At the crest of afternoon, Angel Romanov stood at the edge of his suburban street, squinting at the sky. Normal daylight should have burned above him, but today the sun held a peculiar stillness, blinding and heavy. In the distance, the humming of cars quieted to silence; the world held its breath for a heartbeat that stretched far too long.
He hesitated, his heart hammering. When the rumble of a truck sputtered and died half a block away, Angel knew this was no simple power outage. He took a step forward. The air around him seemed to shimmer with heat. People emerged into the street, confusion on their faces as streetlights blinked out. A distant crack—like thunder ripping the sky—shook the ground. Windows exploded silently; glass cascaded into the growing panic of the neighborhood.
Angel raised his arms reflexively to protect his face from shrapnel. His violet eyes widened as electricity collapsed, plunging the world into a tense darkness broken only by the glares of neon signs flickering out one by one. He felt his pulse racing, adrenaline rushing, and instinct screaming at him to run.
"Mom! Dad!" he shouted, looking back toward his home a few houses down. His stomach twisted; he saw them emerge from the broken doorway—his parents, shocked and bruised but alive. Relief was a hot, bitter taste. Neighbors cried out and fled their houses. Angel bolted toward his parents as the sky flickered with a strange corona glow, unnatural orange swirls dancing on the horizon.
The street was chaos. A neighbor, Mr. Harding, stumbled, clutching his head as if the world itself had exploded inside it. Children screamed. Angel grabbed his mother's arm and pulled, then hurled himself toward an overturned car. He'd been in enough science classes to know what was happening: a massive solar flare had just swept the Earth, frying electronics everywhere. Without phones or cars, without power and lights, the civilized world collapsed in minutes.
He and his family reached their battered home. Inside, dust fell from the ceiling. His mother threw him a gun from the closet, a glint of understanding in her tired eyes. In seconds, Angel understood they would need it. They moved silently, listening to distant sirens that might as well have been songs from another planet. All around, fires erupted — in a city without power, discipline collapsed into chaos.
Angel's mother tightened her grip on the kitchen knife, and his father checked the windows. Terror had drawn together what had been strangers: their neighbors huddled in doorways or ran aimlessly into the night. But here, behind boarded shutters and bolted doors, they were safe. They had to stay that way.
For the first time, Angel felt fear crawl up his spine. Yet beneath it was a thrill of power: he stood, a six-foot-tall teen boy with the cleanness of a saint in his bone structure, holding a gun in hands he never thought would know this weight. Freckles dotted his nose; evening shadows made his violet eyes gleam like polished amethysts. He took it in stride, ignoring the glitter of violence in their reflections. He had always been small and clever, avoiding fights that would bruise his angelic face. But in this moment, he felt an edge sharpen inside him.
Night fell in tense silence. Candlelight and kerosene lanterns flickered in the houses like lonely ghosts. Angel lay awake on the living room floor, sleep eluding him. Sirens still wailed in the distance, a mournful cry under the quiet stars. Outside, every electronic device was dead; the world beyond was blank.
His mother murmured a prayer by her bed, fear etched in her aged eyes. His father clasped Angel's shoulder. They would figure it out tomorrow. They had each other, and a gun for protection. It was better than nothing.
Angel slipped outside into the quiet of early night and shivered. The stars looked different without light pollution, fierce and bloody. He thought of that for a long time. He thought of the light inside machines — gone now — and wondered what starlight might see instead in him.
He checked his father's old revolver for the hundredth time. Its chambers held six bullets; one was spent already from the trading post raid, one left. His hands did not tremble. He was afraid, but there was a strange calmness in him too. In the sleeping world after the storm, every instinct inside him had sharpened. He was no longer just a boy; the innocence of boyhood was slipping away.