The world did not end with a bang, but with a wrongness.
It started with the light. The late afternoon sun, filtering through the arched windows of the Aethelgard, didn't just set—it sickened. It deepened from gold to a burnt, bloody orange, then bled into a feverish, electric green that painted the stone walls the color of old bruises. No sunset in history had ever looked like this.
Asher Vale felt it before he saw it. A pressure drop in his ears, a metallic taste on his tongue, like licking a battery. The ginkgo tree in his private garden, visible from the control room window, began to tremble violently, though there was no wind.
He rose from his ginkgo-wood desk. The city's hum outside was changing—not disappearing, but twisting into a chorus of car alarms, distant, rising screams, and the sudden, percussive crunch of collisions.
His hand went to the central drawer. It slid open soundlessly.
Inside, cradled in black velvet, lay his answer to the unraveling of order: the Matabele 9mm. Its brushed tungsten frame was a promise of violence; the swirling, inlaid veins of 24-karat gold tracing the shape of a ginkgo leaf were a declaration of sovereignty. It was a gun meant for a king of the new dark age.
He lifted it, and the sickly green light slithered along the gold inlay like venom. On his right hand, the heavy platinum signet ring—its stark, raised 'V' carved into black onyx—felt suddenly heavier, a cold anchor.
The door crashed open. Silas stood there, not with panic, but with the grim focus of a soldier who'd just heard the first shell whistle in. "Reports are chaos. Not a blackout—something else. The sky's… doing something. People are losing their minds in the streets."
Before he could continue, Ren rushed in behind him, her phone held up. A live news feed, glitching violently, showed a reporter pointing a shaking camera at the sky. "—confirmed reports of severe atmospheric disturbances worldwide. Authorities are urging calm—OH MY GOD—" The camera jerked to the street where people were… changing. Not into monsters, but into frenzied animals—clawing at their own skin, attacking each other with bare hands, driven mad by something in the air. The feed died.
Ren's voice was a scalpel, sharp with professional terror. "It's not just light. There are particulates or some kind of agent in the air. It's triggering violent psychosis, migraines, hemorrhages. Lena's in a sealed wing, but if the hospital's HVAC fails or is compromised…"
She didn't need to finish. The cold spike of fear for his sister was a more potent stimulant than any adrenaline. Lena. Exposed, fragile, in the heart of a breaking city.
Kael appeared in the doorway, a silent wraith. He held out his hands. In one, a compact gas mask. In the other, a tactical shotgun. His message was clear: The air itself is now the enemy.
"The Protocol is obsolete," Asher stated, his voice cutting through the distant bedlam. The old plans were for a war of men. This was different. "We adapt. Silas, seal the Aethelgard's ventilation. Activate the air scrubbers. The Guard wears masks. No one breathes the outside air unfiltered."
He holstered the majestic gold-and-black pistol and took the mask from Kael. "Ren, with me. Full bio-containment gear for Lena. We are her extraction team."
"Kael." The man's eyes locked onto his. "You are the pathfinder. We go to the hospital. Nothing stops us."
The Aethelgard transformed from a fortress into a sealed ark. Great blast doors thudded shut over ventilation shafts. The Ginkgo Guard, now masked and goggled, looked like demonic sentinels against the emerald hell-glow.
In the courtyard, the two armored SUVs were already running, their interiors fitted with portable air filtration units. Asher slid into the lead vehicle, the weight of his gun a comfort against his ribs. Ren, now in a light medical hazmat suit, checked her seals beside him. Kael took the wheel, his own masked face an expressionless plate.
The steel gates groaned open, not onto a street, but onto a Hieronymus Bosch painting brought to life.
The sky was a swirling vortex of putrid green and bruised purple. The air shimmered, thick with iridescent dust. People staggered, some vomiting in the gutters, others screaming as blood trickled from their noses and ears. A group nearby had turned on a shop window, not to loot, but to smash it with a mindless, berserk fury.
Their convoy was an island of terrifying order. As they pushed through the chaos, a man, his eyes wide with panic and nose bleeding crimson, threw himself onto their hood. He wasn't attacking. He was begging, pounding on the glass, his screams muffled.
Asher's window slid down a crack, the filtered air hissing out. He didn't speak. He simply leveled his gaze and raised his right hand to the frame. The green light caught the platinum 'V' ring, making it glow with a baleful, authoritative fire.
The bleeding man's eyes fixed on the symbol. Through his panic, recognition flared—a deeper, more instinctual fear than the madness in the air. He scrambled back, falling into the street, and pointed a shaking finger. "V-VALE!"
The name spread through the fraying crowd like a ripple. Faces contorted in madness or pain twisted toward the vehicles. They saw the masks, the guns, the implacable advance. They saw the man in the lead car, his face half-obscured, his eyes like chips of ice behind the lens, his ring a beacon of terrifying authority in a world where all authority had dissolved.
A path cleared. Not out of respect, but out of a primal understanding: this force was not part of the chaos. It was its master.
Ren watched, her breath fogging her mask. "They see you as part of it. The storm and the shelter from it."
Asher stared ahead at the glowing, nightmare silhouette of the city hospital, its emergency lights flickering weakly against the green gloom. "I am the only shelter left," he said, his voice flat and final through the mask's filter. "Remember that."
The SUV surged forward, a predator moving through a herd of the dying and the damned. The apocalypse was a toxic wind and a maddening light. And Asher Vale, with his gold-and-black gun and his symbol of 'V', was driving straight into its heart to claim what was his.