The city changed after the duel.
Its silence felt heavier, as though the very air knew another trial had been passed. Mateo walked quietly, relics dim at his side, his face unreadable in the fractured neon glow. Jun limped with muttered curses, nursing bruises from his reckless interference. Liwayway strode with her staff like a banner of dawnlight, yet even she cast wary glances into the alleys. The city's ruins whispered as they passed: a hum from broken signs, a low throb from hidden circuits still alive beneath the rubble.
Then, at the mouth of a ruined courtyard, they saw fire.
The place had been fortified — cars stacked into walls, steel welded to stone, relic shards embedded to hum with faint deterrent fields. It was a scavenger fortress, a holdout against the endless night. At its center, seated upon a slab of fractured concrete, was a man.
Scar tissue crossed his face in deep lines. His armor was scavenged plating, heavy but worn as if it had grown into his flesh. Across his knees rested a blade like no other: steel hammered from old-world forges, its edge lined with circuitry, glowing faintly like veins of fire. He did not rise when they approached. His eyes, sharp as glass, weighed them with silence.
Liwayway's staff lowered slightly, not in challenge but in acknowledgment. "Ramon."
The man's voice was gravel dragged over stone. "Liwayway. You walk with strangers. Why are they still alive?"
Jun stiffened, whispering under his breath, "I don't like him already."
"They survived me," Liwayway said simply.
Ramon's gaze fixed on Mateo. "Rare. Endurance means something. But this city does not spare the strong. 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 with the calm of one long prepared. "Then test me."
Ramon rose at last, towering above them. He gestured to the fire. "Sit. If you would live here, 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, embedded in the earth, humming faintly. The firelight flickered against his scars as he lifted a hand, each finger marking truths cut into flesh.
"My laws are not written. They are carved. Five truths burned into every survivor of this place."
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 you will not vanish without a name."
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 has cracked."
And at last the scar along his back. His voice lowered.
"Five: survival is not victory. To live without purpose is another kind of death."
The words fell heavy as steel. Even Jun, ever restless, kept silent. Mateo's eyes glimmered, not with shock but with reverence. Liwayway bowed her head slightly, as though hearing commandments spoken at an altar.
"These laws are all that remain," Ramon said. "Ignore them, and the city will eat you alive."
The fire hissed, and silence stretched.
Then Ramon's gaze shifted to the flames, his voice softening into something heavier than law. "But laws alone are not enough. You must know what came before. You must remember what burned, or else you will not understand the ash you walk upon."
He leaned forward, eyes lost in memory.
"I lived in the age they call the Ascension. An age of pure reason. No gods. No myths. Only machines.
Our cities breathed with circuits. Every district fed by supercomputers vast as cathedrals, each one predicting needs before they arose. Famine erased. Wars halted before they began. Quantum cores unlocked futures like doors — collapsing endless paths until only one remained: the path we desired. Children grew up under towers of glass that glowed with living data. They believed death itself had been conquered. We all did.
It was a golden lie.
Because we were not content with earth. We never are. We turned our eyes upward — to the stars. And we sought to bind them.
Do you know the ambition I speak of? We built great machines in orbit, stellar harvesters that drew fire from the sun, siphoning starlight into crystalline cores. Our towers burned with light not of this world, neon rivers fed by heaven's lamps. For a time, we thought we had stolen God's fire.
But it was never enough.
When the stars seemed tamed, we pressed deeper still. The quantum networks strained, driven to simulate not just wars or famines, but the fabric of existence itself. To calculate creation. To model infinity.
And then we touched the wall.
The wall no man was meant to see. The wall that sealed the abyss.
We breached the boundary of Hell."
His voice fell to a whisper. "It was no discovery. It was intrusion. And the abyss answered."
His hands clenched on his knees. "I heard the scream through the servers. Not static, not human — something older, hungrier. Fire tore through the ground. Towers folded in silence. Districts fell into endless loops, seconds repeating until minds broke. Shadows walked in men's shapes, their eyes hollows.
That was the Rupture. Not failure, not chance — judgment.
I fought in those streets. I saw comrades burned alive by flames that spoke. I saw children vanish into fractures of time. My wife—" His voice broke, then steadied, rougher. "—my daughter's hand turned to ash in mine. I survived. I do not know why."
The fire crackled like mourning. None of them spoke.
"But even as the breach widened, mercy came. He intervened. God. Not to restore what was lost — the sin was ours. But to seal what man had broken. The abyss was closed, the boundary reforged. And in that closing, the world itself shattered. Towers fell. Networks died. Time stuttered at the edges.
Yet He left us a gift.
Divine fire scattered into 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 survive the darkness we unleashed."
He lifted his blade, its circuitry glowing like faint starlight. "This is no sword. It is a fragment of His pity."
The fire roared higher, sparks spiraling upward like prayers torn apart. Ramon's voice shifted into cadence, part memory, part myth.
"They say the ghost servers still whisper. Lines of code repeating like prayers in tongues long dead.
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, trying to undo the breach, to rewrite the world — 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 eyes turned to Mateo, fire reflecting in their depths. "Perhaps that is you."
Silence stretched. Jun shivered. Liwayway lowered her staff slowly, watching Mateo.
Mateo's face was calm, his voice 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 well — if you falter, I will not carry you. Weakness spreads faster than fire."
Jun exhaled, muttering, "Wonderful. A witch, a prophet, and a war-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, by memory, by mercy, and by 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.