The morning was broken by the trembling of glass.
Callum's eyes fluttered open, a sharp metallic groan echoing like a ghost from the Earth itself.
He wiped his face groggily and stumbled toward the window of the cabin, his feet cold against the steel floor.
Outside, the tarmac screamed.
A jet huge, metallic, and beastly was racing down the runway, its engines roaring like lions in a final hunt.
It wasn't just taking off; it was escaping.
Callum's eyes widened. The boy, barely nine, pressed his forehead to the glass, watching the wings tremble and the air ripple.
The plane lifted not like it wanted to fly, but like the ground was trying to spit it out before death swallowed everything whole.
He staggered back, heart pounding. Then something made him freeze. A man was sitting behind him, quiet as a shadow. Black jeans. Black tee. Black bomber jacket with a zipper the color of ocean water. Even his sneakers carried those same icy-blue streaks. He looked like he'd been dipped in the night, then kissed by the sea.
And his hair short buzzed, but dyed a strange soft vanilla, like ice cream left too long in a dream.
The man's eyes met Callum's.
Callum (nervously):
"U-Uncle... where am I?"
The man gave him a small, wry smile.
Mizukane Sōzō:
"You're in Flight 98T4, kid. Cruisin' at survival altitude. And me?"
(he leaned back)
"I hunt ghosts. Nice to meet you. Also… congrats. You dodged an atomic bomb."
Callum blinked.
Am I safe ? But how ?
Back on the ground, in the shadow of the crumbling Kanya Airport, humanity was unraveling.
People screamed, wept, and ran in no direction. Some collapsed into arms they hadn't felt in years. Lovers kissed. Children clutched strangers. A man stared blankly at the sky, as if daring it to explain itself.
Then a voice came. Cold. Recorded. Final.
Speaker (crackling):
"THIS IS A RECORDED ANNOUNCEMENT.
TO THOSE WHO DIDN'T BOARD THE FLIGHT
IN 1 MINUTE AND 20 SECONDS, A NUCLEAR STRIKE WILL HIT THIS LOCATION.
THIS IS NOT A DRILL."
Screams cut the air.
Speaker (cont'd):
> "This is the end. We urge you use your final moments with purpose. Close your eyes. Join hands."
Hands found hands. Those without hands? They simply closed their eyes.
Then came the prayer. One voice mechanical, synthetic but echoing like God himself had been mechanized.
Speaker:
"Repeat after me
OH GOD, WHO WATCHES FROM BEYOND THE STARS…
WE BOW OUR HEADS, NOT IN FEAR, BUT IN HOPE..."
The voices followed, shaky and raw.
"FORGIVE US FOR EVERY SILENCE THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN A WORD OF LOVE…"
"FOR EVERY WALL WE BUILT… FOR EVERY BRIDGE WE DIDN'T."
"WE PRAY FOR OUR CHILDREN… MAY THEY FIND PEACE BEYOND THE FIRE."
"AND FOR THOSE WHO TOOK FLIGHT MAY THEY CARRY OUR HOPES INTO THE SKY."
Then the final line:
"THIS IS OUR LAST MESSAGE… FROM THE EARTH THAT ONCE HELD US ALL. GOODBYE."
After the announcement
A soft, haunting flute began to play through the speakers. Not triumphant just… final.
From the horizon, it rose a glowing sphere of pure annihilation, its belly blistering with molten white. A silent ripple danced across the earth, shimmering like heat haze and then, in a single blink:
The nuclear bomb kissed the ground.
BOOOOOMMMMMM.
The sound was delayed. Light was not.
The impact cracked the sky like porcelain. A ring of energy, invisible but devastating, erupted from the epicenter a perfect circle expanding outward at the speed of vengeance.
Buildings shivered, snapped, and then disintegrated not like they were collapsing, but like they had been unwritten from the story of Earth. Bricks turned to vapor. Glass turned to shards of light. Asphalt peeled upward as if reality itself was boiling.
The people saw it coming but only for a breath.
