When the World Went Grey

Prologue 

Joy, happiness, life, creation—the spark of beginning, the heartbeat of earth itself, the endless manifestation of color and beauty and light—blossoming, growing, unfurling into something infinite. And then, one day, nothing. The world, once bursting with radiance, was swallowed whole, devoured by an oblivion so complete that even memory faded to greyscale, leaving behind only the cruel, inescapable taunt of black and white, a silent mockery of what once was. Shadows of what had been clung to the charred land beyond our shelter, reaching with desperate fingers toward a sky that had long since turned its back, and as the relentless nothingness took, and took, and took, we were left only to bear witness, to suffer in the empty remains of what we had destroyed. And as the world faded to monochrome, I became one of the countless shades of despair. 

Our city, once flooded with bustling citizens driving cars of every colour, is reduced skeletal frames of buildings and cracked roads- a cruel reminder of the countless nights I spent, sleepless, hidden away in my attic, thriving off the colours coating my paint pallet. The word around us hasn’t just been burned; it’s been erased, the vibrancy stripped away. 

I look around our underground shelter, and for people struggling to survive, everyone was perfectly content with making conversation from the concrete where they sat- as if they weren’t on their death beds. We scrape by with the rations the leaders distribute weekly, our bodies weakened by hunger, our minds fractured by the unbearable monotony of a world without colour. 

But it isn’t the hunger or paranoia that haunts us, but the weight of absence, the memories of colour fading with each passing, dissolving to add to the torture of the ash flakes contaminating the air. 

Black. White. Grey. Repeat. Every damn time. And then I find myself thinking the same though I thought since the day the world was drained of colour: This is a dream. Colors can’t just... disappear. 

And yet, here we were in this mere sketch of what was— a vast land that stretched on through the remains of the nuclear tragedy, colored in shades of ash and bone where nothing grows and nothing dares to blossom. For now, I resort to my only escape, my eyelids suddenly feeling too heavy, my mind too weary— symptoms we've long since accepted as the norm- and allow myself to relax against the concrete wall. 

Part Ⅰ 

Rations are low. Too low. 

A small group of us was sent into the depths of our despair to scrounge together enough food to ensure our, at the least, survival. Survival doesn’t always grace the entirety of our measly society, and it’s unfortunate, but death, even at seventeen, is not an unfamiliar fate. 

I look out into the rubble, finally lifting my eyes from my sneakered feet for the first time since they stepped beyond the shelter’s entrance. The land is silent, the only sound the crunching of boots landing against who knows what, and the whipping wind nipped at my skin, scattering my once auburn-streaked hair across the back of my jacket. Black. White. Grey. Rep— a gleam catches my eye. We’re at the edge of the ruins, that’s impossible... 

My feet are already betraying me, already venturing closer to this foreign feeling of freedom. Five years ago was the last time I was graced with the presence of colour. Five years since the bombs. Five years since this world was diminished to a simple— a mere— greyscale. Five years. For colour to still exist... would be out of the question. 

I track the glistening spark of hope, forcing my eyes to stay open, forcing my feet one in front of the other until- 

Where’d it go? 

I blink. Scanning the scene, my eyes dart frantically from each piece of colourlees scrap to the next. Come on. Come on. Come— 

Nothing. 

The unmistakable feeling of wilted grass prickles at my knees as they hit the ground where it was. The hope of colour in an achromatic world slipped through my hoary fingers like sand slipping through the grasp of the ocean’s spray continuously. 

“Elara?” Siena, one of the other young scavengers ask, kneeling down in front of me. “You okay?” 

I blink back tears I didn’t know were welling, forcing composure I don’t have, even as I feel the feather-light touch of Siena’s hand on my shoulder. I know I can tell Siena the truth, she did take me in after the bombs killed my parents, but to burden her would be to break myself in the process. “Yeah.” My voice is breathy as if I’m questioning my own answer while letting the first one that comes to mind slip past my lips. If anyone is going to believe me, it’s going to be her. She is the only family I have left after all. “I just... I thought I saw colour.” 

Siena’s muted, but still striking, once blue eyes go wide, clawing to clench onto the sliver of hope and clinging onto it like a lifeline. Anything. Everything. 

She leans closer, the shoulder-length ashy hue filling her head now slipping past her ear. “If anyone can find it, it’s you.” She said it like it was the easiest thing in the world, but that was just the way Siena made everything seem. Easy. Like it wasn’t the sight reignites a desperate hope, a longing to believe that life, in its fullest form, is not truly gone. 

Part Ⅱ 

I can’t pretend like it didn’t happen. I can’t unsee it. 

I know it’s risky. I know there are people here who need every last bit of help they can get. But if there’s a better, beautifully vivid world out there inching to be found, it needs to be found. 

So here I am, in the thick, inky embrace of the dead of night, my fingers curling tightly around the worn, chilled rungs of the ladder that stretches upward like a fragile, rust-bitten bridge to a world I have long since sworn, with every fiber of my being, to unravel, to tear apart piece by piece if that's what it takes, all in pursuit of that elusive, flickering glint—something small, something distant, something that once dared to catch and hold the fleeting light of a bleached and weary sun. 

Because if there is one truth I refuse to let slip through the cracks of time, it is that colour, in all its wild, untamed brilliance, is not just an indulgence, not merely an ornament to be admired from afar, but a necessity—a lifeblood that the world not only craves but deserves to be drenched in, to be wholly consumed by, and if it is within my grasp to bring it back, to pry it from the hands of whatever force dares to smother it, then I will chase it, seize it, and deliver it without hesitation, no matter the cost. 

Singed. Sealed. Delivered. Address? A monochrome world once called “Earth.” 

