, fifteen years after the flood drowned the world, Kalious often woke with the scent of ocean rot in his nostrils.
He sat atop a jagged ridge of stone, just beyond the boundary of his tribe's camp. Below him, the morning fog rolled over the forest like a second tide. The trees, tall and gnarled, reached like desperate hands into the haze. Next to him, Malious shadowboxed with the wind, fists thudding into empty air with rhythm and resolve. Steam rose from his back, his sweat evaporating in the chilled dawn.
The two cousins had risen early, as always. They trained together before the sun had the chance to catch them idle. Not because they were told to, but because the world no longer gave second chances to the slow.
"Your hook is wide," Kalious said, not looking away from the mist. "Open your shoulder like that, and someone faster would take your chin."
Malious grinned, not pausing. "Let them try."
Their tribe was not large, just a makeshift collection of broken families and orphaned children raised by five elders. Two men, three women. Survivors of the original ARC vessel refused to join the cities being built inland. They were outcasts who believed the mainland was cursed, haunted by greed and old blood. They built their lives in the margins, among the wilds, where the ambitions of man hadn't yet reshaped the land.
The camp was made of stitched tarps, scrapwood shacks, and fire pits dug into the earth—crude but home. There were six children in total, each carrying the weight of a lost world on their shoulders. The elders taught them how to hunt, how to survive, how to read the winds and move through silence. They spoke little of what came before the flood.
It was quiet, peaceful.
It wouldn't last.