When Aran drifted in and out of consciousness for hours, agony lacing every breath with fresh torment. As he lay there, buried up to his chest in rubble, more and more radiation slowly leached into his body. As the energy poured into him, it mixed with his natural mana, the pool of his reserves growing, becoming deeper, and more violent. After more than a day, his body was repaired, skin slowly closing over his wounds, and bones and tendons reforming.

When Aran’s eyes finally fluttered open, it was night. Coughing violently, he tried to sit up, only to find his movement restricted by the partially collapsed wooden wall covering him. He laid back and closed his eyes, forcing the claustrophobic panic down, and slowed his breathing. He was alive, and that was certainly… something. He’d seen enough movies and clips on the internet to know a nuclear bomb had just been dropped on the city, and he had survived it. Of the impossible things that had been happening lately, this stole the show. How had he survived? Glancing down, he looked over his dust and soot covered body. Brushing away some of the filth, scarring covered nearly every inch. His eyes widened. With this much scarring, there must not have been much skin left to regrow. Horror at how close he had been to utter annihilation welled up within him, tears flowing freely. He sobbed quietly, the sound echoing across the silent ruins around him.

---

Eventually, he regained composure, and examined his surroundings more thoroughly. He was laying under a thin wooden wall, and if the grittiness he was feeling was any indicator, his clothes had not survived the blast. A bright moon lit the surrounding area, enough to see by. Around his small pile of rubble were a few still smouldering remains of small houses, some small fires still active within them. His pile looked to be laid up against what used to be a gas station. Besides the few buildings, the ground was mostly flat, and he couldn’t see any taller structures. His view was blocked to the east, so he assumed he’d been thrown all the way to the western edge of the city, judging by the wide open lots and the hills empty of anything he could barely make out in the distance. The waxing moon shimmered on the bay to the south.

The chill of the night air made a shiver run up his spine, bringing him back to reality. He was naked, alone, in the middle of the night, in the radioactive ruins of his hometown. He almost laughed at the absurdity of it. First things first, he needed to get out from under this wall. Luckily, the wall hadn’t really had much of its weight resting on him, and shimmying his hips up freed enough of him to get some leverage, yanking his legs out with a grunt. With a sigh he stood, feet shifting on the various bits of building beneath him.

A gentle breeze wafted in off the bay, the way it cooled his scalp immediately bringing his hand to his bald head. Just one more thing in a long string of disasters, he let it go. His hair hadn’t been that great to begin with, and he needed to find shelter and clothes as soon as possible. Walking to the base of the rubble, carefully picking his way to avoid impaling his feet on broken glass, he circled around the closest building. It had indeed been a gas station, and by the looks of it, a small convenience store too. Luckily only most of the store was gone, and after digging through broken wood and a knocked over shelf, he found some food. A few undamaged packages of beef jerky, a prepackaged sandwich he hoped wasn’t supposed to be refrigerated, and some candy.

Aran sighed. So much for a hot meal, he thought. Still, more important was finding water. That was what all those books and shows about survival said, anyway. He’d done quite a bit of research when he was younger, when he’d wanted to run away. Never did though, did you? No, always came back when she cried for you. He shook his head, blocking out the memories. After digging through most of the remains of the store, he found 2 intact bottles of water, but nothing else worth salvaging. He gathered all his supplies together on the ground, a meager set if he’d ever seen one. It would only realistically last him a day or two, maybe less. He needed clothes, too. He wasn’t sure if the cold could really hurt him anymore, but best to be safe. Besides, he didn’t want to be naked out here. There was nothing else worth salvaging in the shop, but there was at least a partial roof, and it would block some of the wind, so he decided to stay until morning. After moving a shelf and part of a door to create some walls, he opened some of the jerky, and nibbled a few bites. He would need to ration it for now, until he found more food. He took a small sip of water, closed his eyes, and waited for morning.

---

When he woke to bright morning sunlight, he finally saw what was left of the city. He climbed to the top of his makeshift shelter’s highest point to get a better view, crouching to block some of the wind from his naked body. The city was gone, and for the first time in years, it was completely silent, the only sound the sigh of the wind in his ears. From where he stood, he could just make out the edge of a crater where the bomb must have detonated. He estimated he’d was roughly a mile from the edge of the initial impact. From what he remembered of the blast, in the moments before he passed out, the bomb went off near the city center, in the middle of what passed for a downtown. Welksfield had never been a big city, but in recent years the city had seen some growth due to some small tech startups bringing in younger business. Now it was all gone.

