CHAPTER XXVII - Until the End

The end did not arrive as fire.

It did not tear through Delta in a single catastrophic rupture, nor did it announce itself with the violence humanity had always imagined when speaking of extinction. There was no final explosion above the surface, no last army crossing a ruined horizon, no voice from the dying world declaring that the age of mankind had reached its closing breath.

The end came instead through systems.

One after another.

Quietly.