One woman froze, her arms tight around her daughter, watching a wall of pure light climb the sky like an ascending god. Her lips parted. No words came.
Another man dropped to his knees, not in prayer, but in surrender. His skin began to smoke before the blast even touched him.
At the Kanya Airport, the terminal windows exploded inward, glass slashing through flesh like transparent razors. One man raised his arm to shield himself too late. He screamed, not from pain, but from understanding.
He had just watched the end of the world.
The blast wave hit.
People were thrown like dolls. A child vanished into a swirling gust of dust. A woman fell backward onto another, their bodies tangled in mid-air before heat stripped their skin like silk from a flame.
The fire came next.
Not flames like in fireplaces but a tsunami of plasma. It rolled, devoured, engulfed. It didn't spread it hunted.
The sky itself ripped open, revealing a canopy of flame that turned blue, then white-hot. The mushroom cloud climbed, miles tall, churning with apocalyptic wrath. And then
Sound caught up.
The shockwavehit .The earth quaked. The heavens trembled. Eardrums burst. Bones shattered. Every tree in a five-mile radius bent backwards then snapped in half.
A man on fire stumbled forward, trying to scream. Only smoke left his mouth.
Another man's skin blistered in real time, peeling off like fruit skin under boiling water. He fell, convulsing, whispering "help" as if God had a signal in hell.
Then chaos birthed chaos.
Someone, blind and disoriented, stumbled over another. A foot stepped on a hand.
"Who the fuck !"
A punch.
A scream.
A body crashed into a woman
SLAP!
"You think this is the time to get handsy?!"
She was wrong. So was he. Everyone was wrong.
Fists flew in darkness. Eyes burned in their sockets. The air turned into a screaming furnace.
One old man was knocked into a boxer who swung in blind fury
CRACK!
right into a woman who fell like a marionette with cut strings.
A child cried.
"Mama? It's dark… Did I close my eyes?"
No response.
Because her mother had already turned to ash.
Then came the next blast a secondary detonation, a monstrous pulse from the core of the bomb. The fireball expanded again, pushing the shockwave outward in a perfect sphere of death.
Screams turned into noise.
Then into static.
The airport folded into itself metal twisted like paper, concrete atomized, and the final cry of civilization was a flute, still echoing through melted speakers. Its notes, once soft, were now ghostly and wrong a funeral song for a planet.
And then nothing.
Everything vanished in a white roar.
Earth forgot.
Only the sky remembered.
INSIDE THE FLIGHT
The red lights were flashing like the heartbeat of hell.
Passengers stared out their windows. The world below had become ash, stretching endlessly in every direction. Flames surrounded the plane like a ring of judgment.
Little Callum stood on his toes, eyes wide with silent awe.
INSIDE THE PILOT CABIN
In the cockpit, war was being fought in seconds.
Renji "Shin'en" Kurosawa gripped the yoke like it was the neck of fate itself. His knuckles were white. Sweat slid down his jaw. But his voice? Like cold steel being unsheathed.
Renji:
"Velocity 182. Altitude climbing. We need a minimum of 240 knots to outrun the thermal bloom."
Beside him, Tetsuya "Gekkō" Hanabira danced across the dashboard, flipping switches with manic grace.
Tetsuya:
"Engines are screaming. We're maxed out. We're burnin' sky, Shin'en!"
Renji (grim):
"Not fast enough. That fire's comin' up like it wants to taste us."
Then it hit.
BOOM!!!
The plane shook violently. Lights dimmed. Sirens screamed.
In the screen
FUEL TANK BREACH DETECTED. LOWER FUSELAGE. TEMPERATURE RISING.
A wave of heat burst through the cockpit vents.
Tetsuya (shouting):
"We're hit! The bottom tank's been kissed by flame fuel's leakin' into the cabinsystem!"
Renji (quiet horror):
"Throttle's losin' pressure… we're down to 120…"
Tetsuya (gritting teeth):
"That's death speed, mate."
Renji:
"We can't push full thrust without repairing the breach. One wrong pulse and this bird explodes midair."