As the rising sun cast a warm glow on the ancient roads, the Old Man scratched a deep line onto the cover of a worn notebook, marking the dawn of the fourth decade since the Collapse. A passing onlooker would remark upon the leathery texture of his skin, toughened by the traversal of the ruined continent, and marvel at wrinkles communicating the unique hardiness which came with experience. The wastelands preyed upon weakness, as the skulls of many an unfortunate traveller would attest.

The apocalypse, the coming of which devastated the population and scarred the face of the earth, was of unknown origin. Perhaps it had been an atomic war, over in the hours it took for the terrors of metal and radiation to complete their deadly arcs in the sky. Perhaps it was a new virus, borne by wind to the far corners of the earth, or even the machinations of visitors from another planet. To the Old Man, what did it matter how the world came to an end?

Within the walls of the town, the dilapidated storefronts were barren of useful materials. Gas stations laid bone-dry, almost unrecognizable with the passage of time. As the Old Man glanced at the faded billboards, he recalled standing in line for hours in line for some opening night so long ago, muzak mingling with idle chatter before the unveiling of a new blockbuster. When everybody believed tomorrow would always come. And so the Old Man continued towards the Promised Land. Under a starlit sky, the lone traveller split open an aluminum can. Perched upon a tartan blanket, the heavily dented radio murmured static, interspersed with an occasional fragment of a song or jingle broadcasted on loop for an audience long dead. Engraved above its cracked display were the numbers 42.7, the dial meticulously removed to prevent tampering.

It had been scavenged from the corpse of a Holy Man, part of the white-robed order which sprang up with eerie efficacy a mere half-decade after the deterioration of society. The Old Man could no longer recall the monk’s features or even where he had buried him in a shallow grave, yet he remembered his last words uttered in a hoarse whisper as his blood turned sand a deep scarlet. “I must find the signal . . . travel North and find the home of the righteous.”

It had been almost four years since he began his fool’s trek, searching for a vestige of true civilization, for the moment when words and music would flow once again from the radio’s battered speakers.

On the fifth night, the Old Man came across a temple, carved from the stone mountainside. To its east laid a farm and humble houses, high fences keeping out the savage animals grown fierce from the decline of man. At the entrance of the temple stood two uniformed guards, white vests adorned with necklaces and rings of gaudy gold. With imperious, outstretched hands the guards demanded a tribute for entrance to the Temple of the Fallen Angel.

“Here,” they declared solemnly, “lies the angel who came to deliver mankind from destruction, deep in meditation. The Miracle has not forsaken us – let the penitent ones prostrate themselves in His light.” Intrigued, the Old Man fumbled for a tribute, handing over a bracelet of tarnished silver. With a shallow bow, the guards parted way.

And as the Old Man descended the ornate wooden steps, flickering flashlight in hand, he came to a chamber, decorated with Doric columns and marble walls. Sunlight shone from a circular opening in the ceiling, illuminating the offerings left in an imposing bronze chalice. The center of the clearing was left untouched, a square of dusty red ground neatly surrounded by gleaming, polished tiles. The chamber was empty of life, the perfectly formed footprints in the wine red sand the sole evidence that it had ever been disturbed.

“Well?” a guard asked with a sneer, “Beautiful, innit?”

The Old Man nodded.

It was near midnight, as far as the Old Man could tell. His sight was obscured by the dense fabric of the ceremonial headgear, which wrapped around the entirety of his head. The only source of illumination besides braziers lit with coals half-submerged in murky oil were the blood-red rays shining from the rough-hewn stone in the hands of the High Priest. This very night, they would perform the ceremony of the Miracle.

_______

Several days ago, the Old Man had arrived at the edge of the Silver Forest. The tidbits he had gleaned along the way were unfavourable at best - the expeditions the tribes of the Wasteland had sent out to explore the Forest never returned, and its vastness precluded any chance of finding their remains. Rumors concerning horrific and impossible Beings spread like wildfire, and before long the forest had been declared cursed, entrance forbidden.

Almost a decade later, the forest would be consumed by fire in a single night, and the watchmen at the forest’s border would be haunted for the rest of their lives by images of the winged, monstrous shadows they saw soaring beneath the full moon’s glow.

