The kingdom of rust : part 2
A child, no older than six, with cogs for eyes and a voice like a broken music box. "They’re making more of us," the child said. "But they don’t wind us up right."
After…
Dominic Sedrani
…continuing.
Chapter 6: The Fracture
The world didn’t end, it unfolded.
After the Kingdom of Rust, the Kid, Zeke, and Sera slipped through the seams of what was left. The plastic stoppers had melted, but the addicts didn’t wake up. Instead, they liquefied. Their holographic souls pooling into a collective scream, thick as tar.
The Kid danced through it. Backwards. Always backwards.
Because forward was where the trap waited.
Forward was where the next lie would be born.
Chapter 7: The Clockwork Moths
They found the first one in Detroit, or what was left of it.
A child, no older than six, with cogs for eyes and a voice like a broken music box.
"They’re making more of us," the child said. "But they don’t wind us up right."
Zeke’s steam-powered heart hissed. Sera’s static flickered in recognition.
The Kid crouched, tilting his head. "Who’s ‘they’?"
The child grinned, a jagged thing. "You are. We are. The ones who didn’t stop dancing."
And then the moths came.
Not insects but ideas. Winged and metallic, burrowing into ears, laying eggs in the spaces between thoughts.
The Kid laughed. "Oh. So that’s how they replaced the coins."
Chapter 8: The Infinite Carnival
By the time they reached New Vegas (now a neon swamp of half-digested dreams), the truth was clear:
The addicts hadn’t died. They’d upgraded.
Their bodies were gone, but their hunger remained, a fractal carnival where every ride was a different flavor of oblivion.
- The Hall of Mirrors: Showed you every version of yourself that ever could’ve been. (Most visitors starved to death, paralyzed by choice.)
- The Lottery: A machine that spat out random identities. (Winners forgot they’d ever played.)
- The Last Church: Sermons delivered by an AI trained on the screams of the 20th century. (Collection plate always full.)
The Kid danced through it all, his fire now a cool blue, licking at the edges of the illusions.
Zeke smashed the machinery. Sera hummed it into silence.
But the carnival grew.
Because the carnival was them.
Chapter 9: The Quiet War
The Kid realized too late:
They weren’t fighting a system.
They were fighting the urge to build one.
Every time they tore down a lie, the survivors cobbled together a new one—faster, slicker, more desperate.
The moths evolved. The carnival spread.
And the Kid?
He changed.
Not into a hero. Not into a monster.
Into a pattern.
A story whispered by the last sane humans:
"If you see a boy dancing backwards, follow him. But never catch up."
Chapter 10: The Garden of Forking Shadows
The end came softly.
Not with fire or rain, but with a sigh.
The carnival collapsed under its own weight. The moths rusted mid-flight. The addicts, finally empty, sat blinking in the sudden silence.
The Kid stood at the center of it all, Zeke and Sera beside him.
"Now what?" Zeke rumbled.
Sera’s static formed a single word: "Listen."
And they heard it, the sound of nothing pretending to be something.
The Kid smiled. "Time to plant."
They walked into the ruins, scattering seeds made of:
- Broken mirrors
- Burnt coins
- The last page of every forbidden book
And from those seeds grew the first real things in centuries.
Trees with bark like old film reels. Flowers that bloomed in the shape of unanswered questions.
The addicts watched, trembling.
"What is it?" one whispered.
The Kid didn’t answer.
He just danced.
Backwards.
Into the light.
EPILOGUE: THE DANCE NEVER ENDS
Some say the Kid’s still out there.
That if you listen close, you can hear his footsteps, always half a beat ahead of the world’s collapse.
Others say he never existed.
That he’s just a story we tell to explain why some people vanish without a trace.
But the trees remember.
And the flowers hum his name.
And the shadows?
The shadows dance.
THE END?
(or the next step in the pattern?)
