The light was barely visible, but it was there. A single, stubborn point of luminescence in the vast, swallowing darkness of the valley. Elias had been watching it for hours, a silent companion to his vigil on the cabin’s porch. It was the only sign that he wasn’t the last person on earth. He’d come here after the cities fell silent, to a place his grandfather had spoken of as a sanctuary. The old man’s journals, filled with spidery handwriting and pressed flowers, were his only guide now. He’d learned to trap, to read the weather in the clouds, to find water where none seemed to exist. He’d learned to be alone. But that light... it meant someone else had survived, someone else had found a high place. Perhaps they, too, were looking out at the pinprick of his own candle, wondering the same things. Friend or foe? Hope or threat? For weeks, the question had gnawed at him, a counterpoint to the simple rhythm of survival. Tonight, the air was different. It carried a scent not of woodsmoke or pine, but of damp earth after a long drought, a smell of renewal. He thought of his grandfather’s final journal entry, a prediction not of doom, but of a long, slow healing. Of roots finding purchase in broken concrete, of rivers running clear again. He thought of the person across the valley, and for the first time, the fear was eclipsed by a quiet, profound curiosity. What were they building? What stories would they tell their children? The future, once a terrifying void, suddenly felt less like an ending and more like a vast, blank page. He went back inside, the rough-hewn walls feeling less like a prison and more like a home. He blew out his own candle, plunging the cabin into the same soft darkness as the world outside. Lying on his cot, he looked one last time at the distant, steadfast light. “I have a feeling that tonight I will dream about the future,” he said while closing his eyes.