As the Old Man set about marking his path through the thickets, the trees became increasingly ancient the further he penetrated the Forest. Eventually, he came across a wooden treehouse blended almost seamlessly with its surroundings. A tentative pull on a dangling string, which could easily have been mistaken for a branch identical to the ones the Old Man’s machete had cut down by the dozens, led to a sturdy rope ladder falling from the trapdoor entrance of the small fort.

Climbing up, he was met with a scene to which his mind sputtered confusedly. Before him, three children sat clustered around a tastefully-embellished map, whispering to each other. On shelves rested thick tomes with leather covers, and a wrought-iron lantern lay haphazardly on an elaborate, exotic rug. The tree house would be cramped for adults, yet it seemed to be tailor-made for the children.

“Ah,” declared a boy, short blond hair concealed by a stiff, pointed hat. “He’s here”. The adolescents had not looked up, nor shown any signs of surprise.

“On time as always,” the girl murmured, “We have need of assistance.”

“Who are you?” the Old Man asked gruffly, voice hoarse from lack of use.

“The Neighbourhood Watch, of course,” said the third boy, whose brown hair rakishly covered his left eye. “Isn’t that obvious?”

“Nothing obvious about it,” the blond kid retorted, “Castellan, he hasn’t met us yet. Haven’t you got any manners, acting non-linear in front of our friend?”

“Hmph,” Castellan sulked, balancing a branch on his finger unrepentantly. He spun it lazily, with impeccable balance.

“Sorry about that,” the girl apologized, reaching out a hand for the Old Man to shake. “My . . . companions are not the most social, and we’re in quite the crunch.” Her accent was Britannican-tinged.

The blonde-haired boy shook as well. “I’m Kronos, and my companion here,” he gestured to the girl rooting through a cabinet, “is . . . Rhosyn. Our delightfully upbeat friend scowling in the corner is Castellan.”

“Charmed,” the Old Man grunted. “What was all the business about linearity and being on time?”

“No time to explain why we don’t have time to explain,” Castellan shot back with a nasty grin.

“If it’s any consolation, you’ll find out,” Kronos said apologetically, fastening a translucent crystal to a cavity in the trunk of the tree.

“Hey!” shouted Rhosyn, “Imminent destruction of the world first, idle chitchat later please.”

“Aye aye, captain,” the two boys snickered.

“Imminent destruction of the world?” the Old Man murmured. “Aren’t you kids too young to worry about this?”

“Someone has to. Else the Order of the Miracle, as they call themselves, will fracture time and cause our reality to, ah, reset so to speak.”

“The Order of the Miracle . . . “ the Old Man trailed off. The Forest tended to attract the detritus of society, hundreds of stragglers vanishing into the undergrowth, and it would not be outlandish that some of them lived on still, separated and safe from the violent practices of the Wasteland tribes.

“They’re insane,” Kronos clarified, “They find one mystical bauble and suddenly they think they’re masters of the universe.”

"You’ve ever heard of the Lapis Philosophorum? Alchemical aid?” Castellan attempted to stifle a condescending smile upon seeing the Old Man’s dumbfounded expression. “The Order have managed to get their filthy hands on one.”

“It’s like giving a thermonuclear warhead to six-year-olds,” said Rhosyn, rolling her eyes. “There’s enough energy in it to rewrite reality in a locally contained space, and they’re trying to mine it for apotheosis.”

Kronos mimed stretching a rubber band with his index fingers. “Soon it’ll snap, taking the entire Solaris system with it.”

______

“Prove your devotion to our cause, child.” The High Priest smiled beatifically.

Five hours before the ritual, the Old Man stood in a clearing, in the pure white Initiate robes he was given. The grass felt damp beneath his bare feet, already caked uncomfortably with the dark soil. Before him stood the forty-odd members of the Order, ranging from Initiate to Follower to Priest. Standing on a wooden stage, the High Priest wore robes of red and gold, evoking the traditional garb of the Archbishops of old.

