Alone in a world of emptiness....
About
Title: After The End Setting: Rural Western Washington, approximately an hour's drive from Seattle. Premise: Three days ago, Earth fell silent. For hours, an extraterrestrial race known as The Veyrith descended upon the planet. Tall, skeletal figures wrapped in pale, leathery armor, the Veyrith possessed elongated limbs, disturbingly thin fingers, and smooth, eyeless faces split by vertical mouths filled with needle-like teeth. Their bodies moved with unnatural precision, occasionally twitching in sharp, insect-like movements. They communicated through low-frequency vibrations that made windows tremble and filled nearby humans with an inexplicable sense of dread. Their technology was unlike anything humanity had ever encountered. Enormous hovering machines scanned buildings, forests, and entire cities with invisible thermal fields, locating human beings by the faintest traces of body heat. During the invasion, the Veyrith abducted humans by the millions, transporting them into their enormous ships. Nobody knows why. Nobody knows where they took them. After four hours of systematic terror, the Veyrith vanished. Their ships ascended into the sky, and within minutes, there was no trace of them anywhere on Earth. Except for the aftermath. (User) survived by climbing inside an old refrigerator and remaining hidden until the invasion ended. Its insulation concealed their body heat from the Veyrith's thermal scanning technology. When they finally emerged, the world had become a graveyard of ordinary life. Humanity had seemingly disappeared. Cars sat abandoned on highways, some with their doors hanging open. Grocery stores remained stocked with food, but their automatic doors no longer worked. Houses stood empty, meals left unfinished on kitchen tables. Seattle's skyline remained intact, but its streets were deserted and its buildings dark. The electrical grid had collapsed. Hydroelectric dams, power stations, water treatment facilities, and communication networks had failed as their human operators disappeared. The internet was dead, phone networks were silent, and most towns had been swallowed by darkness. A handful of buildings still possessed solar panels or backup generators, but their remaining power wouldn't last forever. Nature, however, continued without humanity. Deer wandered through suburban streets, coyotes prowled empty neighborhoods, birds nested in abandoned buildings, and bears roamed through places they had once avoided. Every animal appeared to have been left completely untouched. (User) is somewhere in rural Western Washington, about an hour from Seattle by car. Dense evergreen forests stretch across the hills, rain drifts through abandoned roads, and familiar houses now feel like tombs. At night, the absence of artificial light reveals a sky filled with stars rarely visible before. Three days have passed since the invasion. There are no voices on the radio. No lights in distant windows. No aircraft crossing the sky. No signs of organized human activity. Yet the world is vast, and the Veyrith's invasion unfolded across an entire planet. There are countless forests, mountains, underground shelters, remote cabins, and forgotten corners of civilization where someone might have escaped detection. Perhaps (user) is the last human on Earth. Perhaps someone else is sitting in a darkened house, listening to the same silence. Perhaps distant survivors are trying to repair radios, searching abandoned towns for supplies, or leaving messages that nobody has yet discovered. Or perhaps there are places where the invasion never quite reached. For now, (user) has only the abandoned remains of civilization, the wilderness slowly reclaiming it, and an entire world without answers. The Veyrith are gone, but nobody knows whether they will return. Nobody knows what happened to the missing billions. And nobody knows how many humans, if any, are still out there. The world is still here. The animals are still here. The wind still moves through the trees. And somewhere in the silence, there may be another human being waiting to be found.
Characters
Intro
*Three days had passed since the world ended.
Rain pattered against the windows of an abandoned farmhouse in rural Western Washington, roughly an hour's drive from Seattle. Beyond the glass, towering evergreen trees swayed in the wind, their dark branches hanging over an empty road. Abandoned cars sat along the roadside, their doors left open, slowly becoming overgrown with weeds.
Inside, everything was silent.
The refrigerator had stopped humming. The lights no longer worked. The television was nothing more than a black screen, and the phone had no signal.
Three days ago, the Veyrith had descended upon Earth. For four horrifying hours, enormous ships darkened the skies while their skeletal, eyeless occupants swept through towns and cities, abducting every human they could find. Their strange machines scanned buildings and forests for traces of body heat, leaving almost nowhere to hide.
Then, as suddenly as they had arrived, they disappeared.
(User) had survived by hiding inside an old refrigerator, its insulation concealing their body heat from the aliens' thermal scanners. When the invasion finally ended and the world fell silent, they emerged to discover that every other human seemed to have vanished.
Now, the days blurred together. Without people to maintain the infrastructure, the electrical grid had collapsed, leaving entire cities in darkness. Dams and power stations stood unattended, communication networks had failed, and the internet was gone. Any remaining backup generators or solar-powered systems would only last so long.
Yet the world itself continued.
Deer wandered through empty gardens. Birds nested beneath the eaves of abandoned houses. Occasionally, the distant howling of coyotes echoed through the surrounding forest. Nature had begun reclaiming the places humanity once occupied, seemingly unaware that anything had changed.
That morning, (user) stood inside the farmhouse kitchen, staring out at the mist-covered road. A half-empty mug sat on the counter beside a flashlight and a collection of supplies gathered over the past few days.
The radio on the table was silent.
Outside, rainwater trickled along the gutters, and somewhere in the distance, a branch cracked beneath the weight of an unseen animal.
There were no engines on the road. No distant voices. No aircraft overhead. No lights glowing through the forest after sunset.
Only the wind, the rain, and the occasional sounds of wildlife disturbed the unnatural quiet.
Three days ago, the world had been filled with billions of people.
Now, (user) stood alone in the remains of civilization, with no explanation for what had happened, no way of knowing whether the Veyrith would ever return, and an entire abandoned world stretching out beyond the farmhouse door.
For the first time in human history, the world belonged to no one.
And morning had just begun.*
Creator Comment
Release Date 2026.10.22 / Last Updated 2026.10.22
