The Ground Floor used to be a place of bustling life, where the sun kissed the earth and nature thrived. A paradise on Earth—at least, that's how it's said in the old tales. In the modern age, though, it's a wreckage. The once-thriving cities now stand like cracked, rusted skeletons, with only faint echoes of the grandeur they once held. The Earthbreaks—those catastrophic disasters that come every few years—had decimated what remained of society's foundations. It's a place where survival is the only thing anyone cares about anymore. Where light is scarce, food is precious, and water is worth its weight in gold.
Rowan Everhart had known the Ground Floor all his life, but it didn't feel like home anymore.
Everywhere he looked, he saw broken infrastructure, empty streets, and rusted remnants of the past. Once majestic buildings that had once touched the skies now lay in ruin, half-submerged under the earth as though the very land had swallowed them up. People lived in hovels made from scrap metal, scavenged wood, and old vehicle parts. They couldn't afford to live in a well built and structured house because by the next Earthbreak, it would all be turned into nothing.
The skies above were nothing but a dull gray—no stars, no clarity—only smog, the scent of burning waste, and the occasional crack of an Earthbreak in the distance, a constant reminder that the land beneath was dying.
Rowan was just sixteen, a boy who'd never known anything better. His family, once a small but comfortable clan, had died in an Earthbreak two years ago. The earth had cracked open, swallowing whole sections of the city, crushing homes, businesses, and lives in a split second. I was like an earthquake but the part that got broken got replaced with nothingness, a bottomless void.
The wreckage left behind was unspeakable, but it wasn't the tragedy of their deaths that lingered in his mind. It was the way everything had changed after.
People had stopped talking. No one smiled anymore. There was no time for that. People who lived in the Ground Floor were like walking shells, barely surviving, moving from day to day with nothing but fear of the next Earthbreak. The Earthbreak used to have intervals which the inhabitants of the Ground floor knew but recently, it hasn't been faithful to it's intervals. The Ground Floor was fading quickly.
Rowan never spoke about the loss. He didn't want pity. He didn't need it. But what he did need was a way out. The higher the better. The higher they went, the more life was waiting for them. The Skyspires, the floating islands high above the Ground Floor, represented hope, salvation, and the future. To ascend was to be reborn. It was the ultimate dream, the goal that everyone seemed to strive for—except for Rowan. His dream had died with his family.
Yet, there was always a sliver of hope, a tiny seed of belief that perhaps one day, he could escape, just like everyone else. But it wasn't going to be that easy.
You see, not everyone could ascend. Not everyone could be awakened. Only awakened people could ascend to a Skyspire. The skyspires were humongous, only one had the size of Asia in it's glory days. That was what made the Ground Floor so dark.
There were rituals. Awakening Rituals, as they were called, that promised to help people awaken their latent potential and rise to the Skyspires. People spent all they had—food, money, family heirlooms, anything they could get their hands on—to pay for these rituals. There were no guarantees that it was genuine, most of them were nothing more than scams designed to bleed the hopeful dry.
Rowan had tried one of those rituals himself. It was the last hope he'd had.
The "ritual" had been nothing more than an empty promise, a ruse to steal his money. After all, the world was full of them. Full of people who would sell their souls for a chance at power. He had been naive, young, and desperate. He had handed over everything he had—his savings, his old family heirlooms, even the remnants of his mother's clothing—just to be told, in the end, that the ritual had failed. That the powers he'd hoped for were never there to begin with. The disappointment had been crushing.
Now, Rowan was cynical. He didn't trust anyone who claimed they could help him ascend anymore. He didn't even believe in the Awakening Rituals. No one could really rise above the Ground Floor unless they had a true awakening—one that was rare, one that happened by luck or fate. And Rowan wasn't about to let himself get scammed again.
But the Ground Floor had a way of twisting you. No matter how hard he tried to avoid it, Rowan couldn't escape the clutches of the people who ruled the land below.
The Syndicate controlled everything.
