There are calls that you only come to cherish once the line on the other end has fallen silent.
When I died, my phone screen was still lit.
Fourteen missed calls. Every single one from the same person: Mom.
All evening, I had stared at that number, my thumb hovering over the "call back" button. I told myself, "I'll call her back once I finish this report." In my thirty-one years as her child, I had said "I'll call you back later" so many times that it had become an automatic reflex—as natural as breathing. It never occurred to me that the word "later" could have an expiration date.
There was no truck barreling toward me, like in the stories I read to pass the time. There was only a freezing-cold office at three in the morning, a cup of stone-cold coffee, and a dull ache in my chest—a pain I'd spent the last six months blaming on work stress. I slumped over my keyboard. The final message I managed to send was: "Sure, I'll send it to you tomorrow morning."
Tomorrow morning. Yet another "later."
Then, darkness descended—and it wasn't the gentle, peaceful transition people often describe. In that icy void, what terrified me wasn't death itself; it was the image of a woman sitting by her phone, dialing a child who would never answer again—dialing once, then again, and again.
I wanted to scream, "I'm here, Mom! It's me!" But I no longer had a throat, no breath left, and no more "laters" to offer.
And just then, I heard a voice calling out.
It wasn't my mother's voice. It was the voice of a child—tiny, trembling, and fractured by sobs—reaching out from a place so distant it appeared on no map I had ever known:
"Please, sir… the last flame is about to go out… someone—anyone—please, come and save us…"
Fourteen calls I had let go unanswered.
But the fifteenth—from a stranger in a world unknown—was the one I finally picked up.
"I'm listening."
No sooner had I spoken than the darkness above me cracked open.
That starless sky tore apart like an eggshell. Through the fissure, the first light I had seen since three in the morning poured in—golden, warm, and so blindingly bright that I would have wept, had I still possessed eyes to cry with.
Then, from beyond the sky, a hand reached in.
It was colossal. Each finger was as vast as a mountain range, the whorls of the fingerprints resembling dried-up riverbeds seen from high above. It descended with agonizing slowness. I—a person who had never dared to decline a single meeting—did not run. Perhaps it was because I no longer had legs to run with. Or perhaps, simply, because I was tired.
The hand closed around me.
I braced myself to be crushed. Instead, it cradled me, much like one might cup their hands to shield a candle flame from the wind. It was warm—so warm that it brought back memories of my mother's hand whenever I ran a fever: rough, faintly scented with medicated oil, resting silently against my forehead in the dead of night.
The last time I had let her do that was when I was sixteen.
"Wait…" my voice fractured, though I had no idea where I'd even found a throat to speak with. "I… I haven't called my mother back yet…"
The hand offered no reply. It merely tightened, ever so gently—as if to say: *I know. But there is a child waiting over there.*
Then, it pulled me upward.
Everything spun. I was hurled through a tunnel that stretched as if from one lifetime into another. A cold cup of coffee, the window of an office, the fourteen instances of the word "Mother"—all streaked past like shooting stars, growing smaller and smaller until they vanished entirely.
Finally, there was an impact. Wind, the scent of smoke, and the cold, hard ground beneath my back.
I opened my eyes. I had eyes again. There is the sound of breathing, and in the palm of a hand, a phone screen remains lit. An incoming call—with no name attached—ticks away the seconds.
High in the unfamiliar sky, a sliver of light is closing—slowly, as if a hand were being withdrawn.
I opened my eyes.
I had eyes again. I could breathe—the air was acrid with smoke—and the cold of the stone seeped through the back of my shirt. Cold. Aching. Does that mean I'm still alive?
Wait—no. I died, didn't I? Or did I? Could I have just passed out from exhaustion, sprawled on the office floor, and this is all just an absurdly detailed dream?
Instinctively, I placed a hand over my chest. The dull, persistent ache that had plagued me for the last six months—which I'd always blamed on work stress—had vanished, as if it had never existed at all. I should have felt relieved. Instead, I felt only fear.
I pinched my cheek. It hurt. I pinched harder. Still painful, and still, it explained absolutely nothing.
Around me stood the scorched stone pillars of a temple with a partially collapsed roof; ash drifted through the air like dirty snow. I was still wearing the same wrinkled dress shirt from yesterday, complete with a coffee stain on the sleeve and my employee ID badge dangling against my chest—an office worker amidst the ashes of some unknown world. It didn't look like heaven. It didn't look like hell, either—surely hell wouldn't be this cold.
I looked up. High above, a sliver of light was closing, leaving behind only a thin wisp of cloud. No explanation. No one holding a sign that read, "Welcome to the New World." The mountain-sized hand that had plucked me from the jaws of death simply retreated, as if the whole thing were the most ordinary occurrence in the world.
