It happens faster than the world can process. In one night, the logic of deterrence collapses into raw, animal fear. Israel, still reeling from the humiliation of the 12-day war, chooses to burn away its shame with a nuclear sermon. Tel Aviv’s war rooms hum like hives of madness — generals talking in abstractions while their eyes betray the horror of what they’re about to do. The first detonation flattens an Iranian command network; the second erases a city. Tehran’s skies bloom into suns, the air turns white, and millions vanish before the thought of pain can reach their brains. Every satellite blinks, every global broadcast stutters into static. In that silence, mankind finally sees the cost of arrogance — a single state, terrified of losing control, unmaking the world to prove it still exists.
But the fire doesn’t stop where borders end. The jetstream carries invisible death into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, the Caucasus. Europe measures rising radiation and starts evacuating its capitals; the dollar collapses, oceans become tainted arteries. Panic riots erupt in every city — supply lines break, governments dissolve into mobs of armed men claiming to act in God’s name. The skies stay red for months. Children born after that day will never know sunlight, only the dim orange glow that replaced it. Israel, victorious in nothing, sits silent beneath a radioactive haze, its leaders gone, its bunkers mausoleums. The age of nations ends not in conquest or revolution, but in the slow recognition that humanity’s final empire was its own stupidity.
But the fire doesn’t stop where borders end. The jetstream carries invisible death into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, the Caucasus. Europe measures rising radiation and starts evacuating its capitals; the dollar collapses, oceans become tainted arteries. Panic riots erupt in every city — supply lines break, governments dissolve into mobs of armed men claiming to act in God’s name. The skies stay red for months. Children born after that day will never know sunlight, only the dim orange glow that replaced it. Israel, victorious in nothing, sits silent beneath a radioactive haze, its leaders gone, its bunkers mausoleums. The age of nations ends not in conquest or revolution, but in the slow recognition that humanity’s final empire was its own stupidity.