The world hasn't ended. It's just stopped pretending to be whole.

You still remember the smell of rain on warm asphalt, the hum of streetlights, the meaningless conversations about tomorrow. Now everything smells of rust, cold ash, and something sweet that, once you recognize it, you can never get out of your nose. Decay has its own scent. And it lingers.

People no longer call it the apocalypse. That word was too big, too dramatic, too much like a movie. No one wakes up in the morning thinking