"Sir… have you truly arrived?"
I jolted. A child was kneeling beside a flame no larger than a fingertip, cupping their burned hands around it to shield it from the wind. Behind them, other children huddled in the corner, staring at me as if I were a miracle. I turned to the left. No one. I turned to the right. Nothing there, either. I looked down at my shirt, stained with coffee.
*Sir? You mean… me?*
The girl stared at me for a long time. The flicker of hope that had appeared in her eyes faded away, yet she showed no resentment, nor did she cry. In a voice that betrayed a weary familiarity with disappointment, she asked softly:
— You… don't know anything at all, do you?
I nodded. My throat felt parched.
— I'm Mira. Let me tell you. Quickly, though—the fire won't last long.
While one hand shielded the flame, she used the index finger of her other hand to trace shapes into the layer of ash covering the stone floor: seven circles, drawn with the swift, practiced ease of someone who had done it a hundred times before. Instinctively, I sat down—back straight, hands resting on my knees—the very posture I'd take for a meeting. All that was missing was a projector.
— My people say that seven hundred years ago, the sky was blue.
I looked up. The expanse above us was a dull, murky gray, like water used to rinse rice. I tried to imagine the color blue, but I couldn't.
— Back then, there was the Heart of Origin, which kept the whole world alive. Then it shattered into seven pieces, each falling onto one of the seven continents. — Mira's finger tapped each circle in turn. — Ever since that day, everyone has needed the pieces held by others just to stay alive. So, they started fighting. They've been at war for seven hundred years.
— This is Argon. It's covered in volcanoes, and the sky is choked with black smoke. They don't believe in gods; they worship weapons. They have mobile fortresses as tall as mountains, and their soldiers are half-human, half-machine. — She brushed some ash from her hair.
— And this is Nova, up in the clouds. — She pointed toward the sky, then quickly pulled her hand back, as if afraid of being seen. — They call us "filth" that needs to be "purified." A beam of light descended from the heavens, incinerating an entire city in a single breath. Where Nova passed, there was no ash left—because there was nothing left to turn into ash.
At that very moment, from somewhere far away, a whistle rang out. It was high, crystalline—so beautiful that, had I not known better, I would have mistaken it for a song. Before I could even tense up, the youngest child in the corner covered their ears—a gesture performed with the practiced ease of a well-rehearsed routine.
"That's a Nova whistle. Far off," Mira said, not even bothering to look up. "We were born to the sound of these whistles, sir. As for lullabies… well, my grandmother says people used to sing them, once upon a time."
In my world, the thing I loathed most each morning was the sound of an alarm clock.
"Isicla lies in the Far North—it's nothing but ice," Mira continued, speaking faster, as if to fill the silence. "No one who has ventured more than fifty miles in has ever come back out alive. The dead there are trapped in the ice, serving as food for the inhabitants' beasts."
"Ryxel is a toxic jungle—the hottest, most humid place of all. They don't need many soldiers; they have hybrid creatures, lethal poisons, and assassins who strike from the shadows."
"Polco is perched atop deep canyons, filled with airships. They don't harbor hatred for anyone—they simply sell weapons to Argon, smuggle food to Ryxel, and even rent out soldiers to the highest bidder." Mira curled her lip—for the first time, she looked like an ordinary child. "My grandmother says that if the world were ever to find peace, the first ones to cry would be the people of Polco."
I nearly laughed—then realized just how painful that joke truly was.
"Axtist is the strangest place of all. Space there folds in on itself, like a sheet of paper. The people there carve ancient runes into their own bones, so that they can no longer feel sorrow." — Her finger came to a stop on the sixth circle.
— And finally, Njdhanh—right where the Heart shattered. Nothing but ash and bone. They… they can speak to the dead. — Mira's voice dropped to a whisper. — Every soldier who falls, anywhere at all, only makes them stronger. The longer the war drags on, the more powerful they become.
The seven circles lay motionless amidst the ash. I stared at them, realizing I had just attended the first presentation of my life where every single slide was a different way to die.
— As for where we are… — Mira traced a cluster of small dots in the space between the circles. — It belongs to no one. The wreckage of Polco's ships, armor from Argon, ice from Isicla… all piled up to form an island. They call it the Blood Belt. Here, you might shake someone's hand in the morning, only to be stabbed in the back by afternoon. This temple was struck by a stray projectile—I don't even know whose it was. Nobody asks about things like that anymore.
— And for the past few months… — She swallowed hard. — The seven shards of the Heart have begun to turn black. They're beating irregularly, like the heart of someone on the verge of death. You said it's because they've been drained for seven hundred years. If the fighting stops, every continent will wither away, because their shards have run dry. But if someone triggers the ultimate weapon just one more time… — Her hands tightened around the flame. — The entire world will shatter. Completely—beyond any hope of being pieced back together.
