Elena stood holding the test results in trembling hands, her eyes glistening with tears, her chest tight with pain.
"Does this mean… I'll never be a mother?" she whispered, her voice barely audible—words slipping out from the crowd of emotions swelling in her heart before vanishing.
The doctor hesitated for a moment, then replied in a sorrowful tone, "I'm sorry, Elena… you've entered early menopause."
"Isn't there a solution?!" Elena interrupted, her voice breaking as she clasped her fingers tightly on her thigh to hold herself together. "Can't you..." But she stopped, unable to finish her sentence.
The doctor gently told her, "You have permanent damage to your ovaries, and medications won't help in this case." Then she stepped closer, softly brushing Elena's hair and said, "But don't lose hope! Your uterus is healthy, and we can try artificial insemination to make your dream of motherhood come true."
The weather in the city of Noxara was hellishly hot, with temperatures reaching 58 degrees, yet people walked through the streets wearing light turbans and scarves to shield their necks from the intense heat.
Some argued with merchants in clay shops, others chatted as they walked, while some shouted to sell their goods. But none of that noise reached Elena, who was lost in her own clashing thoughts.
She stood beneath one of the large canopies set up to shield from the heat, wiping the sweat from her brow with the sleeve of her shirt as she glanced around. Everything seemed as usual: people were busy with their errands, shops were open, and women examined dresses, haggling over prices... but Elena's heart was no longer the same.
Something inside her ached, and she couldn't tell if the pain came from a wound in her heart, from suffocating emotions, or from the dreams that had faded away.
Elena wiped the sweat off her flushed cheek and continued walking through the crowded streets with a distracted mind. Suddenly, as she gazed at the crowd ahead, she noticed a strange darkness creeping across the horizon like a menacing cloud. It started as a faint shadow that stirred her unease, then grew into a thick, consuming blackness that swallowed the lights of the shops lining the road.
People around her turned their eyes to the sky, stunned—so much so that a child dropped his candy in sheer astonishment. A mother rushed to scoop her child into her arms, then she too stared upwards. Elena felt a tightness in her chest and frowned as she turned to see the source of the panic.
The sky—meant to be lit by daylight, as it was only three in the afternoon—had suddenly turned pitch black. No sun, no moon, not even stars. She tried to breathe deeply, but the air felt heavy. Looking around, she saw others struggling too, clutching their chests and gasping for breath…
In the terrifying silence of sky and earth, a thin line of light appeared, stretching from the far east to the far west. Then more lines began to glow in the darkness, shimmering in shades of emerald and pale green.
Elena felt deep in her bones that something unnatural was happening. Those lights forming in the sky looked as though they were about to explode right above her. "Something's wrong!" a terrifying voice echoed in her head, urging her to run. But her legs were like stone—unmoving, unyielding.
"Run!" the voice kept screaming, louder and louder in her mind, yet she remained frozen in place, like a statue, her eyes wide with astonishment, locked onto the sky.
The sky suddenly shimmered with stars—denser and brighter than any Elena had ever seen in her life. And then, without warning... the stars began to fall toward the earth.
Screams of terror erupted through the street, jolting Elena back into control of her body. She turned around, eyes wide with panic. People were fleeing in all directions—mothers calling out frantically for their children, everyone scrambling to find shelter from the falling stars.
But the real shock came when Elena saw the stars piercing through people's chests—without killing them. She watched with her own eyes as one star struck the heart of a young man who had been trying to close his shop. Yet he remained standing, no wound in sight.
Then, within minutes, everyone began collapsing to their knees, screaming in agony, clutching their chests as if their hearts were being squeezed from within. Elena's body trembled in fear, and that trembling soon turned into an uncontrollable shiver. Her heart pounded wildly, and without a moment's hesitation, she ran—ran before one of those strange stars could strike her too.
Elena ran as fast as she could toward the residential area, where the homes were carved into the earth. She had thought the stars were falling only on workplaces, but the cries of pain emanating from beneath the ground shattered that belief.
People were lifting the straw covers from the entrances of their homes, rushing out, screaming for help. "Save my daughter! Her heart hurts!" That was just one of the hundreds of desperate cries Elena heard, but she didn't stop. She kept running toward her distant home.
She closed her ears, trying to block out the sounds of anguish. She saw a woman carrying her child, running toward one of the homes, only to collapse unconscious like so many others. Meanwhile, in the sky, the glowing lines continued to stretch endlessly, bearing witness to the terror of everyone below.
Elena reached the haystack marked (1078)—the sign of her home among thousands. She shoved it violently, causing it to tumble aside, then hurried down the dark stairs she knew so well. At the stone door at the end of the hallway, she tried to open it with trembling hands, but the key slipped from her shaky fingers.
"Dammit!" she whispered with a trembling hand, struggling to fit the key into the lock, glancing nervously over her shoulder. As soon as she managed to open the door, she rushed inside and slammed it shut behind her. Elena collapsed on the floor next to the door, her breath heavy and uneven, as though shards of glass were tearing through her lungs from the inside.