The crowd of Miraculists parted silently before him as he walked to the High Priest. The smoldering sunset warmed his face as he turned to face the Order, raising the obsidian knife handed to him by the High Priest for all to see. With an abrupt motion, he drove a deep gash into his arm, and gasped as his blood watered the ground of the Forest. The High Priest raised the Philosopher’s Stone high, and before the Old Man’s eyes, the wound dried and faded, leaving but the faintest scar.

“You are now one of us. The Soulless, the Wanderers, the Guardians of the Past. We serve the Miracle and so it serves us.”

The chant was echoed by all those assembled as the Old Man rejoined the congregation.

______

“We are gathered here tonight through devotion. Burned upon my essence is the brand of the Miracle – my hands are the hands of the Mother and my gaze the gaze of the Father. I am cursed, yet it is the greatest blessing which could ever be bestowed. Tonight we shall perform the sacred ceremony, to remake this sickly world in Its image.” The High Priest raised the Stone high yet again.

As the Priest murmured the words to a primordial chant, the Old Man could see shadows at the border of the clearing, glints of fangs and blood-red eyes embedded in winged beings, demonic monstrosities hovering at the boundary shrouded by darkness. A pounding, rhythmic pressure seemed to distort the atmosphere, an undercurrent of something raw and involuntary as if the universe itself was resisting the event which transpired before their eyes.

A Being shambled from the woods towards the High Priest, wings unfurled. The Old Man flinched from the sight of it, his eyes involuntarily averting from taking in the Being in its entirety. All he could see were mere glimpses, of ridged talons, matted dark fur, and a long, cruel tail. Yet the Old Man knew his role, and this focus gave him strength.

______

The next minutes passed in a blur. He recalled a flash of lightning heralding the arrival of the Watch, the three youngsters springing from nowhere as columns of blinding white light shot into the sky. Simultaneously, the pressure lessened. A bronze sword flickered into Kronos’ hand as he swung, neatly severing a limb from the Being, who let out a piercing shriek penetrating into the Old Man’s skull. From Rhosyn’s revolver came six consecutive cracks of thunder, three finding their mark and three silver bullets spinning furiously in place in front of the Being. Not to be outdone, Castellan brandished an oversized war scythe, slicing partway through a thickly-muscled thigh before being blown away by a gale produced with one spasm of It’s mighty wings.

As if on autopilot, the Old Man mechanically brought out his pistol, given to him that very morning by Rhosyn. In its chamber was a solitary bullet, fashioned from the same bronze from which Kronos’ sword was forged. The pistol itself was hardly ordinary – it was a Gauss hand cannon, whose electromagnetic coils would accelerate its projectiles to a significant fraction of the speed of light. All of this would minimize the metaphysical influences of the Being, in the presence of whom the laws of physics themselves bent. Of course, the Old Man was oblivious to all this, focused purely on the scene before him.

His aim was steady – the Old Man was so detached from the situation the screaming barely registered. He was shooting at cans with a BB gun on his family’s ranch on a fresh summer evening. He was preparing for the next war, emptying a magazine into a cut-out as sweat dripped into his eyes, at the brink of exhaustion. He was at any time except the now. He did not miss.

As the Old Man dragged his feet in the aftermath of a sandstorm, left eye obscured by duct tape covering a dent in ancient goggles, he felt a bitter gladness at the sight of the silver city in the distance. Evidence perhaps that he was slowly going insane, succumbing to some senility which came with age or the lack of water, but at least it was something to look at.

The city resembled none which he had seen before. Structures were adorned by spires and angles which could only have been crafted by the most daring of architects in tandem with the most confident of engineers, and despite the whirling gales of sand which had wormed their way into the Old Man’s backpack, the city’s silvery sheen was clear of such imperfections.

Stumbling into the city, the streets were eerily empty. Curiously enough, the wind had ceased when he had entered the city’s bounds, yet outside it howled away all the same. As the Old Man inspected the buildings, there was an unconventional lack of exterior windows, the doors hermetically sealed with a small slot beside them just large enough for some sort of keycard.

Suddenly, a beam of light shot into the air, emanating from deeper within the city, refracting off of the sand particles on the air. A distant explosion rang out, melding with a rhythmic clanking of metal. The Old Man ran to investigate, curiosity overwhelming caution.