My hand moved instinctively to my chest, where an old, familiar pain had just vanished.
— But why me? — My voice came out hoarse. — I'm just an office worker. I can't even manage to meet my own deadlines.
— I don't know. — Mira's honesty was heartbreaking. — And I don't know whose hand that other one belongs to, either. "I only know what my grandmother told me. She said this is the last flame left from back when the sky was still blue. If it goes out, no one will ever remember what color the sky used to be. And if a day comes when no one can save us, then keep the flame alive until the very end—and call out into it. Someone will hear."
He looked up at me, his eyes bloodshot yet completely dry.
"My grandmother passed away during the Season of Ash last year."
"The fire has been so weak these past few days. I've been calling for three nights straight. I didn't think anyone would answer—but you actually came."
I looked down at my phone. The numbers on the screen ticked forward, second by second. Fourteen missed calls. It turns out that, on the other end of the line, every world is defined by the same fear: the fear that no one will pick up.
I opened my mouth to tell the girl she had the wrong person—to explain that I was just some guy who'd died from overwork, someone who hadn't even managed to return a call to his own mother. But seeing those hands—covered in burns—refusing to pull away from the flame, even by an inch, I swallowed the words back.
The small flame flickered, as if it, too, were holding its breath, waiting for my answer.
Mira didn't wait for me to speak. Perhaps she was accustomed to the silences of adults—silences that often signaled a search for a polite way to say no.
She glanced toward the corner of the temple, where a few small figures huddled close together, and said softly:
"The others over there are like me. We're all refugees."
I followed her gaze. Only then did I truly look.
The oldest, perhaps twelve or thirteen, sat near the exit. Her back was straight, her eyes fixed on the patch of sky visible through the temple's ruined roof. Beneath a tattered cloak, her left arm was not flesh, but iron—a rusted, clunky mass loosely attached to her shoulder. Every time she moved, the joint would creak, and she would quickly press her other hand against it to silence the sound.
"That's Kera. From Argon," Mira whispered. "They conscripted her into the infantry, replacing parts of her body with iron. She managed to escape just after they'd attached the arm."
A moment ago, "cyborg soldiers" had been nothing more than a slide in Mira's presentation. Now, one sat five paces away, struggling to stifle the creaking of her own arm.
The second girl, around fifteen, sat apart from the rest. Her hair was shorn short, and hanging from her neck was a piece of metal—about the size of a child's hand—covered in a dense, intricate array of letters and numbers.
"That's Vela. From Polco. According to her contract, she was… a shipment." Mira chose her words with great care. "The ship carrying her was shot down over the Blood Belt. She was the only survivor from the entire cargo hold. Everyone tells her to throw the tag away, but she refuses. It shows the destination where she was supposed to be delivered." She said that, at the very least, there had once been a place waiting for her.
The word "waiting" landed on my chest, heavier than I had expected.
As for the youngest—the one who had covered her ears when the siren wailed—she remained curled up inside a tattered blanket, with only her large eyes peeking out.
"Little Lia," the old woman said. "I found her on a piece of ship wreckage drifting at sea. She doesn't remember where her home was, nor the names of her parents. All she remembers is the sound of the siren."
"And as for me…" Mira looked down at the ash beneath her feet. "Earlier, I mentioned that wherever Nova passes, there's no ash left behind. I know this because I went back to look for my village. That morning, the flames were flickering restlessly, and the old woman told us we had to leave. When we returned that afternoon, the ground was completely bare—as if someone had swept it clean. I searched for ages. There wasn't even a trace of ash."
Four children, from four different places—and none of them had a home left to return to.
I opened my mouth, but the words that came out were not the ones I had intended to speak:
"Is there anyone else?"
"No one left," Mira replied, her tone as casual as if she were discussing the weather.
She gazed down at her own hands, which remained cupped around the flame, never straying even an inch away.
"You want to know how I called for you, don't you?"
I hadn't asked. But I nodded.
"It's a forbidden art. She taught it to me when I was seven, and warned me never to use it." Her voice was flat, like someone reciting a lesson. "Because the price for this magic is the life of the person casting the spell."
The wind whistled through the roofless shrine. The flame flickered, then slowly righted itself.
"W-what did you say?"
"For the first two nights, no one answered." Mira didn't respond directly; she just kept talking, as if afraid that if she stopped, she wouldn't be able to finish. "I felt a sense of relief. And then I hated myself for feeling it. But on the third night… you answered."
