**—translated from the last relic of Earth**

They came after the silence.

After the cities collapsed into dust

and the oceans forgot their names.

They sifted through shadows,

searching not for treasure,

but for truth.

They found it in a ruin—

a single page,

charred at the edges,

sealed in rusted metal

like a secret begging not to be found.

No diagrams.

No cures.

No final instructions.

Just this:

_“We thought ourselves eternal.”_

_“We built monuments taller than trees,_

_then chopped the trees to clear the view.”_

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_“We waged wars over borders we invented,_

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_over gods we imagined,_

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_over skin we were born into.” _

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_“We stacked bodies for oil._

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_Drowned children for walls._

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_Called it strategy.”_

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_“Our heroes were rich._

_Our saints were cruel._

_We laughed when the sky caught fire,_

_and took selfies under dying stars.”_

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_“We poisoned the rivers,_

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_then sold bottles of purity._

_We branded compassion as weakness,_

_and mercy as delay.”_

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_“We knew we were dying._

_We knew.”*_

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_“But we wanted one more dollar._

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_One more click._

_One more moment where we didn’t have to care.”_

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_“We screamed into the void—_

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_and the void liked, subscribed, and moved on.”_

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The life force—older than war,

older than suns—

read those words in stillness.

They did not weep.

They had no tears.

But they understood.

This was not extinction.

This was suicide.

A slow, deliberate undoing

by hands too greedy to stop

and hearts too hollow to care.

No tragedy.

Only choice.

And at the bottom of the page,

scribbled like blood under a nail:

**_ “We could have lived.

But we loved ourselves to death.”_**