Aran sighed. How many people had still been trapped? How many who weren’t lucky like him? He knew he’d been extremely lucky, even with his body healing itself. If he’d been any closer to the blast, he was under no illusion that he would have survived. Looking down at himself, he was still unsure of how he’d survived. It had taken a lot of mana to repair his body after the spider monster had first mauled him, and he was sure he wouldn’t have been able to just take a nuclear bomb blast.

He looked inward for the first time since the bomb. The core of energy at his center was worlds apart from before, and for the first time, he could perceive it clearly. It looked like a swirling vortex of pale energy. As he looked closer, he noticed it wasn’t a single continuous energy, but a light blue mixing with a sickly looking yellow, with the yellow being the dominant color by far. As they churned together, he noted the blue energy was slowly being absorbed by the yellow, the combination a bright green. A large portion of the energy had already been converted to green, while it did seem different, he couldn’t really tell how. The yellow, he surmised, must be from the radiation. That there was so much of it wasn’t surprising after the bomb, but that there was so much inside him was worrying. Radiation could kill you, and now he had a massive pool of it just steeping inside of him like some particularly dangerous cup of tea. Great, he thought, probably have like 15 kinds of cancer now.

He chuckled a bit to himself. Could he even get cancer now? He honestly felt great, even with a miasma of poison swirling in his body. Even more surprising, he wasn’t cold at all, naked as he was. He felt warm, like he’d just sat next to a roaring fire.

Still, he wanted clothes. If he eventually found any other survivors, he imagined being naked would make meeting them awkward. Climbing down off his little pile of rubble, he carefully picked his way to the nearest likely looking rubble, what looked to be the remains of a house. Some of the walls remained, but large sections of the roof and walls cluttered the area. Moving inside, he started shifting debris out of the way, looking for anything that might still be serviceable.

After an hour laboring moving the smaller bits of rubble, rifling through, his patience was rewarded. Under what used to be a garage door, he found a large dresser mostly intact. He nearly broke the first drawer in his excitement, spilling socks and underwear all over the ground. He immediately tried some of the boxers on, finding them an acceptable fit, if a bit loose around the hips. Scrounging through the rest of the drawers, he found some plain pants, and a white undershirt that fit reasonably well. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been lucky enough to find shoes. He pocketed the socks anyway, figuring he could wear them at night if nothing else.

He scrounged through the rest of the house, only finding an extremely rusty knife. It was brittle enough parts of it crumbled to the touch. Strangely, the handle looked nearly new, aside from some dust. He turned it over in his hands, flakes of rust falling from the movement. With a sigh, he tossed it to the side. A knife would have been extremely useful, especially if he was going to be on his own for a while. With a grimace, he moved to the next section of rubble, slowly sifting through the contents of what had been someone’s life.

Over the next few hours, he found a small backpack, and several more rusty tools and knives, but none in any better condition. He was beginning to wonder if the radiation had somehow accelerated the deterioration of the metal. He’d never heard of such a thing, but he didn’t really know all that much about nukes, to be honest. After a few more hours of digging, he decided to call it a day. The sun was nearly set, and he was having difficulty seeing anything anyway. Throwing his new jacket in his bag, he went back to his shelter. After digging all day, he was ravenous. He tore into a party sized bag of chips and some jerky, not even caring that the chips were entirely crushed. After wiping the crumbs off, he settled back and tried to relax. Thoughts about the future occupied his mind, however.

Tonight he had eaten well enough, but that wouldn’t last. He’d run out of food soon, and he hadn’t seen or heard another living thing all day, not even a bird or insect. He would need to find a new source of food, or other survivors soon or he’d starve. He was on the northeast side of the city, but didn’t think going north would be a good idea. He had no idea how long it would take to find people, and going north the weather would only get worse as winter approached. From what he could recall from looking online and school trips from years ago, the nearest town was south, about 30 miles. That would probably take him an extremely long time to walk, but hopefully he’d find others outside of town on the way. He decided he’d head south, and though that would necessitate around most of the city along the eastern edge, hopefully he’d find either people or something to eat as he went.

Satisfied with his plan, he looked inward to his mana again. The bright yellow was gone, replaced by a huge swath of green. There were still spots of blue throughout, though, and it didn’t seem like any more radiation had been added. Aran sighed with relief. His body seemed to be able to repair from nearly anything, and hopefully the rest of his mana would be able to ward off any effects from the radiation as it was slowly purified. Tired, and finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, he fell asleep.