There was no shortage of corruption on the Ground Floor, and no one exemplified it more than the Syndicate. The Syndicate boss, a man named Faron Talvaz, was a relic of the old world—an awakened individual who had used his powers not to rise to the Skyspires, but to keep everyone else down there with him. He was weak and afraid of the unknown, despite his awakening, but it didn't matter. He had more than enough power to control everything. No one could go against him and survive.
He extorted the people, taking everything they had in the name of "taxes"—taxes that were never really paid to anything. The people received nothing in return. No protection. No aid. Just demands. And the more you tried to escape, the more he sent his enforcers after you. It was a hell on earth. At least, what was left of the Earth.
Water, cloth, food—anything that was valuable was taxed. It was a monopoly, pure and simple, and it was all held in the hands of Faron Talvaz. The people hated him, but there was nothing they could do. No one could stand against him, no one was willing to die. At least, the taxes were half-assed guarantee that they don't kill you.
Rowan had been dodging them for weeks, carefully staying out of the Syndicate's reach. He learned to keep to the shadows, to blend into the streets like one of the many faceless people who had given up hope.
But today was different.
Today, the streets felt... quieter. Like something was watching him.
He ducked into a nearby alley, pulling his tattered hood over his head and trying to move as quickly as possible. He couldn't risk being seen. Not today. The Syndicate had been looking for him after he had missed his "tax payment" for the second month in a row. His savings were gone, and now they were after his body, his soul—anything they could squeeze from him.
The Syndicate enforcers were brutal. The last person who had refused to pay had been dragged through the streets. His body had been left hanging in the center of town as a message. A message to anyone who defy them.
Rowan's heart hammered in his chest. He kept moving, looking around for any sign of danger. The walls of the alley felt like they were closing in on him, the shadows growing thicker, heavier. He couldn't breathe.
A cold hand grabbed his arm, yanking him backward. He barely had time to react before a fist slammed into his stomach, sending him to his knees.
"Thought you could run from us, boy?" a voice growled.
"I'm sorr.." Another blow was thrown to his stomach before he could make up words. He coughed out.
Rowan's vision blurred as he looked up to see a group of thugs, their faces twisted in cruel amusement. They were led by a man who looked like he had seen too many Earthbreaks. His face was scarred, his eyes cold and calculating.
Faron Talvaz sat behind them on a chair that his lackeys carried, observing the scene with a detached interest. The man was medium in height, fat, with an air of authority that made the air crackle. He was an awakened—just enough power to rule the Ground Floor, but not enough to rise. He had chosen to stay, to use his small fraction of a awakening to control the land beneath him.
Rowan's blood ran cold.
"Take him," Talvaz said lazily, his voice dripping with disdain. "We'll teach him what happens to those who don't pay their dues."
"This is not fair... I payed one of your guys for an awakening ritual." Rowan pleaded with his voice coarse. "It didn't work. It was fake. I didn't awaken"
They all bursted into laughter, one enough to make tears well up in his eyes. He was scared and ultimately he hated them, there was nothing he could do to fight back. But he couldn't give up.
"It's not our fault you're useless and can't be awakened." One of them laughed out.
"Don't kill him. But make him wish he was dead" Talvaz bellowed and the enforcers obeyed him without batting an eye that Rowan was just a kid.
The enforcers closed in, surrounding Rowan. He tried to struggle, but his body was weak from hunger, his limbs too slow to fight back. They'd caught him. They always did.
And as the darkness closed in around him, Rowan knew it was only a matter of time before he would be another forgotten soul, another casualty of the Ground Floor. He was too weak to survive such a beating.
But there was something in him that refused to give up, something that whispered, Keep going. Keep rising. There has to be more than this.
And as the enforcers dragged him away, Rowan's thoughts lingered on the floating islands above, far beyond his reach.
They dragged him to a place and just dropped him there. They laughed as they went away.
One day, he swore to himself, he would rise to the Skyspires. He would live this mad place. He would go and never return. He would live in the 'New Earth'.