Lying on the cold ground, she fought for a single breath, while the city of Noxara outside her home crumbled under the weight of those strange lights and falling stars from the sky.
In the living room, the clock's hands continued to move, emitting a faint sound with each tick. The ground trembled several times, with enough force to knock the flower painting from the wall, sending it crashing to the floor.
The goldfinch in its iron cage was startled by the tremors. It spread its yellow wings, speckled with black feathers, and fluttered around the cage, desperately searching for a way out of the terror that had seeped into its tiny heart.
Elena opened her eyes with difficulty, groaning as she moved her aching body. At first, everything was a blur, but gradually her vision cleared until she could make out the ceiling, adorned with flickering lights. The lights blinked on and off, as if fighting to stay lit against the darkness that seemed intent on swallowing them.
She suddenly sat up, and memories of the terrifying events flooded her mind like a torrent, filling every corner of her thoughts. She stood on trembling legs, slowly approaching the closed door. She raised her shaking hand, wavering between opening it or leaving it shut forever.
She could hear her rapid heartbeat, not just in her chest but in every part of her body. A sense of suffocating pressure filled her, as if she were trapped in a room with walls closing in tighter with each passing moment. But how could she escape when the room was her own body? Where could she flee when there was no safe haven, neither on earth nor in the sky?
The ground trembled again after hours of calm. Elena staggered and fell to the floor, her salty tears spilling onto the carpet by the door, unnoticed by anyone.
She tried to stand up and retreat to her room in search of safety, but her body was exhausted, devoid of strength. She could only crawl with her trembling hands, navigating past the disordered living room, disrupted by the tremors, not even noticing her bird trapped in the corner of the room. Her eyes were clouded with tears as she crawled until she finally reached her room... and slammed the door shut behind her.
Elena no longer kept track of time. She stayed hidden in her room, eating whatever she could find in the small fridge. The voice in her head kept warning her: *"The outside is dangerous... don't go out."* So, she spent most of her days hiding in the darkness, as power outages became the norm.
When she opened the fridge—perhaps for the tenth time—she discovered it was completely empty. No food, no drink. "No... this can't be happening..." she whispered in a broken voice, as the pangs of hunger stabbed at her insides, as if a knife was carving through her gut.
In the darkness of the room, Elena broke down in bitter tears. Her tears flowed down her face, then onto her hands and legs. She had no food left, and only two options remained: either starve to death here, or venture out into the unknown in search of food. But she wasn't ready for either.
After moments of self-encouragement—"The Emperor must have acted; the outside is safe now"— she finally dared to open the door. She stepped out cautiously, her eyes scanning the area back and forth, searching for any sign of danger or hope.
The lights continued to flicker intermittently, powered by solar energy, while the picture lay on the ground next to the broken vase and withered flowers. A strange silence filled the space, intensifying Elena's fear.
Elena took slow steps toward the corner of the room where her birdcage stood. Her heart ached, beating painfully in her chest. When she reached it, she found him silent… lying motionless at the bottom of the cage. She bit her lip until blood welled up, while tears streamed down her cheeks. Her little friend was gone.
After three years of caring for him, feeding him with love, he had gone like this! With trembling hands, she opened the cage and lifted his small body. She gently ran her fingers over his soft feathers, as if afraid to hurt him. Even in death, she still feared causing him pain.
Carrying her bird's tiny body, Elena walked to the cold kitchen—the place she had avoided for days. "I'm sorry... Rive..." she whispered in a broken voice, her breath ragged, as the knife trembled in her hand. "I have no choice..." she added sorrowfully, then placed his stiff body on the cutting board. She ran her fingers over his colorful feathers one last time, tears falling freely.
Was she crying for the death of her only friend? Or because hunger forced her to do something she never imagined? She couldn't answer. With trembling hands, she raised the knife and cut off his small head... then hurriedly cooked it, as if by doing so, she could ease his soul's pain of death.
She ate it while tears filled her eyes. After three years of love and care, all that remained of Rive were a few colorful feathers on the table.
But even that didn't satisfy her hunger. The thirst still burned her throat, as every drop of water in the house had run out. She felt as if fate was pushing her toward the door... pulling her to face that outside world.
Elena stood before two choices, with no third option:
Staying meant certain death—either from hunger or thirst. Perhaps someone would find her one day, but she recoiled at the thought of being saved by a man. "Even the dead aren't safe from men here," she whispered in her darkness.
As for leaving... it was a gamble of life or death. Either the city had returned to normal, or devastation had spread everywhere.
After hesitation, she chose to take the risk. She dressed in comfortable clothes and gripped a thin metal pipe as a primitive weapon. When she opened the stone door, a faint light greeted her, along with a foul odor that choked her senses.
She climbed the stairs with a heart pounding like a drum, until she suddenly stood on the rooftop...
She was faced with a nightmarish scene:
A pale sun struggled to pierce through the thick, dusty fog, while corpses lay scattered in the streets like autumn leaves, and the sky still bore the scars of that mysterious catastrophe.
"What happened to Noxara?" she asked herself in a broken
voice, her hands trembling on the metal pipe. The world she had known was no longer there.