Aether's Burden

The air evolved to match the threat.

I should know. I lost most of my family to it. We called it the Dark Plague—a new lung disease that existed only in my city. I thought I could stop it. I built an energy solution that should have saved our home, but corporate greed and politics suffocated it to death.

So I turned back to activism, the only thing I had left. I fought, organized, and shouted at a world that had gone deaf. Nothing changed. The air kept getting dirtier, and people kept dying.

Then I got unexpected help—one that only cared about results. It looked like progress at first, until everything spiraled beyond my control. Things started happening before I knew about them.

As the answers began to surface, I realized I was never the one in control. The future had come to reclaim itself, to correct a mistake through me.