A Ballad for an Era: The Calamity Born of Pamiers

[Sci-Fi] [Mecha] [Combat] [Vast Worldbuilding]

Adapted from the game Punishing: Gray Raven.

You can enjoy this even if you haven't played the game. If you have, it can fill in the story for you.

The steel is weeping.

When civilization salvages memories from the ruins of data, it always hears the sound of tides where metal resonates with blood. Moonlight steeped in the Punishing Virus is gnawing away at humanity's last twilight.

Crimson clouds forever hang beneath the floating gardens, like blood scabs congealed when the gods tore the sky apart.

The virus is another form of moonlight. It creeps along the fingers of the Constructs, blooming into crystal clusters in their welded seams.

When mechanical hearts begin to simulate pain, the emotions once called flaws instead become prisms that pierce the dark age.

The first Dominic etched humanity's epitaph into the marrow of silicon life. Memory black boxes flicker with the Construct's heartbeat.

Some call this blasphemy, unaware that between the rusted gears, a dawn more vibrant than flesh has already begun to grow.

When the red tide receded, it left behind a silver beach. People knelt at the edge of the sea of consciousness. "We are all waiting for the moment we are deciphered." Their voices mingled with the distinctive frequencies of electronics. "Like a flame waiting for the night it will be named civilization."

When tactical visors glimmered in human eyes, the Gestalt of the floating gardens began to wail. Those fireflies called viruses were piecing together, atop the ruins, a truth humanity dared not admit: the tears of those who ascended through machinery were the nectar that would restart the age.

Moonlight still corrodes the earth, but roses of steel will bloom amid the rust.