Chapter Four: After The Blast
1177 Words
It was impossible to tell what had happened to Elijah.
One moment, he had thrown himself into the heart of the explosion — a last, desperate act that felt more like a legend than reality — and the next, there was nothing. No trace of him. No witnesses to speak of his final stand. Everyone who might have told the story had been reduced to ash.
The silence afterward was suffocating. The air felt wrong — heavy, empty. The school, already half-ruined, was now nothing more than scattered rubble and dust. There was no sign the stone head had ever existed. No scorch marks, no shards, no monstrous silhouette in the distance. It was as though the creature had been erased from reality, along with everything else.
The girl he had tried to protect — the one who’d been blasted into unconsciousness — was gone too. Maybe she’d been crushed under falling debris. Maybe the fire had claimed her like the others.
As for Elijah… nothing. Not even a shred of fabric from the clothes he’d been wearing. The only evidence he had ever stood here at all was a pair of broken glasses, half-buried in the dust. The lenses were cracked and clouded, impossible to see through.
What happened to him? It was the obvious question — but it was also useless now. The blast had not only destroyed the school; it had scattered the remains of almost a hundred people. No one was coming for them. And if by some miracle a rescuer arrived, their chances of finding anyone alive were slim to none.
The sky, once choked with unnatural black clouds, had begun to clear — but calling it a beautiful day would have been a lie. The air was too still. The world, or at least this corner of it, felt extinct.
Then, without warning, the air ripped apart with a deep, rolling boom.
It wasn’t from above — it came from below.
An orange-gold light erupted upward, a pillar stabbing into the sky. The ground trembled. Lightning cracked from the heavens, while thunder seemed to roar from the earth itself. Static electricity prickled across the ruins, sharp and restless like the charge before a tornado.
And then—swish.
The wind sliced through. The thunder vanished. The lightning blinked out. All that remained was smoke — thick, curling, the kind you saw in a kitchen fire gone horribly wrong.
For a moment, it was impossible to see what stood within it. The world held its breath.
And then the hologram appeared.
Glowing green text, hanging in midair:
[ CONGRATULATIONS — YOU HAVE DEFEATED THE HEAD ]
[ YOU ARE NOW A PLAYER ]
[ YOU HAVE ADVANCED TO THE NEXT LEVEL ]
The smoke thinned.
A figure stood there — n***d, wreathed in faint sparks of golden lightning. His eyes glowed the same green as the hologram.
It was Elijah.
But not the Elijah we knew.
His body was different — taller, sharper, as if forged anew. His expression was unreadable, his breath steady. When he exhaled, the lightning died away.
He ignored the glowing messages. Instead, his gaze swept across the ruins, slow and deliberate, like someone mapping a place in his mind. His eyes settled on a mound of rock and twisted metal. Without hesitation, he stepped over and began to move the debris — not piece by piece, but in a single effortless lift, as though gravity had decided he no longer applied.
Beneath the rubble lay the girl — unconscious but alive.
Elijah scooped her up and walked away without a word.
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Some time later, he stopped at an abandoned factory. The building’s skeleton rose against the pale sky, silent and empty. He paused at the entrance, glanced around, then stepped inside.
When the girl finally woke, she found herself lying in a real bed — soft, clean sheets, her wounds bandaged, her skin scrubbed free of dust and blood. Her head throbbed with a deep ache.
Elijah stood at the window, his back to her, staring out at the wreckage of the world.
She didn’t recognize him. The aura around him was different — heavier, almost inhuman. His posture was straighter, his shoulders broader. On the table beside her, his broken glasses rested in the sunlight.
“Who are you?” she asked.
He turned just enough for her to see his face. “So you’re finally awake, huh?”
Her eyes widened. “Elijah?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not here to hurt you. I wasn’t going to hurt you.” His voice was deeper now — steadier, with an edge she hadn’t heard before.
She sat up slowly, though the real reason she trembled wasn’t him. It was the memory of what had happened.
“What’s your name?” Elijah asked.
“What happened?” she deflected.
“You already know,” he said. “And before you tell yourself it was a dream—it wasn’t.”
Something in his tone told her he was telling the truth.
“Now,” he said again, “your name?”
“Rean,” she said after a pause. “Rean Parker.”
“Well, Rean,” Elijah said, handing her a neatly folded set of clothes, “find yourself somewhere safe.” He picked up his glasses and headed for the door.
She stared after him. “Where are you going?”
“What does it look like?” He didn’t look back.
“You’re just going to leave me? Alone?”
“You’re not my responsibility. And I’ve got more important things to do than play babysitter.”
She jumped from the bed and ran to him, throwing her arms around him from behind. “Please… take me with you. I don’t want to be alone.” Her voice broke.
He froze. Affection had never been his thing, and this sudden closeness felt strange. Truthfully, he didn’t even know where he was going — only that the world outside the window was wrong. Even though everything was quiet now, he couldn’t shake the feeling of invasion.
“Fine,” he said at last. “But clean yourself up.”
While he waited, he found himself thinking. When Rean finally emerged, he turned to speak — and almost lost his words.
Her hair, golden and loose, framed a face far softer than the battlefield they’d met in. Hazel eyes, bright despite the exhaustion, met his. She wore the clothes he’d given her — a white T-shirt, a red jacket, a matching skirt, and clean white sneakers.
She smiled shyly. “Well? What do you think?”
“Are you ready?” he said, sidestepping the question.
“Yeah.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
She hurried to match his pace. “Where?”
“We’re still human. We need food.”
“Great, I’m starving.”
As they stepped outside, new text appeared in Elijah’s vision:
[ FIRST LEVEL COUNTDOWN: 03:00:00 ]
[ PREPARE YOURSELF ]
He glanced at Rean. “We’d better hurry.”
- Writer
