The World’s End

The last tree leaned into the wind, its branches skeletal, its leaves as brittle as old paper. Across the horizon, cities were winking out one by one, each extinguished light another heartbeat silenced.

A child knelt in the dust, her palm pressed against the ground. She whispered to the soil as though it might whisper back, the way her grandmother once said the earth used to sing. But the ground was silent, hard as bone.

The air smelled of iron and smoke. Above her, the sky convulsed, a shuddering seam tearing across its vast skin. Fire spilled through the crack, ribbons of molten color that licked at the clouds and fell toward the dead world below.

She didn’t run. There was nowhere left to go. The oceans had boiled away, the rivers had turned to dust, and the voices of the people had thinned to nothing.

The child closed her eyes and imagined once more the sound of rain, the taste of bread, the warmth of another hand in hers.

Then the fire came, and silence was all that remained.

When the wind rose again, it carried with it the blackened flutter of the tree’s very last leaf, turning to ash before it touched the ground.