Surrounded by rubble, I step out into the spotted sky and let the chill of a rare wind smack me right in the face—a stark contrast to the warmth seeping across my chest. I shake my head at myself and how I utterly disregarded the warnings of the other survivors and so effortlessly snuck out of the security of our shelter into the wasteland so eagerly. 

I glance around the land stretched out before me, waste crowding the ground and ashes polluting the air, and I swear the hues of grey, now illuminated by stars and a moon- that appeared as dots and a waning semi-circle- were darker than black, everything meshing with the ink-stained sky. 

I will find it. I’ll find it if it kills me. I will. 

Then, just beyond the endless stretch of night, a shimmer, the faintest trace of warmth against the cold monotony. 

“It's real,” I murmur though no one is around to overhear, “It has to be.” 

Part Ⅲ 

I walk for hours. And it still feels like I’ve gone nowhere. I’m still surrounded by the grey void, still surrounded by remains of a better life, and still, with the shimmering speck of hope before me, not stopping. 

The landscape is an endless graveyard of the past. Twisted steel, collapsed buildings, and roads that crack beneath my feet stretch on like the bones of a forgotten civilization. Everything is still. No birds cry overhead, no wind whispers through trees—because there are no trees left to whisper through. The silence is heavy, pressing against me like the weight of the sky itself. 

I huff, pressing my back against a crumbling door, not bothering to look at the house, but rather the swing set across the road, peering intently as it swings back and forth in the stillness of night, moved by something unseen— perhaps the ghost of the child who cherished it. 

A sigh slips past my lips at the tempting offer of sleep, but refusing to give in quiet yet, I push my weight forward. My feet drag, weighing me down. Black. White. Grey. Repeat. It’s infuriating that I can’t close the distance between me and my last hope of colour. 

My eyes snag on a reflection in the road. My pace quickens. 

My footfalls echo in the empty, colorless world as I near the glinting surface. A mirror—cracked, dirt-speckled, abandoned in the middle of the road like it doesn’t belong. Like nothing belongs. 

I slow, breathing hard. My reflection stares back at me, distorted by the fractures spiderwebbing across the glass. The same dull world is behind me. The same lifeless sky above. But beneath me, just beyond the cracks, something else— 

Green. 

My breath catches. A patch of grass, impossibly vivid, bleeding through the reflection as if it exists in another world. As if it's real, somewhere, somehow. 

I step forward, heart pounding, kneeling at the mirror’s edge. My fingers hover over the glass. The colors look too bright, too alive, like they’d burn if I touched them. But I don’t hesitate. 

I kick the mirror. 

It shatters under my heel with a sharp, crystalline crack. Splinters of glass scatter across the road, glinting like stars in the empty light. I brace myself for something—anything. A shift in the air. A tremor in the ground. A door opening where there was none before. 

But when I look down, the green is gone. 

Just shards of broken glass, catching the darkened sky in their edges. Just my own reflection, fractured into a hundred jagged pieces. 

I lurch forward, scraping at the road where the mirror used to be. Nothing. No hidden portal. No sliver of color left behind. My hands shake. Tears, clear wetness, drip down my cheeks in slowed fashion. My breathing comes in clipped gasps. 

I saw it. 

I know I did. 

The wind stirs, sending a few stray fragments skittering away. I watch them disappear down the road, swallowed by the nothingness stretching endlessly ahead. 

And then I keep walking, pushing harder—further. Relentless. 

Part Ⅳ 

I refuse to let myself stop. I won’t. I can’t. Not if I want any chance at finding the colour I’ve recklessly craved. 

My eyes follow the path I left in the dust, the sun rising higher in the sky, and then—thunk. 

The ground hits me before I can brace for it. Pain shoots through my skull in sharp, electric volts. I glance up, dazed, and see the thick trunk of the tree I just slammed into, its rough bark pressing into my chest, pinning me to the earth. I wince, trying to push myself up, but my head swims with dizziness. 

The tree stands tall, towering over me like an ancient sentinel, its branches casting long shadows in the early morning light. I can feel its strength, as if it's mocking my weakness, daring me to rise again. 

I press my palms to the ground, leaves crunching beneath them, and accept this tree’s challenge. The rough earth presses against my skin, grounding me in this moment, daring me to rise. A chill runs through my spine as I push myself up, dirt clinging to my fingertips. The air is thick, damp, charged with something unseen but undeniable. 

Prepared to confront the tree, I stand to my feet and ball my fists, the tension in my body coiling like a spring. I’m ready. My knuckles tighten, breath steadying—until a sharp, almost imperceptible sting pricks at my palm. 

Crunch. 

My hand flattens instinctively, fingers twitching as I feel the sensation spread. The leaves, crisp and brittle, stick to my skin like they belong there. A brief annoyance flickers through me, and I almost brush them off without a second thought—until something stops me cold. 

The color. 

Not grey. Not black. Not the dry, lifeless husks of darkness. These leaves are green. It’s faint. Fading. Dying. But it’s there. 

The realization steals the breath from my lungs. 

Green. 

Here, among the decay. 

Color still exists, but it is fading. The world is not truly black and white—it is dying in slow motion. The nuclear bombs did not erase color; it severed life’s connection to it, leaving only those who remember it to witness its vanishing. 

A smirk, one I haven’t worn since the day of the bombs, breaks across my lips. It all makes sense. I have to find the colour. I have to find the— 

What about everyone else? What about Siena? 

I cut myself off, bending to gather a handful of dull leaves from the ground. Siena would want this. 

If anyone can find it, it’s you. 

My grip on the leaves tightens as if I can hold onto her words—onto her— for guidance like I always have. 

And I intend to do just that.  

One step. For hope.  

Another. For faith.  

Two steps. For a new life. 

Another. For Siena. 

And then I’m sprinting, not daring to look back. 

Fin.