Epitaph: WESTERN NORTH AMERICA 3

Unknown Author 

190 A.I./2210 A.D. 

     Many believe that the world ended 190 years ago, when Impact shook the globe and unleashed the Scourge. But in reality, all that did was hit reset. As the Scourge swarmed the earth, they tipped the scales, and a society teetering on the brink of collapse finally fell. 

     Infrastructure failed, and power grids blinked out of existence. Supply lines, the lifeblood of a swelling population, were suddenly reduced to a razor-thin lifeline that could barely sustain the fragments of humanity clawing their way through the body-clogged ruins to survival.

     But it wasn’t the end—just another reset.

The history of Earth is rife with resets. Floods, famine, war. Ice ages, meteor storms, and environmental decay of our own making. Every time the world ends, we think it’s for good. 

     But every time humanity rises again, they forget the past and careen toward destruction once again.

     The Scourge were a reset we never could have foreseen, one that very nearly ended the cycle. 

     Humanity fought for almost two centuries. They rose from the ruins and rebuilt what was lost, but it was never quite the same. The Scourge still haunted the darkness at the edge of every city and stalked the battlefields like a stain we could never wash from the land. 

     Humans returned from the brink of extinction, but humanity was always a few steps behind. It was lost somewhere along the way, trampled into the muddy ground by the relentless footfalls of an army, buried beneath the rubble of a fallen city or burned in the fires that struggled to cleanse the earth. 

     But here and there, a glimpse of it still remains. 

     It lives on in those who remember and those who care. In those who fight battles but don’t revel in them. 

     The world ended, and it will again. 

     Yet in the desolation, hope flickers like a forgotten flame. It persists in the quiet acts of kindness, in the shared memories of what once was, and in the determination to build something better from the ashes. These are the embers that refuse to be extinguished, sparks that strive to ignite a new flame.

     At the end of the world, as legacies die and the legends fade from stories and songs, all that remains of the humanity we once knew is the ghost of an epitaph whispered over a forgotten grave. 

     But after the darkness, a new day dawns.