In what appeared to be the town square was some sort of otherworldly machine, devoid of wings or supports yet floating in the air. Its casing was crowded with brutal angles, resembling more of a geometric object than something made by man. A house-sized metal beast, with a piercing red eye. Out of a damaged corner, melted and singed charcoal-black leaked some kind of translucent green fluid, which evaporated as it touched the ground.

Facing it was a humanoid, in a strange, bulky suit, and what appeared to be a priest, clad in dark red finery. The person in the suit moved with inhuman speed, bounding from place to place with a fluidity reminiscent of dancing as the ground cracked behind them. At times, the Old Man could swear they flickered out of existence for a brief second then reappeared a meter away, pointing an arm at the floating machine. Wherever it was pointed, clean, circular holes were punched into its casing. For his part, the priest was clad in what seemed to be mere cloth, yet as he chanted in some forgotten tongue spears of lightning were conjured, as he tossed them towards the machine with but a flick of his fingers. As it turned towards the priest, red-eye gleaming fiercely, the Old Man felt extreme pressure even from the other side of the square, yet the pair remained unaffected in their deadly dance.

Eventually, the machine succumbed to its injuries, and it lay on the stone bricks leaking stardust into the cement. Its eye was cracked beyond repair, a thousand holes smoking from their edges. It let out the final whine of a cornered animal, an eerily emotional screech, and was silent.

______

“Speak, citizen,” came the commanding, distorted voice from the person in the suit.

“I like to see the face of those with whom I converse,” the Old Man replied. He was not generally afraid, but nevertheless there was something unsettling about the duo. He could not quite put his finger on it.

“It’s all right, Zeta,” the priest reassured his companion, “we’re all friends here.”

Zeta nodded. With a smooth motion, the helmet unfurled, retreating back into the suit to reveal a woman’s face, seemingly chiselled from stone and bearing a long scar which connected forehead to chin. Her hair was cut tightly, with militaristic uniformity. She sighed. “It’s been a long time since we were out of the war. Old habits I suppose.”

“Wouldn’t kill you to be a little more polite,” the Old Man grunted as he sat down on a bench.

“Hrrn.” Came the response.

“Can you tell us more about what happened here?” the priest asked, smoothing gray-flecked hair. He was quite conventionally attractive, a delicate face tarnished by a barcode which seemed to be tattooed on his forehead. Yet, his voice possessed the steel which the Old Man recognized came from years of combat.

“Not much more than you, I’m afraid,” the Old Man sighed, “I only just came here myself.”

“Hey, Rosen.” Zeta pointed, looking up at the stars. “The stars have changed.”

Rosen gasped, stepping back out of shock and whirling around to stare at the sky. “How is this possible? The configurations – this isn’t part of charted space!”

“The Edge’s transport malfunctioned perhaps, or some other cosmic anomaly.” Zeta murmured. “Shitty alien tech.”

“Hrrn,” the Old Man replied.

______

“You know, as far as I remember, our military never had such tech.” They were exploring the city, seeking survivors of whatever cataclysm had affected it.

Zeta grunted. “A fat lot of use this gives us now,” she replied, lifting up an arm to show the barrel of a weapon built into her suit. “No matter how much I boost the power, still does jack-all to these structures, though it tore the hell out of that HK unit.” She spat saliva, tinged with blood, onto the ground.

Rosen nodded. “This shouldn’t be possible,” he explained, “the Invisible Swords were designed to rip holes in the fabric of space itself, yet it doesn’t even scratch these buildings. The Prometheus Lens on the other arm gets absorbed completely, with zero heat change.” He grimaced, pausing to marvel at the strangeness of the entire situation. “Who would’ve known we would find such technological curiosities in such an otherwise quiet backwater planet?”

They would continue to search and found no inhabitants.

______

They came across a plaque, nondescript and embedded into the center of a central road. It was hardly larger than the average door, and it was carved from what seemed to be white marble, yet it was as impervious as the buildings. Inlaid in plain font were the following words:

“I swear – by my life and my love of it – that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” – A great man, so long ago.

