He stood alone in the overgrown field, his arms hanging limp by his sides. His small, eight-year-old frame had once been a symbol of innocence, but now it was something else—something darker, something alien.
The wings that had appeared on his back a week ago were still with him, grotesque and impossible, expanding and contracting like the lungs of a beast. They were massive, tattered at the edges, yet impossibly strong, and they didn't belong.
The world had begun to change the moment those wings first sprouted, as though the heavens themselves had opened up a crack and sent something down—something that should never have been.
They had come from somewhere beyond Earth. The child didn't know what they were or where they had come from, but he knew that they had never been meant for him.
When they first emerged, they were soft, like a bird's feathers. They were delicate. But now, they were sharp and jagged, blackened by something that seemed to seep from them like blood from a wound.
The boy had screamed then, when they attached themselves to his back, but no one had heard. His parents didn't care. His neighbors, too wrapped up in their own misery, turned away.
He was alone with the wings now, alone with the weight of their existence.
It had been impossible to ignore what happened after the wings came. At first, they had simply been strange. The child's life had felt off-kilter, as though something had been off in the world from the start.
He felt his bones ache under the strange pressure of the wings. His friends had stared at him with blank expressions, asking if he was okay, but there was no answer he could give them. He didn't know how to explain to them that these things had just… happened.
But that didn't matter anymore. The wings had begun to move without his consent. Without his will. They flapped in the night, at first a low rumble beneath the house, but soon they had filled the whole sky.
The town had begun to shift, its buildings cracking, as if they too were being undone by the presence of something that didn't belong.
The air smelled different. He couldn't quite place it, but it wasn't the smell of grass or earth. No. It was something else—something that burned the back of his throat and stung his eyes. Like sulfur. Like fire.
The first time the boy truly understood the wings' power had been when they crushed the old woman's house. He'd been walking down the street, unsure of where to go. His mother had sent him out, but her voice was distant, like she hadn't even noticed him standing there. The house was gone in seconds—one flap, and it was reduced to rubble.
He remembered her screams, the echo of the terror in her voice, and the way the earth itself trembled beneath his feet. The wings had done that. They had done more than that, but it hadn't been enough.
He had been standing there, feeling the rage in the air, and the wings had thrummed. Not with sound, not with light. No, they throbbed with something much darker, much deeper.
He hadn't even known he could make them move. They didn't respond to anything he did, no matter how much he screamed at them. He was their vessel, their carrier, nothing more. And now, the town was going to burn.
No one had believed him. No one had seen what was happening to the world, to the skies. No one had cared.
The boy didn't speak much anymore. There was nothing to say. He had stopped even trying to explain. His voice had become hoarse, swallowed by the endless wind and the constant sound of those wings.
There were no answers to the questions that remained. The town had begun to forget him, even as it died. The wings were now a presence in the night, and soon, no one would remember the boy who had been lost to them.
The night the town burned, the boy stood in the middle of the street. The air was thick with smoke. The buildings that had once stood proudly were now mere husks, their shells hollow, their glass shattered.
The streets were littered with remnants of what had been—clothes, toys, shattered glass—and then came the screams. First, they were quiet, muffled by the walls of the buildings that still stood. But they grew louder, piercing the stillness of the dark.
The boy couldn't move. His wings had already unfurled, stretching like something alive, each flap sending a wave of destruction through the air.
He looked at the ground beneath him and saw the cracks, spreading, veins of destruction coursing through the earth. The sky was black.
And that was when the world started to die.
Each beat of the wings shook the ground, sending tremors that cracked the earth wide open. The buildings crumbled, the people screamed, and the sky split open with a sound like thunder. The boy had no control over it. The wings were doing this, responding to something far beyond his understanding. Something he couldn't even begin to fathom.
With each flap, the wings grew heavier. And yet, they didn't seem to stop. As if their hunger had no end, as though they would never be full. The destruction would not end.
The boy ran. His legs were weak, but his fear pushed him forward. He didn't understand what had happened. Why the wings had come. Why he was the one who had been chosen to bear their burden. All he could do was run, hoping that he would escape whatever had been unleashed. But there was nowhere to run.
By the time he reached the outskirts of the town, there was nothing left but ash. His breath came in ragged gasps, his body trembling with the weight of what had just happened. He wanted to cry, but no tears came.
And that was when it happened.
One of the wings shot out, its jagged edge catching his body, sending him crashing to the ground. He didn't feel pain—not at first. But when he looked down, he saw the blood. It wasn't his own. It was the blood of the earth. The wings had stained it, had bled it into the world, as though they were tearing apart the very fabric of existence.
The wings hadn't just been destroying the world. They had been feeding on it. The boy was nothing more than a vessel—a puppet. And now, his blood mixed with the earth's. The wings consumed everything they touched.
They had no mercy.
He tried to move, tried to crawl away from them, but the wings held him in place, pinning him down with a strength he couldn't hope to escape. His body burned with the heat of the earth, scorched by the blood of what had once been. The boy could feel himself fading, but the wings would not let him die.
Not yet.
He could hear the city burning in the distance, the crackling of flames as they devoured everything in their path. He could see the smoke rising up into the sky, a dark cloud of despair. The wings were still there, still beating, still consuming. They weren't done. They were far from it.
He realized then that he had been nothing but a tool, a means to an end. And when they were finished with him, they would move on to something else. The earth would burn, and the heavens would not care. The boy had never mattered. He had never been anything more than the beginning of the end.
As he lay there, his body slowly fading, the wings continued to beat, and the world continued to die. And he was left there, forgotten by everyone, even by himself.
Until there was nothing left but the sound of wings in the night.