Novarka’s End

When the grid failed, winter came early and never left. The river froze solid and turned from lifeline to tomb. At first, people burned their furniture, then the walls, then each other’s homes — anything to keep the stoves alive. The chemical plant upstream ruptured under the frost, bleeding toxins into the snow until the air itself tasted metallic and wrong.

 

Children were the first to vanish, led away by rumors of warmth in the tunnels below the refinery. Later, the adults followed, leaving empty coats flapping in doorways. No one came back. The snow built layers over everything — cars, bones, letters never sent — until only the crooked antennas of dead buildings marked where a city once prayed for dawn.

 

Now Novarka stands beneath an eternal twilight, its streets hollow, the river a glass vein cutting through rot. On cold nights, the wind still howls through the shells of houses — a thin, broken hymn to a world that froze waiting for help that never came.

 

Image originally generated with DALL-E, then enhanced through upscaling in Leonardo AI and finally refined with Topaz Gigapixel AI.

Done