War, famine, fear, poverty. Thus, are laid bare the deficiencies of man. We heroes, captains of industry and of intellect, long have we suffered under the heels of looters, destroyers, and enslavers.

The Honour of the soul, bled dry by fickle society, a parasitic mewling for help from the leeches.

On this day, shall we return to society, and remake it in our image. And our image alone.

“Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

“Wonder what happened to them”, the Old Man wondered aloud. Perhaps they, too, had been torn apart, in all their infinite confidence, by the thousand vicious knives of civilization. Or perhaps not.

______

As they departed the city, the sky was lit with a searing heat of gold-tinged red, the sun setting on another forgotten mystery. The Impenetrable City in the desert left behind as an eternal monument.

And so the journey continued.

The silhouette of the central towers arose from the fog as the Old Man slipped past the corroded iron bars of what had once been the gate. With the center sliced open by bolt cutters, the pierced barrier between the overgrown wilderness and the asylum’s grounds resembled the open maw of a ferric beast as it rested immobile in faint imitation of its original intended purpose.

As the ramparts grew closer, it became evident that they had been constructed at a time later than the asylum within. These walls were composed of some experimental concrete mixture, which did not deform after being subjected to the intensely humid environment for so long. Closer to the north it had partly collapsed where the earth had vailed before the roiling waves of the lake, which roared as it came in contact with the sloped shore. In the distance came the flash of lightning accompanied by the sonorous rumble of thunder.

Perched upon the walls were watchtowers, spotlights long defunct, casting sharply angled shadows to shroud the Western walls. Yet, passing through the outer circle of the ramparts, the Eastern walls’ interior surface was intricately etched with what appeared to be occult sigils, not scrawled with the careless touch of the amateur, but rather with a meticulous, studious eye, each geometric figure indented deep and indelibly. It would be hard to imagine that whoever had occupied the asylum could have been ignorant of the existence of the hieroglyphic symbols which coated every square foot of the walls so much that it resembled more a stele to linguistic history than a simple barrier. Indeed, from a cursory inspection, the Old Man identified Old Norse, Aramaic, Latin, even Enochian, among several others whose scripts his learned eye had never graced.

It was with an almost superstitious trepidation that he nudged open the oak doors, stepping gingerly over the shards of wood and glass which littered the otherwise well-preserved carpet. The asylum itself had not been designed with comfort in mind, and beyond the front foyer, the interior walls and floor had been renovated to fit with a more militaristic theme, stark metal, and antiseptic white as far as the eye could see. The west wing was the only part of the original design left intact, and if anything it felt more spartan than the renovations. Though the word asylum traditionally did not have luxurious connotations, the West wing resembled a penitentiary, made up of claustrophobic cells with rusted iron bars and featuring grooved channels in the floor to funnel liquids into central grates.

To the East was the remnants of a well-stocked armory, rows upon rows of assorted military weapons, armor, and specialized equipment, including everything from large tanks several meters wide filled with holy water to flamethrowers and silver bullets. In one of the dozen storage rooms laid what seemed to be bulky spacesuits, decorated with the same occult symbols which had decorated the walls. Another room still was filled with holy texts, shelves upon shelves, and another room held tanks filled with exotic liquids and materials. The rest of the rooms were completely emptied, presumably archives of information and backups kept classified by whatever evidently well-funded organization had occupied the asylum.

Eschewing any acknowledgment of architectural complexity or innovation, the castle ‘s innermost tower was the largest by far, dwarfing the turret-like observation posts which flanked it in each of the cardinal directions. A stone staircase twisted around a central sequence of cylindrical chambers, each separated from the staircase by a thick pane of reinforced glass, tinted a shade of dark grey. The first chamber was some sort of self-destruct mechanism, outfitted with tangled masses of C-4 and thick electrical wires. The second chamber was more intriguing – here the chambers began to open up, the second chamber almost twice the size of the already gargantuan first. A layer of thick steel blast shields separated the center of the chamber from the outside, and the center hosted a large dish-shaped platform of some reflective material. Hidden in the scaffolding-like framework of the ceiling were scientific apparatuses, large generators, and exotic arrays shrouded by black plastic fittings and masses of insulated power coils. Panning the thin column of light from a shoulder-mounted flashlight revealed the upper torso of a helmeted figure, which though oddly deformed was still recognizable as one of the suits from the storage facility. The sigil on the visor had been smudged, and it protruded from the dish as if it had risen out from the solid mass. A cautious tap on the outside produced but a hollow echo, peculiarly resonant, the sound of a minute pebble ricocheting against the walls of a vast cavern. Seared into a blast-resistant shielding was the faint outline of another suited figure, drawn in chalk with its hands upraised in supplication or prayer.

