The group followed the glowing path, their nerves frayed but their curiosity stronger. The trail led them to an open field where an enormous hologram flickered to life. It was Trudeau again, looking older, wearier.
“If you’re seeing this,” he said, “then you’re part of the solution. The visitors left tools to save us, but they’re hidden. Only those who seek understanding will find them.”
“What tools?” Jas asked, frustrated. But the hologram disappeared, leaving them in darkness.
Just then, a tremor rippled beneath their feet. The horizon flared—not lightning, but something stranger. Above them, the clouds parted and the northern lights flared unnaturally green and red, crackling like electricity caught in a cosmic tantrum.
“That’s no aurora,” Ivy whispered.
They climbed the ridge to get a better view, and that’s when they saw it.
Far in the distance, a massive digital billboard on the edge of the ruins burned, its surface still glowing. On it had been an AI-generated image—Trump, adorned in papal robes, arms raised in mock benediction. The flames had curled the image like paper. The "halo" behind him had been replaced by a blackened sunspot, still sizzling.
As they stared, a new line of graffiti shimmered to life beneath it, as though etched by invisible hands: False prophets fall hardest.
“The sun wrote that,” Roman muttered, shaken.
“Or maybe Earth had enough,” Ivy said.
A silence settled over them—not fear, but awe. Something vast had stirred. Whether it was nature, divine wrath, or alien intervention, they didn’t know. But they felt it: the reckoning had begun.