The palace no longer echoed with laughter. It breathed only silence.
Mirshad sat in the main hall, eyes hollow, flipping through channel after channel. Screens blinked, cut to static, then faded to black. "World News: Signal not found." "UN Broadcast: Offline." "Global Satellite Feed: No response."
Each click was another nail in the coffin of what used to be Earth. Sophia entered quietly, carrying a plate of warm food she had prepared herself. She placed it beside him on the low table and sat across from him. Neither spoke. They ate in silence—the kind of silence that pressed down on the chest like a stone.
Days passed. Then week's. Every morning was the same. Every night was the same.
Sophia began to watch him from afar—from the balcony, from the hall corners, from the kitchen doorway.
Mirshad had become a shadow of himself. Sometimes he opened Sirius and repeated the same question, "Any updates? Heat signatures? Survivors? Movement?" And every time, Sirius answered, "Negative. No changes detected." He would close it and stare at the wall, or the ceiling, or the floor—but never at her. The golden eyes that once burned with life now carried nothing but stillness.
Some days, he left the palace. Not to search. Not to fight. Just to walk. He wandered the streets of his past—the tea shop where he once sat with his real friends, the boys who knew him before the name MRD ever existed, before the world crowned him, before the prophecy whispered his name.
He touched the wooden table outside the shop, the paint still chipped where he had carved his name with a coin.
He passed the old football field where they played barefoot until their feet were raw, the corner where they skipped class and shared secrets.
Now it was all dust. Still. Cold. Their laughter existed only in his memory. "They knew me before the world did. Before power. Before the storm," he whispered to himself as he sat at the tea shop bench for hours, watching nothing.
That evening, he sat again before the dark screen, his untouched food cooling on the table. Sophia stood at the hallway entrance, silently watching, still hoping.
Then Sirius beeped—a single green alert. "Detected: Human movement. Location: Coastal Bridge, South Shoreline. Signal confirmed. CCTV footage recovered." Mirshad blinked.
For the first time in weeks, his fingers moved with purpose. The footage played. There he was—David—smiling, walking, surrounded by his men, laughing. Alive. "Timestamp: Four minutes ago." Mirshad stood up slowly. No roar, no scream—just stillness. But it wasn't peace. It was the quiet before the storm.
Sophia stepped from the doorway, her eyes searching his face. She didn't speak. He looked at her with calm, cold certainty. "Stay. You're safe as long as they're inside you." He walked to the door, paused, and looked at her once more. "I'll be back." She nodded, her eyes glistening—not from fear, but because she knew the man leaving now was not the one who had broken. He was something else.