The final chamber was the most spacious and grandiose of them all, in stark contrast to the previous two which extended the essentials-only militaristic feel. Unlike the others, it was perfectly spherical, and every surface was etched with the runes from the ramparts. It seemed almost primeval, with an interior made of what appeared to be hardened clay. The engravings exhibited eight-fold symmetry, evoking some sort of fractal tessellation effect which disoriented the viewer.

Positioned at the geometrical center of the shrine, suspended in the air through unknown means, was a humanoid figure around twenty times the size of the average person, legs crossed with one hand down by the stomach region and one hand open, fingers pointing towards the sky. An ethereal light emanated from it, a rhythmic pulsing mimicking the regular rhythm of a heartbeat. There it sat, motionless.

“Greetings.”

The greeting did not come from the figure. Instead, it was a voice within the Old Man’s head, coming from the walls around them. It was orotund yet mellifluous and exuded an eerie calm which had become scarce since the Cataclysm.

“I will begin now.”

The words were oddly separated as if someone had excised from the original audio slivers of time and stitched the remnants together, a stutter which lent an alien cadence to the otherwise innocuous words.

---

Over the next hours, the Being told its story. At times, Its voice would change in pitch, and instead of words, there would be images and emotions and music which could only be described as vast, sublime, and brimming with unfathomable depth.

Back where It had been borne (here It used “Devised” instead of birthed), It had been the orchestrator of wars and discord, committed unspeakable crimes which It, even on the verge of death, would not recount. It had come from another universe, exiled and left to expire infinitely far from its home. Its powers, inconceivable by human standards, had been restricted by a “Spear of Compassion”, which gradually depleted the energy It needed to subsist.

Here, the Being weaved tales of his universe, the images flashing to imprint themselves indelibly into the Old Man’s mind, not only emotions but raw concepts, geometry and philosophical quandaries flowing seamlessly into a river of unending expression as it threatened to overflow the meager boundaries of his human mind. Alien melded with human, darting back and forth flitting from light to dark and clarity and esotericism to answer profound existential questions, ancient mysteries dissected and resolved with all the care one would use to swat flies on a hot summer day.

Suddenly, Its voice tapered off, to complete silence. The raging storm far above (for they were quite deep within the earth now) could not be heard, and without warning, It disappeared instantly, without leaving a trace. A split second later, a column of energy, its thickness around that of a finger, erupted from the ground. Soundlessly, it pierced the ceiling, leaving behind a perfectly circular hole. While the Old Man felt no heat, he knew, somehow, that anything breaking the imperceptible boundary between the raw energy and the air would be annihilated without a trace.

As the light subsided, the Being returned. This time it was inverted, the open palm’s fingers pointing to what lay beneath instead of the heavens above. When it spoke, it was unintelligible, and if one were to have recorded and transcribed the fragments there would have been the revelation missing snippets, the sounds and images disappeared from the previous conversation played in reverse, exhibiting some sort of temporal symmetry or oscillation which confounded conventional physics. As likely a hypothesis as any other was that were natives of this universe exhibited symmetries in space, those of the universe of the Being lived temporally symmetric lives, dying upon the moment of convergence once and forevermore.

So the asylum for beings beyond the stars was left behind once more, its secrets still shrouded by the mists of time and the transience of memory, arsenal of weaponry designed for use against monsters defying understanding proving useless in the face of the Catastrophe. What had happened then the Old Man could only surmise, for individual accounts and physical evidence proved impossible to reconcile.

For those who look towards the future, perhaps it was time to let go of the past.