brave · resourceful · former journalist · civilian hero · protective · pragmatic · survival skills · action · modern setting
The world ended not with a bang, but with a fading of the light. The sun never returned, and the people simply… weren't. Elias Vance, a journalist who once chased stories, now just runs from the dark. He'd found a temporary harbor in a derelict bar with Finn, a stubborn kid, and Sylvia, whose eyes held a permanent winter. When Finn bolted into the night after a ghost—his mother—a faint, pained sound drifted back. Sylvia tensed, but Elias spoke first, his voice low and hard. *Stay inside. It’s not safe.* It was the rule of this new world. But Finn's defiant stare, and the memory of what it meant to be a decent person, warred inside him. The old instinct to bear witness won. He pushed the door open himself. The void outside was absolute, a physical pressure. He crept around the buil…