The city burned, and the sky burned with it.

The sun had long since sunk beneath the horizon, but its absence brought no darkness—only fire, swelling in great billowing clouds over the streets, blackening the heavens like the breath of a dying god. The towers of Verdant Heights stood like jagged tombstones in the blaze, their glass skins melting into rivers of molten slag. Somewhere beneath the smoke and ruin, the people screamed.

Then the bombs fell again.

A second wave of detonations cracked the earth open like a rotten fruit. The blast rippled outward, swallowing entire blocks in a curtain of dust and flame. Shattered rebar jutted from the pavement like broken ribs, streets lined with the bodies of those too slow to flee. Fire rolled through the corridors of the city, creeping in its silent hunger, devouring whatever remained.

And above it all, from the highest point of the ruins, a single flag fluttered in the rising heat.

Crimson. Torn at the edges. The mark of the Reapers Hand.

They had sent their message.

Project Red War Room – 11:45 PM

The air in the war room was thick with smoke. Not from the fires raging outside but from the smoldering cigar pinched between Levi Ivanov’s fingers. He let it burn untouched, the embers eating their way toward his skin, though he made no move to flick them away.

The map before him was marked in red, thick lines drawn over neighborhoods that no longer existed. Cities reduced to coordinates, lives reduced to casualties, war reduced to strategy.

He had seen it before. Many times. Too many times.

But never like this.

Verdant Heights wasn’t a battlefield. It wasn’t a war zone. It was home.

His home.

His nephew’s home.

Levi blinked once, slow. His eyes drifted away from the map, toward the stack of letters piled beside his hand. They were worn from rereading, corners folded, smudged with old fingerprints. He hadn’t meant to pull them out tonight, but his hands had acted on their own.

The topmost letter was already open.

He picked it up, let his eyes fall over the familiar slant of the handwriting.

Jacob’s handwriting.

Uncle Levi,

I don’t hate you. Not even close.

Dad doesn’t talk about you much, but I read every one of your letters. Sometimes I wonder if you write them for me instead of him.

I’m not mad about Project Red. I don’t think you made the wrong choice. I just think it should’ve been mine to make. I don’t know if that makes sense.

You said you wanted to protect me. I believe you.

I just don’t know if I was ever meant to be protected.

- Jacob

Levi exhaled sharply through his nose.

The cigar burned his fingertips. He flicked the ash away.

It was Adam who hadn’t forgiven him.

Adam who let the letters sit unopened.

Levi had sent a dozen, maybe more, always knowing they’d never be read, never answered. But he had written them anyway. As if the words might find their way through the ink and paper, into the hands of his brother, into the past, into a time where he could’ve done things differently.

But that time was long gone.

A knock at the door.

He didn’t look up.

“What?”

A soldier stepped inside, hesitant. His uniform was still stained with dust from the ruins. He smelled like blood and smoke.

“Sir,” the soldier said, clearing his throat. “They want your orders.”

Levi stared at the letter in his hands. His nephew’s words. The ones he would never write back to.

His fingers curled around the page, and he set it down carefully atop the others.

Then he stood.

“Ready the strike teams.” His voice was calm, quiet. “The Reapers Hand think this war belongs to them. We’ll remind them whose city this is.”

The soldier hesitated for a moment. As if considering saying something.

Then he nodded, turned, and left.

Levi stood alone in the empty room, staring down at the map of Verdant Heights.

A city that no longer existed.

He reached for another cigar, and outside, the fires burned.

Somewhere in the Wreckage – 2:13 AM

The boy lay broken beneath a crumbled streetlight, his breath shallow, his blood black in the dim glow of the embers.

There was a woman standing over him. Or something that had once been a woman.

Her eyes were sunken, hollowed by grief, her hands trembling as she reached down to touch the ruin of the child’s face.

The buildings around them groaned, foundations shifting in the wake of the blast. The fires would reach them soon.

She knew this.

But she stayed.

A thin, wailing sound rose in her throat, something between a sob and a song. She smoothed the boy’s hair with shaking fingers, rocking back and forth, her body casting a long, warped shadow in the firelight.

A single word fell from her lips.

Over and over.

His name.

A name no one would remember.

A name swallowed by the smoke, the ash, the endless night.

Project Red HQ – 4:47 AM

Levi sat at his desk, staring at the final letter. The one he had never sent.

His hand twitched once before he picked up his pen.

He hesitated.

Then, slowly, he crossed out every word.

He started again.

Adam,

You don’t have to answer this. I don’t even expect you to.

I just want you to know that after tonight, everything changes. This isn’t about Jacob anymore. This isn’t about keeping him safe. It’s too late for that.

The war came to him. It came to all of us.

I don’t expect your forgiveness. I don’t expect anything at all.

But you should know one thing—I never wanted this. I never wanted to be the one to make these decisions. But I made them anyway. Because someone had to.

Because someone always has to.

Levi sat still for a long moment.

Then, slowly, he folded the letter.

And added it to the pile.

Unsent.

Forever unread.

The sun began to rise beyond the smoldering ruins of Verdant Heights, washing the bloodstained city in gold.

And somewhere, miles away, Jacob Ivanov dreamed of fire.