The rain fell in sheets, heavy and cold, drenching the shattered wasteland that had once been Earth. Ash mixed with the mud, and smoke curled lazily from blackened ruins. Skyscrapers were skeletons now, jutting into the gray sky like broken ribs of a planet long since left behind. Nothing moved—no birds, no wind, no life. Just the quiet crackle of distant fire and the steady tap of rain on shattered steel.

Amid the wreckage, a hulking form lay still. Half-buried in rubble, slumped against the crumbling wall of a collapsed bunker, was Master Chief. His armor was scorched, dented, and torn, deep gashes exposing the charred inner plating beneath. The golden visor of his helmet was fractured, a web of cracks splintering across it—one jagged section completely missing, revealing the dark, bloodied shadow of the face beneath. Rain trickled inside, mixing with blood as it pooled in the hollow of his cracked helmet.

He didn’t move.

His chest barely rose, shallow and strained. A flicker of light sparked in his HUD—then died. Systems were failing. The world around him had failed already.

There was no extraction coming. No voice in his ear. No Cortana. No allies. Just betrayal—echoing in his silence. He had trusted them. He had saved them. And they left him here. Like scrap.

Lightning tore the sky. For a second, the metallic giant looked like a statue—forgotten and weathered by time. Then thunder rolled low across the hollow ruins, and still, he did not stir.

Raindrops slid from his fingers, limp at his sides. One arm twitched. A reflex, maybe. Or maybe some fragment of the soldier still fought, buried deep in the damaged neural lace.

But here, in the drowning ruins of a dead world, even legends bled.

Even gods were left behind.