Hot wind pushes against your back, tugs at your clothes, nips at your ankles. It seems almost alive, trying to keep you from its wasteland. But you won’t be deterred by the angry breath of a dead landscape. You tighten your cowl against your face, cursing this biting wind. Rumors claim the very air is toxic, but here you are with no ill effects. So far.

Legends say this was once a lush, forested area. There’s no trace of it now. Not a single tree. The most the deadzone offers is a few spindly scrub bushes, twisting a few feet toward the sky with delusions of grandeur.

Lips twisting, you feel a kinship with these shrubs fighting for survival in a place of death.

Lost in your fancies, you haven’t been paying enough attention to your footwork. You stumble and almost fall as rocks scatter beneath your feet. You tense. Then feel foolish. There’s no one around to hear, not this far into the deadzone.

So you press on. You’ve come too far to stop now.

You don’t let yourself consider what you will do if this has all been for naught. If all the clues you’ve pieced together over years have been false. There is something out here. There has to be.

Cresting a hill, you can finally see the faint purple haze you’ve been searching for. The Breach. Your heart quickens. You’re almost there.

No one can pass through it, of course, though you can’t imagine anyone foolhardy enough to try. The shadowy bubble is chilling, even as far from it as you are.

Fortunately, your destination is some distance from the Breach, and even so, it’s too close for comfort. Reaching for your pack, the only worldly possessions left to you, you draw forth a long stick with a metallic circle on the end. A treasure of a world from before all this, supposedly meant to detect secrets.

With trembling hands, you trigger the device. It works! It starts beeping, a low, monotonous sound. Sweeping the stick before you in slow arcs, you start down the mountain.

You’re not even halfway to the base when you tire of the detector’s sounds. Surely the truth can’t be worth this aggravation? After all you’ve been through it must be.

You reach the bottom, and keep going, not letting yourself think of all you’ve lost, all you’ve done. All that matters is finding--

The beeps accelerate. So does your heart. You glance around. There, beneath the dirt, is there a faint outline of a rectangle? The foundations of a structure like bones in the sand.

Dropping the detector, you pull out a shovel and dig, and dig, and dig. Clack! Something nicks your spade. Falling to your knees, you scramble at the ground with your hands. A metal box sleeps beneath the earth, and with a heave you haul it up to the light.

It’s...underwhelming, just a box. A small trunk, maybe. Once silvery, perhaps, it’s now as washed-out with grayish-beige dust as everything else around, including yourself. Steeling yourself against potential disappointment, you bring the blade of your shovel down on the lock.

Rusty and ancient, it can survive only two blows before falling in pieces onto the ground. The lid resists you at first, then, with a groan, creaks open.

Inside are three thick bundles of rolled paper. They’re sealed inside a strange clear bag. Can it be? You bring one up to your face to look at it. You’ve heard of this. Plastic. A miracle of the old sciences people have long forgotten. The bags are sealed by a strange blue-and-purple seam.

Trembling fingers fumble at the seam, more secure than the lock itself had been. Finally, the opening parts. The sound makes you fear you’ve torn it, but everything seems to be in order.

You half expect a ripple of angry spirits, the clash of punishing thunder, but there is no divine judgment as you bring the first scroll out of the bag. Yellowed with age as they are, your fingers still leave a grimy smear as you unroll the paper. They’ve been sitting so long they resist at first, furling back in against itself.

Frustrated, you hold the bundle as flat as you can against the lid of the box. Sitting cross-legged, your eyes begin to scan the first page…

Seth Speaks:

If you’re reading this, the Apocalypse is over. I wish I had some words of comfort, but I have only the words in this testament.

My name is Sethary St. James, and what follows is the most accurate account of the end of days I’ve been able to write. I’ve spared no feelings, even my own, determined to pen every detail I can recall. Fortunately, all the Saints were trained in memorization and observation, so I believe this document mostly reliable.

Then again, so many things I once believed have crumbled beneath the colossus of time. I suppose, whoever you are, that you must decide for yourself whether these words ring true or false.

Whatever the verdict, I hope these pages are some sort of solace to the reader. They are an agony absolute to the writer. Why, then, did I take it upon myself to record such a painful subject?

Because it’s all my fault.

I have no right to apologize, even to beg your forgiveness. Please believe I never meant to hurt anyone.

I never meant to fall in love.

To truly chronicle the last mission, I must start with my first. Even then, on the day I was knighted, the red chord of fate was already unwinding. It was my eighteenth birthday...