He walked.
From my vantage point of everywhere and nowhere, I watched the man who was once the center of my universe become a solitary, moving speck against the vast, clean canvas of the world I had remade. The air, once thick with the taste of rust and radiation, was now crisp and cool, carrying the scent of damp earth and the promise of rain. The sky was a shade of impossible, piercing blue. A beautiful world. A perfect tomb.
Kaelen didn’t see it. He walked with the relentless, unseeing pace of a machine set on a final, unbreakable directive. He moved through the central plaza, past the stunned sentries and the whispering knots of survivors who were tasting true, clean air for the first time in their lives. Their faces were turned upward, full of awe and dawning hope. His was a mask of
