[Fast-Paced]+ [Apocalypse]
Shen Jiyuan slept for 127 years.
When he awoke, the world had been almost entirely corrupted by the breath of the gods. Gray mists swallowed the land, their servants roamed the ruins, and humanity huddled in underground fortresses, eking out a miserable existence with the last embers of its technology. He had lost everything: his teammates, his home, and the girl who had promised to stay by his side forever. All he had left were three yellowed, frayed scraps of paper in his pocket, bearing two names written side by side. Time had faded the ink until it was nearly illegible.
To find her, he swallowed monster flesh and blood and set out on a broken path to godhood. He joined Ashfall, an organization of madmen, fools, and rebels against the gods. Alongside a disaster wielding the way of fire, a stitched-together nun, and a swordsman wrapped in giant serpents, he lit the first human flame on this land abandoned by the gods.
But reunion was not what awaited him at the end of that road.
Her smile was a hook woven from lies. His love was a script written by someone else. When he finally stood before her, every loss, every sacrifice, every blaze of fire pointed toward the same truth: his entire life had been nothing more than a chessboard for two gods locked in a game.
The only things he had ever truly possessed were the people on that board who were willing to die for him, and the warmth of those three scraps of paper in his pocket.
What remains in the ashes?
A band of madmen, a gun, and a fire that burns up through the cracks in their bones and refuses to die.
