ENTRY I: The Ember Beneath the Stone

Date: The First Collapse

They say the world ended today.

I disagree.

It was never a world worth preserving.

I was born in the undercity of Virellium — a place so deep beneath the surface, light had to be taught to us like a myth. We weren’t born blind. No, that would’ve been merciful. We were taught to see and then told we didn’t deserve the stars. Our ceilings leaked rust and sewage. Our children drank poison in their milk and still grew up grateful for the taste. We were not people. We were ballast. Weight to keep the towers above from floating into the clouds.

I learned young that justice is a joke told by the well-fed to the hungry.

I believed in balance, not justice. That’s my ideology — simple, surgical. The world tilts too far in one direction. It breeds gods above and rats below. I am the plague that equalizes both.

They will call it terrorism. They will use the word villain as though it stings me. I accept it gladly.

Today, I gave the people above a taste of gravity.

The Heartspire collapsed this morning. Tallest of the Five Pillars, home of the First Governance, a thousand-year-old symbol of domination. They called it indestructible.

They were wrong.

I spent twelve years in its foundations, cataloging, learning, waiting. The explosion wasn’t even that impressive — it was where I placed it that mattered. Not the bang. The break.

Fifty-seven thousand died. That’s the official count. They keep it low to preserve morale. The true number is closer to ninety-two.

The screams were real-time, broadcast live, as the tower folded like wet paper. And I watched it from the alley outside my childhood tenement, with the same bitter tea my mother used to make me drink when I was too hungry to sleep.

They’ll begin hunting me now.

Good.

Let them come.

ENTRY II: Residue of a Godkiller

Date: Three Days After

I sleep in the bones of the old transit system. Every breath smells like ozone and oil, and the walls remember voices of the past in rust patterns. I like it here. No one looks down in this world unless they’re falling.

I thought I’d feel more. Guilt, maybe. Some echo of remorse.

Nothing.

Instead, I feel right. Balanced. The world moved one step toward the center. It screams and rages because it knows I’m right. Power never gives up willingly.

The surface government’s issued my image now. Black cloak, silver eyes, mark of Veritas on my wrist — their dramatization is embarrassingly accurate. They want me to look monstrous. They forget: monsters are born, not designed.

There’s a knock in my chest that keeps growing louder. Not fear. Anticipation. They’ll try to frame me as a madman — claim I want chaos for its own sake.

Wrong again.

My plan is precise. Every target chosen. Every name earned.

Next: the Water Grid. When they choke on their thirst, they’ll understand what it feels like to need.

ENTRY III: Letters Never Sent

Date: One Week Since the Collapse

I found an old locker with pictures of families inside — sun-bleached, curling at the corners. A man and two children. The boy is holding a toy dirigible. I stared at that image for an hour, wondering what lie he was fed about the sky.

I wanted to burn it. I didn’t.

I don’t write these entries for anyone else, but if someone finds them after — if history digs me up in blood and ash — I want them to know:

I’m not inhuman. I just stopped pretending to be weak.

I once loved. Once dreamed of being a cartographer. I drew maps of the surface I’d never seen. I gave landmarks names like Hopefall and Brighthook. My mother said I had starlight in me.

She died coughing up black blood while the clinics above charged $300 a minute for air filtration. I held her hand while her lungs liquefied. There was no miracle. No divine intervention. Just silence.

That’s when the idea first took root:

If gods won’t descend to fix this world, then I’ll become the devil who forces their hand.

ENTRY IV: Hydrophobia

Date: Day Twelve

The aqueduct systems failed today. Seven regional cities without controlled water supply. Panic spreads faster than plague.

They’ve blamed terrorists. They’re right.

I left a note scrawled on the central pipe junction before detonating it.

“Your thirst is a mirror. Look in it.”

The media twisted my words, of course. But people are starting to whisper. Not all in fear.

They call me The Balance now. Not Veritas, not my name. Just the symbol I chose to become.

I’ve started dreaming of my mother again. She’s in a place made of mirrors, speaking backwards. I wake up feeling like she forgives me. Or maybe she warns me. Hard to say. Either way, I carry her voice with me. It grounds me.

I haven’t eaten in two days. Deliberate. Fasting keeps my focus razor-sharp. In hunger, I remember the Undercity.

ENTRY V: The Children of Collapse

Date: Day Nineteen

Something strange happened today.

I came across a group of children in the broken metro halls — orphans, from the look of them. Dirty, terrified, but alert. They pointed their makeshift spears at me like I was a myth come to punish them.

Then the smallest, a girl with a torn red scarf, said, “You made the towers fall.”

I didn’t deny it.

She stepped forward. Brave. Her eyes didn’t flinch.

“Good,” she said. “They took my brother.”

I left them food. Not out of mercy. Out of respect.

Survivors deserve tools. And lessons.

Some will grow to hunt me. Others will join the fire. Either path serves my purpose.

ENTRY VI: The Mask Fractures

Date: Day Twenty-Six

I feel watched. Not metaphorically. There’s precision in how the patrols move now. They follow silence like bloodhounds. They’ve narrowed the net.

I’ve left too many fingerprints. Too many patterns.

I’ve started wearing the mask again — the one from the first rebellion in District Thirteen. Matte black, respirator mouth, eyes like polished obsidian. It frightens them. Good.

But beneath it… I feel something crack.

Not doubt.

Not fear.

Just… fatigue.

Being a symbol is heavy. Symbols don’t sleep. They don’t rest. They don’t bleed.

But I do.

My ribs are bruised from the last escape. My fingers tremble when I wire circuits now. I need one week. Just one. Then the final blow: Solvault Prime. The city’s solar core.

When it dies, they’ll know darkness.

And then, the cleansing begins.

ENTRY VII: In Absence of Light

Date: Day Thirty

I triggered the blackout tonight.

Solvault Prime: neutralized.

All cities from Zone A through H — powerless. The sky returned to the Undercity. And now the surface crawls through night like we once did. I wonder if they’ll mistake it for divine punishment.

Let them.

I watched from the old observation tower as the lights winked out. One by one. Like stars dying.

The silence afterward wasn’t peaceful. It was hollow. The way a body goes quiet after the last breath.

I sat there for hours. Remembering a boy who once mapped stars with chalk and hope. And then I folded those maps into the fire.

I am no longer the boy. I am the flame that devoured his dreams — and forged something sharper.

They’ll come for me with all they have now.

I welcome it.

ENTRY VIII: The Final Entry

Date: Unknown

If you’re reading this, I am likely dead. Or worse — contained.

But remember this, you who survives me: I was not trying to destroy the world.

I was trying to make it see.

The systems I burned were built on bones. The towers I collapsed were monuments to silence. I did not create the darkness. I only revealed it.

And if one soul — one child with a red scarf — remembers what it felt like to rise from the ash, then I have won.

Call me villain. Monster. Madman.

It doesn’t matter.

My name is Cael Veritas.

And I was the one who finally said:

“Enough.”