Nobody remembered when the sky first turned the color of burnt pennies. Some said it was the factories, some blamed the wars, some whispered that the world had simply grown tired and exhaled its last clean breath. But in the rusted outskirts of South Sector, where the dust tasted like metal and every glass of water stank of chemicals, there lived a man named Ellion Varr, a quiet ghost of a person who refused to surrender to the filth.
People called him strange. Mad. Touched in the head.
They didn’t know he carried notebooks filled with equations written in the dark, symbols scribbled between coughing fits. They didn’t know about the abandoned workshop beneath his shack, where pipes hummed like dying animals and strange vapors swirled in jars.
They didn’t know he was trying to save them.
Ellion had lost his wife early, her lungs collapsed after a storm dragged poison through their alley. The doctors shrugged. “That’s the world these days.”
He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream.
He simply went home and began working.
For eleven years, he mixed, boiled, purified, failed. Every morning he went to the scrapyard, found something broken, and brought it home like a surgeon collecting organs. Every night he drank the sludge he brewed, testing it on himself. Sometimes it burned his throat. Sometimes it made his heart race. Once it nearly stopped.
But in madness, he found clarity.
The breakthrough came during a blackout storm, when the wind howled like an injured god. Ellion stood in his workshop lit only by blue fire, holding a vial that glowed faintly green. Not bright, not neon, just a soft pulse, like a heartbeat refusing to die.
He whispered, “This world has forgotten how to breathe. But I haven’t.”
He drank it.
It didn’t burn.
It didn’t poison.
It felt… clean. Clean in a way he hadn’t felt since childhood. Clean like rain that didn’t sting your skin. Clean like the ocean before it turned to sludge.
And that night, he dreamed of his wife for the first time in over a decade. She wasn’t dying in the dream, she was laughing.
By morning, he knew what he had created.
A sustainable drink.
A purifier.
A cure for a world choking on its own filth.
He called it Verdant Pulse. Not a brand name, a promise.
But when he stepped outside to share it, nobody believed him.
“Everything’s contaminated.”
“Some kind of scam.”
“Get lost, old man.”
One man even knocked the bottle from his hand. It shattered, steaming on the concrete.
Ellion stared at the pieces, then at the man. He didn’t shout. Didn’t threaten. He simply picked up the shards, cupped them gently in his hands, and whispered:
“You break what saves you without even tasting it.”
He went to the central well, the heart of the district. The water there was thick, brown, sour enough to strip paint. People lined up anyway.
Ellion stepped past them all.
He uncapped a new bottle of Verdant Pulse.
And he poured it into the well.
A hiss.
A ripple.
A crackle like lightning in deep water.
The brown turned to a murky green. Then lighter. Then clearer.
Within seconds, the well glowed like a lantern.
People stared. Some gasped. Some cried.
Ellion didn’t smile. He simply said:
“Drink. The world can heal. But someone has to go first.”
A little girl stepped forward. She cupped the water in her hands and drank without fear.
Her eyes widened.
“It tastes like… nothing. Like when I was small.”
The crowd surged. Hope filled the air, raw, sudden, terrifying. For the first time in years, the district felt alive.
Ellion stepped back, watching them, his hands trembling from exhaustion and triumph.
A madman saved the world, one drop at a time.
He whispered to the sky, the ugly, burnt-penny sky:
“I’m not done. Not until it’s blue again.”
And he walked toward the next district, bottle in hand.
His wife’s laughter echoing somewhere behind him.
People called him strange. Mad. Touched in the head.
They didn’t know he carried notebooks filled with equations written in the dark, symbols scribbled between coughing fits. They didn’t know about the abandoned workshop beneath his shack, where pipes hummed like dying animals and strange vapors swirled in jars.
They didn’t know he was trying to save them.
Ellion had lost his wife early, her lungs collapsed after a storm dragged poison through their alley. The doctors shrugged. “That’s the world these days.”
He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream.
He simply went home and began working.
For eleven years, he mixed, boiled, purified, failed. Every morning he went to the scrapyard, found something broken, and brought it home like a surgeon collecting organs. Every night he drank the sludge he brewed, testing it on himself. Sometimes it burned his throat. Sometimes it made his heart race. Once it nearly stopped.
But in madness, he found clarity.
The breakthrough came during a blackout storm, when the wind howled like an injured god. Ellion stood in his workshop lit only by blue fire, holding a vial that glowed faintly green. Not bright, not neon, just a soft pulse, like a heartbeat refusing to die.
He whispered, “This world has forgotten how to breathe. But I haven’t.”
He drank it.
It didn’t burn.
It didn’t poison.
It felt… clean. Clean in a way he hadn’t felt since childhood. Clean like rain that didn’t sting your skin. Clean like the ocean before it turned to sludge.
And that night, he dreamed of his wife for the first time in over a decade. She wasn’t dying in the dream, she was laughing.
By morning, he knew what he had created.
A sustainable drink.
A purifier.
A cure for a world choking on its own filth.
He called it Verdant Pulse. Not a brand name, a promise.
But when he stepped outside to share it, nobody believed him.
“Everything’s contaminated.”
“Some kind of scam.”
“Get lost, old man.”
One man even knocked the bottle from his hand. It shattered, steaming on the concrete.
Ellion stared at the pieces, then at the man. He didn’t shout. Didn’t threaten. He simply picked up the shards, cupped them gently in his hands, and whispered:
“You break what saves you without even tasting it.”
He went to the central well, the heart of the district. The water there was thick, brown, sour enough to strip paint. People lined up anyway.
Ellion stepped past them all.
He uncapped a new bottle of Verdant Pulse.
And he poured it into the well.
A hiss.
A ripple.
A crackle like lightning in deep water.
The brown turned to a murky green. Then lighter. Then clearer.
Within seconds, the well glowed like a lantern.
People stared. Some gasped. Some cried.
Ellion didn’t smile. He simply said:
“Drink. The world can heal. But someone has to go first.”
A little girl stepped forward. She cupped the water in her hands and drank without fear.
Her eyes widened.
“It tastes like… nothing. Like when I was small.”
The crowd surged. Hope filled the air, raw, sudden, terrifying. For the first time in years, the district felt alive.
Ellion stepped back, watching them, his hands trembling from exhaustion and triumph.
A madman saved the world, one drop at a time.
He whispered to the sky, the ugly, burnt-penny sky:
“I’m not done. Not until it’s blue again.”
And he walked toward the next district, bottle in hand.
His wife’s laughter echoing somewhere behind him.
Jeff Richardson
about 2 hours ago