The city changed after the duel.
Its silence grew heavier, as though the very air knew another trial had passed. Mateo walked quietly, relics dim at his side, his face unreadable in the fractured neon glow. Jun limped, cursing under his breath, nursing bruises from his reckless interference. Liwayway strode with her staff raised like a banner of dawn, though even she glanced warily into the alleys. The ruins whispered as they passed: broken signs humming, hidden circuits throbbing faintly beneath the rubble.
At the mouth of a courtyard, they saw fire.
The place had been fortified — cars stacked into walls, steel welded to stone, relic shards embedded like charms to hum with faint deterrent fields. A scavenger fortress, clinging to survival against the endless night.
At its center sat a man.
Scar tissue crossed his face in deep lines. His armor was scavenged plating, worn so long it seemed fused to his flesh. Across his knees rested a blade unlike any other: steel hammered in old-world forges, its edge lined with circuitry that glowed like veins of fire. He did not rise. His eyes, sharp as glass, weighed them in silence.
Liwayway lowered her staff slightly, not in challenge but in respect. "Ramon."
His voice was gravel over stone. "Liwayway. You walk with strangers. Why are they still alive?"
Jun muttered, "I don't like him already."
"They survived me," Liwayway answered simply.
Ramon's gaze fixed on Mateo. "Rare. Strength matters little here. Endurance means more. But the city spares neither the strong nor the weak. It spares the wise. You—" his eyes narrowed, "—you look like a man who remembers. I will know if that is true."
Mateo inclined his head, calm as stone. "Then test me."
Ramon rose at last, towering above them. He gestured to the fire. "Sit. If you would endure this place, you will hear the laws first. There is no survival without law."
Around the fire, Ramon's presence filled the courtyard like iron scripture. His blade stood beside him, buried in the earth, humming faintly. The firelight flickered against his scars as he lifted a hand, each finger tracing truths carved into flesh.
"My laws are not written. They are carved. Five truths burned into every survivor here."
He tapped the scar along his arm."One: never waste a relic. Every shard carries memory. Every tool carries death. Break it, and you betray the blood that bought it."
His finger moved to the scar across his chest."Two: never walk alone. The city hunts solitude. Alone, you are prey. Together, you may still be hunted — but at least your name will not vanish with you."
He struck the scar along his ribs."Three: trust lightly. Betrayal here is as common as breath. A man may smile and still sell you to the shadows."
The scar down his leg."Four: respect the dead. Disturb them, and the city answers. Graves are not silent here. The boundary is cracked."
At last, the scar along his back. His voice dropped lower."Five: survival is not victory. To live without purpose is another kind of death."
The words fell like stone into silence. Even Jun kept still. Mateo's gaze held reverence. Liwayway bowed her head as though at an altar.
"These laws are all that remain," Ramon said. "Ignore them, and the city will eat you alive."
The fire hissed. Sparks rose like faint prayers.
Ramon's eyes shifted into the flames. His voice softened, not into comfort but into confession.
"Yet laws are not enough. You must remember what burned, or you will never understand the ash beneath your feet.
I lived in the age they called the Ascension. An age of pure reason. No gods. No myths. Only machines.
The cities breathed with circuits. Each district served by supercomputers vast as cathedrals, predicting need before it arose. Famine erased. Wars halted before they began. Quantum cores unlocked futures like doors — collapsing endless paths until only one remained, the one we desired. Children grew beneath towers of glass that glowed with living data. They believed death itself had been conquered. So did we.
It was a golden lie.
For we were not content with earth. We never are. We turned our eyes to the stars — and sought to bind them.
We built stellar harvesters in orbit, machines that drew fire from the sun, siphoning starlight into crystalline cores. Our towers blazed with heaven's light. For a time, we thought we had stolen God's fire.
But it was never enough.
When the stars bent to us, we reached deeper still. The networks strained, driven to simulate not just wars or famines, but creation itself. Infinity, modeled. Existence, calculated.
And then we touched the wall.
The wall no man was meant to see. The wall that sealed the abyss.
We breached it. And the abyss answered."
His voice broke into a whisper. "It was no discovery. It was intrusion. Judgment."
His hands clenched on his knees. "I heard the scream through the servers. Not static. Not human. Older. Hungrier. Fire tore through the ground. Towers folded into silence. Districts looped in endless seconds until minds shattered. Shadows walked in men's shapes, their eyes hollows.
That was the Rupture. Not accident. Judgment.
I fought in those streets. I saw comrades burned alive by flames that spoke. I saw children swallowed by fractures of time. My wife—" His breath caught, then hardened. "—my daughter's hand turned to ash in mine. I lived. I do not know why."
The fire cracked like mourning. None of them spoke.
"But even as the breach widened, mercy came. He intervened. God. Not to restore what we shattered — the sin was ours — but to seal it. The abyss closed. The boundary reforged.
And in the closing, the world itself broke. Towers fell. Networks died. Time stuttered at the edges.
Yet He left us a gift.
Divine fire scattered in the ruins, fusing with what remained of our machines. A last mercy. A chance to endure.
Relics. Weapons. Shards. Not inventions — reminders. Proof that even in ruin, He armed us to face the dark we had summoned."
He lifted his blade. Its circuitry glowed like faint starlight. "This is no sword. It is a fragment of His pity."
The fire roared, sparks spiraling upward like torn prayers. Ramon's voice took on the cadence of prophecy.
"They say the ghost servers still whisper, code repeating like psalms in a dead tongue.
They say some districts never left the day of collapse — dawn rising, dawn falling, endlessly, trapping all who enter.
They say the Tower still hums, the greatest of supercomputers, endlessly calculating, clawing to undo the breach — but shackled, unable to finish.
They say fragments of Hell still bleed through the cracks — shadows that wear your voice, flames that feed on despair.
And they say one will come. The Witness. The man who remembers when all others forget. He will walk the ruins not to survive, but to bear truth."
His gaze turned to Mateo, fire reflected in his eyes. "Perhaps that is you."
The silence after was deeper than the city's night.
Mateo's voice was steady. "I seek no crown, no title. I am here to see. To remember. To endure."
Ramon studied him, then nodded once. "Then you are more dangerous than any blade. And for that, I will walk beside you. But mark me — if you falter, I will not carry you. Weakness spreads faster than fire."
Jun exhaled. "Wonderful. A witch, a prophet, and a scarred zealot. All we need is a king and we'll have a full deck."
Liwayway almost smiled. "Kings do not survive here."
And so the four sat together in the firelight — Mateo, Jun, Liwayway, and Ramon — bound not by trust, but by law, memory, mercy, and judgment.
Outside, the city moaned with circuits and shadows. Above, the fractured sky flickered with dead stars.
For the first time since the Rupture, fellowship stirred.
The myths had awakened. And the Witness walked among them.