After the End

Prologue

The world was always teetering on the edge of chaos, but no one could have predicted how fast it would fall apart. Well, almost no one. Xiaina had always seen what others could not—glimpses of a future filled with catastrophe, moments of heartbreak, and sometimes, brief flashes of hope. Her parents had told her it was a gift, but it never felt that way. A gift would have been something useful, something that could change the future. Instead, she was left knowing the inevitable and powerless to stop it.

As a child, she had dreams about the end—flashes of fire raining down from the sky, cities crumbling, people screaming. She didn’t understand what it all meant until that day, the day the world actually ended. It was eerily quiet before it happened, a silence that hung in the air, like the universe itself was holding its breath. Then everything unraveled in a matter of minutes.

Xiaina’s parents, knowing her power, had built a bunker beneath their home, deep enough to withstand anything. When the apocalypse came, they shoved her into it without a second thought. “Stay here. We’ll come back for you,” they said, though they both knew it was a lie.

For days, Xiaina listened to the chaos outside—explosions, sirens, the distant hum of things falling apart. But as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, the noise faded, leaving only her with her visions of the future. She saw what was coming, but even she couldn’t foresee how utterly alone she would be.

That is, until she met him. Until she met Five.