Is This Really The End?

They no longer call it World War III. Because it was all wars combined into one. No one remembers who shot first. They only remember that after one night, the sky everywhere lit up brightly. Not fireworks, but mushroom clouds. One after another. People took everything most refined, most evil that they had ever created, and poured it straight into each other's faces. When the smoke cleared, the land was gone too. 80% of the places once called "livable" - forests, rivers, fields, coastal cities - turned into a pale white color like bone ash. Trees could not grow, if you drank the water you vomited blood. The soil was dead. Then people looked up at the sky. That was when the real fear began. The ozone layer, the thin layer of skin wrapped around the Earth, something that used to be just a footnote in textbooks, was now torn apart. Looking up, there was no more blue. There was only a murky, pale white emptiness, so thin that it felt like just a strong wind would tear it open. The sunlight shining down from it was no longer warm. It stung, it burned. Standing in the sun for 10 minutes, your skin blistered as if pressed with hot iron. At that moment people understood, bombs could not kill all of humanity, but losing this umbrella would surely kill everyone. Out of fear, humans split themselves into three groups. The first group was those who gave up. They said, well, it's really over. They didn't go looting, nor did they try anymore. They just sat idly by the roadside, on porches, eating whatever anyone gave them, whatever tomorrow brings, brings. Their eyes were hollow. The second group was the crazy ones. They said, oh, the apocalypse is here? The rules are thrown away? Then good. They did everything they had ever wanted to do but never dared to do before. Burning houses, killing people, forming gangs to hunt other people. For them, this was not the apocalypse, this was a festival. The last group was those who still tried to hold on. A few scattered government officials, a few scientists, a few soldiers who remained. They crawled down into basements, into sewers, temporarily set up torn canvas tents, bent over measuring, taking notes, trying to find a way to patch the sky. They looked both pitiful and desperate. Since splitting into three like that, it was considered over. There was no more humanity, only three groups of people living next to each other. 30 years passed like that. The world at this time had only about 4.5 billion people left. Our grandparents said there used to be nearly 9 billion. That is, almost half was lost. For every two people, one disappeared. At this time, only 1.5% of the ozone layer remained. The sky cracked like broken glass. Dazzling streaks of light cut across the sky, looking directly at them would blind you. The sun was so harsh that people had to cover themselves completely from head to toe with rags. Children born, all of them had reddish, wrinkled skin like old men. Whether it was the faction that gave up, the crazy faction, or the faction that tried, at that time everyone had the same question in their head, no one said it out loud but it rang in their heads every night: "Is this the end?" The scientists, after measuring to their heart's content, then said a very short, very cold sentence: "If it continues like this, in 20 more years, the last layer will disappear. And in 20 more years, we will also disappear. Cleanly, without a trace." That was something that 60 years ago, no one dared to think of. And so people continued to live in that fear for almost 80 more years. Until one morning, the inevitable also came. The ozone layer disappeared completely. Everyone thought they would die immediately. But no. From the horizon, a layer of black smoke, thick as Chinese ink, slowly crawled forward. It slithered over mountains, over rivers, over cities, swallowing everything. In just a few days, the entire Earth was wrapped in a black veil. People were still confused, then the world began to deform. The wooden chair in the house suddenly opened its eyes. A wet human eye grew in the middle of the back of the chair, staring at the person sitting. The mirror grew long, lanky fingers, knocking on the glass. The dry corpses buried under the ground for dozens of years, suddenly broke through the ground and stood up, staggering, mouths open full of black dirt. At that time, humans only knew how to run. But where to run now? In just 10 years after that day of deformation, the population dropped uncontrollably, leaving only exactly 2 billion people. And it was at that most desperate moment that a survivor discovered it. He was being chased by a monster, crawling into a deformed abandoned house at random. The monster outside howled, clawing at the wall, but couldn't get in. The house had protected him. That news spread as fast as fire. People began to crawl into those haunted houses to hide. But then they learned, that protection was not free. In the house, you have to play its game. Each house hides something very strange. You are forced to find it, to decode it. If you can't solve it, it will kill you right in the house. And its law is very iron-blooded, never changing: Each house only allows a maximum stay of 14 days. Each house can only hold a maximum of 8 people. If you solve its mystery, you get 3 more days of grace. If you can't solve it after 14 days, everyone will die. And once you have entered, if you have not finished solving it and the deadline has not expired, you absolutely cannot step outside. In return, the house will provide you with enough food and drink to live on. Stale rice, cloudy water, but enough not to starve to death. And so from then on, the remaining 2 billion people began a new life. Living here and there, crawling from one haunted house to another, both hiding from the Black Veil outside, and having to solve puzzles so as not to be eaten by the very house sheltering them. All those rules, those houses, those ways to survive... That is what those who came before left behind.