The phone in my hand suddenly felt as heavy as a stone. All my life, I'd considered answering calls a nuisance. I had never imagined that there could be calls for which someone might pay with their own life just to get an answer. The words "you've got the wrong number"—which I'd swallowed earlier—now felt utterly meaningless. A price had been paid—paid for the sake of an office worker who hadn't even managed to call his own mother back.
Then, I saw it.
The fire was passing right through Mira's fingertips. Her tiny, charred, burn-blackened knuckles were turning transparent, like glass.
She followed my gaze, then looked at her own hand—as indifferent as if she were merely observing a smudge of dirt.
"Ah, it's starting," she said. "I told you earlier that the fire couldn't wait long. That was a bit of a lie. It was *I* who couldn't wait. That's why I was rushing through the story."
The phone slipped from my grip and clattered onto the stone floor, its screen still glowing. I lunged forward and grabbed her by the shoulders. She was still there, but she felt weightless—as light as the clothes left behind by someone who had already departed.
"Stop! Undo the spell! Isn't there any way to stop it?" "Or… or you could just go back—yes, go back right now! I only need—"
I didn't even realize when I started referring to myself as "you" [in the affectionate, older-brother sense].
"I can't," she said softly, sounding almost apologetic. "The price has already been paid; there's no taking it back."
The burns on the back of her hands began to fade—quietly, as if someone were gently wiping them away. For some reason, I found that to be the cruelest part of all. Only when she was on the verge of vanishing did this world finally allow her pain to cease.
"I didn't choose you," Mira said. "I just put out a call. Whoever answered, that's who would come. For three nights, you were the only one who answered."
She looked up and smiled. It was the first time I'd seen her smile—a tiny, slightly lopsided expression, like that of a child finally unburdened of a weight far too heavy to carry.
"It doesn't hurt," she said. "It just feels… light. Light, like when I'd fall asleep on the porch and Grandmother would carry me inside." She let out a soft, lingering breath. "And you know what? I can finally breathe easy. For once, I don't hate myself anymore."
Behind me, there was a clanking of metal joints. Kera had stood up, making no effort to hold herself back this time. Vela knelt on the other side of the fire, clutching the tag tightly in her hand. Neither of the older sisters said a word; perhaps they had known all along.
Only Lia didn't quite understand. She crawled out from under her blanket, crept forward, and reached out to touch Mira's sleeve. Her fingers sank right through, as if brushing against mist.
"Mira? Why are you… see-through?"
"I'm just going a little further away," Mira said, her voice softening. "If you miss me, just talk to the fire. I'll be listening."
"Really?"
"Really." I couldn't tell if it was a gentle lie or a promise. But looking into Lia's eyes, I knew I would never be the one to find out.
Mira turned toward me.
"Sir… I need a favor. Just one."
In my life, I'd heard the phrase "I need a favor" countless times—usually at five o'clock on a Friday afternoon.
"Don't let the fire go out. It's afraid of the wind, but more than anything, it's afraid of being forgotten. It tends to flicker at night; just talk to it. Say anything. She used to tell it stories from back when the sky was still blue."
"I…" My throat felt as if someone had stuffed it full of ash. "I'm not very good at this sort of thing, Mira."
"You don't have to be." She shook her head. Her voice began to waver, like a failing connection, each word dropping away. "Just don't walk away. She was the keeper of the fire. Then it was me. She used to say… everyone who keeps the fire thinks they're the last one. Everyone is afraid. And yet, they keep it." Her eyes, clear as water, looked straight into mine. "Now, it's your turn."
She shifted her fingers slightly, making room.
I reached out with both hands. Mine were twice the size of theirs; as I cupped them, I completely enclosed both the flame and the small hands beneath. Warmth spread across my palms, and I could no longer tell whether it came from the fire or from those tiny hands.
Suddenly, I thought of a colossal pair of hands that had once closed around me in the darkness—slowly, the way one might shield a candle from the wind. It turned out that, from beginning to end, everything was merely a succession of hands passing a flame from one to another.
"Thank you, sir… for listening to me."
The hands beneath mine were gone.
There was no sound, no flash of light—only falling ash and a small, empty space where a child had just been kneeling, still warm.
At my feet, the phone screen had stopped moving—I hadn't even noticed when. The call had ended.
My hands were occupied, so I didn't pick it up. Instead, I spoke—to the frozen screen, to the still-warm void before me, and to a woman far away whom I knew, with certainty, was still holding the line:
"I'm still listening."
No one answered. But the flame within my cupped hands tilted slightly toward that voice, as if someone were leaning their head in to listen.
Around the flame, three pairs of eyes watched me. None of them cried; none of them asked any questions. They simply waited—in the manner of children who have already waited far too long.
I held my hands around the flame, supported only by my fingertips—a weight heavier than all thirty-one years of my life.
This time, there is no "after."