Quietdevastation Stories

Two young men in their 20s survive the end of the world together... until a radio brings back hope and forces a choice that love can't survive.

THE NAMES WE OUTGREW by winter-fire Some loves do not end. They simply stop being places you can live. On the eve of his wedding, Nikolai is confronted with a truth he believed had been buried for years. Letters once lost to silence resurface, revealing that the woman he mourned never stopped loving him-and that the life he painstakingly rebuilt may have been founded on a misunderstanding that was never his to make. Caught between two women who embody different forms of survival-one forged in fire and ambition, the other in patience and quiet devotion-Nikolai must face a question with no merciful answer: Is love defined by the passion that first breaks us, or by the steady presence that teaches us how to endure? Told through shifting perspectives and steeped in imagery of winter, memory, and restraint, The Names We Outgrew is a literary exploration of grief, gratitude, and the cost of becoming whole-asking what it means to choose a future when the past refuses to remain silent.

The world didn't end with the infection. It ended when people began to turn on the ones they loved. The crazed look human. They wear the faces of their former selves. The familiarity a weapon. Ava was raised in a world of wealth and safety. A world lost in the collapse of society and privilege. When she is forced to protect her three-year-old cousin in a city roaming with hunger and madness, her exceptional mind becomes a valuable skill. Monsters fill the corners of Bastion. The city lights diminishing from yellow strobes and into red, pulsating eyes that follow you in the night. Others will resemble humans, but hold more evil than the 'monsters'. This is Part One of The Crazed. The full story continues beyond this platform.