It Is Burning
They sing to their Gods for guidance and salvation, and they pray with the fervor no monk can muster. They will for a new day, a dawn unsaturated with the stench of devastation, an era that renews. The might of magic and strength of science never united, and in their conflict set loose the divine spitfire upon a bastion of humanity. As the smallest of the small, the indivisible and unbreakable was wrought apart, the fury of a thousand suns did set foot upon this recovering earth. The trials of the era long past, the Black Beast's devastation, gave way to survival renewed…
War never changes.
Ashen earth dampens the footfalls of steel-toed boots, the owner wandering aimlessly amidst the rubble. In the wake of the all-consuming flame, his very existence is a miracle to the eyes of the body, but a nightmare to the perception of the mind. With a cough and a sputter, he speaks hoarsely, "Noel?"
In the distance, rubble shifts and rocks crack, a second figure rises, shakily and with the gait of a broken body. Slowly, she limps to the nearing figure and collapses into his weary arms. Hot tears flood her face as the alien planet, home no longer, sets into her eyes. "What happened, Ragna?"
The comfort of her presence is only just enough to keep his will from cracking. "Nukes," he says, the word cracking throughout their ruined surroundings, spurring Mother Gaia to hiss in anger, weep in dismay and pray her children are returned to her nurturing bosom one day. "Survivors," he struggles out, "We need to find them."
And their journey begins, shuffling amidst the broken bones of buildings once upon time called homes. The dust that swirls through the air, fills their lungs with the poison of atomic fury, but as mere imitations of true life, their constitutions persevere; the weeping decay that emanates now from the cursed rock beneath them floods their limbs but cannot rend their twisted DNA.
The swirling smoke and crumbling ruins surround them, and the ominous silence of a torment landscape envelops them. Quietly, Gaia weeps, her terrible cry made flesh in the wandering spirits of her broken children. Corpses, like litter in a city, line the cracked streets and the crackle of fires grows louder with each step. An inferno, burning brightly stands before the two and the cold edge of horror slices them: a hospital. Burnt corpses litter it's surroundings, the charred remains of the young and old, their twisted forms screeching out the damned suffering of their last moments.
Ahead of them stands a lone wall, standing resolute before the powers of devastation, but scarred with the mark of total destruction: shadows etched upon it, the essence of humanity scarred into it, the bodies now long lost to the ether. Ragna staggers to it and pounds his fist into the wall, burning sorrow bursting from his eyes. This wall, this cursed wall is all that remains of Sector Seven. Stretching out infinitely behind it is a mere crater, filled to bursting with infected remains. Jin. Tsubaki. Kokonoe. Makoto. Tager.
Who else had perished? Terumi, a small comfort in a world filled with unfiltered waste. What of Jubei? Tao? Carl and Ada? He sinks to his knees as a trembling hand rests upon his shoulder, but she is no comfort. They are survivors who carry all the guilt and grief; with nothing else to lean on, they collapse against each other.
Hours pass, and still they sit, their bodies wells of poisoned invisibility, but they suffer still no ills other than the terrible strain of a tattered heart. With great force, he wills himself to stand and inexorably drag his only love out, into a future that will bring no comfort. The drive to continue hinges on the miracle of finding even a shred of peace on the outskirts of the newborn wastes. Any city besides this godforsaken one would be better. She cries harder, screaming at him to let her stay, to die as they did, but he cannot. With only her inexplicable existence left to send him walking forward, he pulls her from the site of sorrow and sin outward and onward.
They walk, wills broken and minds in shambles towards the countryside, falling whenever the sorrows of the moment consume them, and cry with reckless abandon, until they find the strength to move once again. Slowly, the twisted lands begins to right themselves and the ostracized color of life: green, begins to reclaim the land. They fall to the ground and stare ahead of themselves, then behind themselves. Two worlds existed now, the hell they traversed, and the alien paradise the stretched before them. The land before them was not paradise. The greenery and life that mocked them was not home. The corrupted earth they left was not either. They were lost forever, left to watch the ticks of the clock in hopes that death drew closer.
There was no hope, no closure and no faith in a brighter future. The sunlit road before them led nowhere. They had died, but their bodies had yet to tell them.