I never thought it would come to this—standing in the rubble of what used to be my home, watching the sky tear open like an old wound. It was the day the White Pegasus descended from the heavens, and the day everything I knew crumbled beneath its shadow.

  I was poor. Always had been. Born in the outer districts of Thalona, a small city by the sea. We lived in shacks made from scrap metal, our roofs barely holding against the harsh winds, let alone the storms that came from the skies. The war hadn’t touched us much before. We were too small, too insignificant. But that changed when the White Pegasus came.

  The first thing we heard was the hum—low and steady. It wasn’t like the ships that flew overhead now and then, nor the distant thunder of faraway battles. This hum was menacing like the sky itself was vibrating, anticipating something terrible. I looked up, and there it was: a massive dark silhouette against the pale morning light, blocking the sun, turning day into night.

  At first, none of us knew what it was. It hung in the troposphere, motionless for what felt like hours, but we knew better than to stare too long. The Quadaric Near-Space Bombardment Transports, they called them. Ships were so massive that they were their cities in the sky. But the White Pegasus—it was different. It was smaller, about 1,680 meters long, with a sleek design that made it faster and more agile than the behemoths we’d seen in vidscreens. Yet it carried something far worse than bombs.

  We had anti-aircraft defences, old and rusting from years of disrepair. They didn’t stand a chance against the Pegasus. No one dared fire at it anyway. Rumour had spread quickly: the front of the ship was filled with prisoners of war, captured civilians, and people like us. If we tried to take it down, we’d be killing them too. But even worse, they said, was what lay inside the tip of the ship—a nuclear silo, ready to rain death if provoked. It was a floating executioner, and we were the condemned.

  Then the bombardment began.

  The first shell hit near the outskirts. A blinding light, followed by a deafening boom. Buildings crumbled, and shanties caught fire. The ground trembled, and the air turned to smoke and dust. I remember running, with no thought in my mind but survival. There were no sirens, no warnings. Just fire raining down from the sky.

  I don’t know how long it lasted. Minutes? Hours? Time blurred in the chaos. All I knew was that nothing of the old Thalona was left when the dust finally settled. My home—a pile of broken metal and scorched earth. My family? Gone. I couldn’t tell where the dead ended and the living began. There was nothing left but ruin.

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  Those of us who survived gathered in the ruins. Our faces were blackened with soot, and our clothes were tattered. We were a broken people, and yet we moved, driven by some instinct to survive. We started to march—not sure where, only away from the destruction, away from the Pegasus that still hovered above, casting its long shadow.

  We walked for days, moving through the wreckage of other towns that had fallen before us. The horror was the same everywhere. Families were torn apart, homes crushed under the weight of war, lives snuffed out like flickering candles. I remember walking over a bridge, once a proud feat of engineering, now reduced to twisted metal and broken stone. Beneath it, the bodies of those who hadn’t made it out in time—some still clutching the remnants of their lives in their hands, as if the past could shield them from the present.

  The others I marched with—soldiers, civilians, refugees like me—we barely spoke. What could we say? Words were meaningless in the face of such destruction. But the silence was worse. In that silence, the memories of the bombardment crept back. The sound of buildings collapsing, the screams of those trapped inside. The constant, unshakable feeling of being watched by the White Pegasus, which still lingered in the sky, its nuclear threat hanging over us like the sword of Damocles.

  The worst part was knowing why it was there. Not just to destroy, but to send a message. A psychological weapon—a ship filled with innocents, daring us to shoot it down, knowing that to do so would rain death on our heads. It was warfare at its most insidious. Even if we wanted to fight back, we were trapped and held hostage by the very people we were supposed to protect.

  As the days went on, more of us fell. Some to hunger, some to injuries sustained during the bombardment. But most, I think, fell to despair. I can still see the face of the young boy who marched beside me, his eyes hollow, his spirit broken. He had lost everything—his family, his friends, his home. One night, he simply walked away into the dark, never to return. I didn’t blame him. In times like this, death feels like mercy.

  Eventually, we reached what was left of a military outpost, hidden deep in the mountains. The soldiers there tried to organize us and give us food, shelter, and some sense of normalcy. But there was no escaping what we had seen or lived through. The White Pegasus might have left the sky above Thalona, but its shadow still lingered in our minds, an ever-present reminder of the horrors of war.

  I still hear the hum sometimes, in my nightmares. The low, steady hum of the White Pegasus, as it hovers, waiting. Watching. And I remember the day it turned my world to ash.

  And I wonder if I will ever be able to forget.

  End