Hana had always been different.
Long before the sky split open and the world collapsed into ash, something fierce lived beneath her skin. Anger, yes. But also conviction.
A refusal to accept the world as it was.
A refusal to bow to the people who called themselves leaders while letting entire communities rot.
She had hated evil for a long time. Before the apocalypse. During it. Every time the powerful turned their backs on suffering, something inside her sharpened. She burned with the knowledge that the world was some kind of twisted game, and that she was expected to lose.
So she fought.
She joined revolutions long before the world ended, raising flags with steady hands, marching through streets choked with smoke and tear gas, shouting truths that made the powerful flinch.
She stood on rooftops with megaphones, her voice cracking but unbroken. She dyed her clothes with the others, splashing color onto a gray, suffocating system. They said the colors symbolized hope, unity, resistance.
For Hana, they meant something simpler:
I'm still here. And I'm not afraid of you.
But bravery wasn't rewarded. It was punished. She was branded a criminal, dragged onto a prison bus while the real monsters smiled for cameras and pretended everything was fine.
And then the apocalypse came.
The sky tore open. The ground convulsed. The old world died.
Hana didn't.
And she didn't just survive. She grew.
Now, walking through the ruins, the radioactive glow beneath her skin pulsed like a heartbeat. She felt it in her bones, in her teeth, in the space behind her eyes. Raw, volatile power, enough to kill a person thousands of times over.
But not her.
She was immune. Overflowing. A walking reactor wrapped in human skin.
She didn't know whether that made her blessed… or cursed…
She paused beside the shattered remains of a storefront. A shard of glass still clung to the frame, just large enough to reflect her face. She leaned in.
Her blue eyes glowed faintly. Her red hair shimmered with an unnatural sheen, as if the radiation had threaded itself through every strand. Her skin looked almost normal, until she moved. Then the light beneath it shifted like embers stirred by a breeze.
She touched the glass. It warmed instantly.
She stepped back, letting the shard cool. The wind carried ash past her boots, swirling around her like a ghostly tide. She watched it drift and thought of the old world, the one she'd fought so hard to fix.
Before the apocalypse, she had dyed her clothes to symbolize change. She did it now, too. A sign of rebellion. A promise to herself.
But was that really what she wanted?
To rebuild the world that had caged her? To return to a society that had labeled her dangerous while letting true evil roam free?
Her fists tightened. The glow brightened.
No. She didn't want that world back.
But what did she want?
Another revolution? She had joined one before. Many, actually. She had stood shoulder to shoulder with people who believed change was possible. She had bled for it, screamed for it, watched friends disappear for it.
And now, in the ashes of everything, the old feeling rose again.
Fight. Resist. Rebuild…
But rebuild what?
A world that had failed her?
A system that had locked her away?
A society that had called her criminal while the powerful crushed lives without consequence?
She didn't know.
For the first time since waking up, Hana felt something other than anger or adrenaline.
She felt lost.
The apocalypse had wiped the slate clean. No laws. No prisons. No corrupt leaders hiding behind polished speeches. No one left to tell her who she was supposed to be.
She could become anything.
A hero.
A monster.
A weapon.
A savior.
A spark that ignited a new revolution, or the explosion that ended everything for good.
And she had joined a revolution again, even now.
A new one rising from the rubble. A desperate attempt to force the remaining powers to stop turning a blind eye to those struggling in this homicidal death pit. She raised flags again. She dyed her clothes again. She fought again.
But deep down, a question gnawed at her:
Was she fighting to rebuild the old world… or to destroy the last pieces of it?
The glow in her chest pulsed, warm and steady. Hana breathed in slowly. She turned, her radioactive light flaring.
The apocalypse wasn't done with her yet.