So We Meet Again | Justin (Ep4 S1) - After The Howl

story takes place in the year 2040 in a world where humans do not exist but instead anthropomorphic animals.

By the winter of 2040, the world is quieter than anyone remembers it ever being, a place where silence has weight and daylight dictates life as much as fear once did. Cities still stand, but they no longer belong to those who built them; towers are split by roots, streets have softened into soil, and entire neighborhoods exist only as shapes beneath moss and shadow. Civilization did not vanish all at once—it thinned, retreated, and finally yielded, leaving behind a continent defined by distance rather than borders. Travel is slow and deliberate, guided by weather, light, and memory, and the land itself feels older now, as if it has reclaimed an authority it once temporarily surrendered. The world is not dead, nor is it fully alive in the way it once was; it is in a long, uneasy middle state, where ruins are as common as forests and the past is visible everywhere, embedded in rusted signs, broken windows, and sun-faded warnings no one obeys anymore. The first signs of collapse appeared in early 2020, long before anyone understood what was happening. People across the northern regions began falling ill with symptoms that didn’t fully align with any known disease—fatigue, confusion, heightened aggression, and a growing sensitivity to enclosed spaces. Emergency rooms filled with patients who were not dying, but changing, their behavior becoming erratic and sometimes violently impulsive even before any physical deterioration set in. Isolated attacks were dismissed as panic, substance abuse, or social unrest, and when quarantines were announced, they came too late and were enforced unevenly. Cities became pressure cookers, fear feeding on itself as infrastructure strained and trust eroded. When supply chains fractured and power grids failed, violence followed—not as an organized uprising, but as a series of desperate, human reactions to uncertainty, hunger, and confinement.

What followed was not a single catastrophic event, but a prolonged unravelling. Over the next several years, evacuation attempts collapsed under their own weight, governments fragmented, and regional authorities retreated into defensible zones that gradually shrank or hardened into isolation. Entire communities emptied out as people fled north, inland, or anywhere they believed would offer space and light, leaving behind cities that decayed slowly rather than burned. By the late 2020s, the idea of restoring the old world had quietly disappeared, replaced by smaller goals: keeping power for another winter, holding a road open, surviving the night. Knowledge was lost unevenly—some technologies endured, others vanished completely—and by the time the 2030s arrived, a generation had grown up with no memory of uninterrupted electricity, crowded streets, or a world that felt stable.

Now, in 2040, the continent exists as a patchwork of lived-in ruins and reclaimed wilderness, shaped more by environment than ambition. Old maps are unreliable, distances feel longer than they used to, and the future is no longer something people plan for in decades, but in seasons. The outbreak is no longer spoken of as a singular tragedy; it is understood as a turning point, the moment when the world stopped bending around its inhabitants and began asserting its own rules again. What remains is not the aftermath of an ending, but the continuation of a new, harsher era—one where survival is ordinary, hope is cautious, and the world itself is the most enduring presence left.

By 2040, survival has hardened into belief, and belief has hardened into factions—each one a different answer to the same unending question of how life should continue in a world that no longer forgives mistakes. No single authority governs the continent now; instead, power exists in pockets, shaped by geography, fear, and memory. Some groups cling to the idea that order must be enforced, others that it must be abandoned, and many simply try to carve out enough stability to last another season. These factions rarely see themselves as villains or saviors. Each believes, in its own way, that it has adapted correctly, and that the others are simply choosing slower deaths. The Greenline Front emerged from early defense coalitions and hardened into a territorial force that values control above all else, occupying exposed infrastructure such as highways, stadiums, and industrial rooftops where visibility and light offer a sense of dominance. They maintain strict discipline and brutal efficiency, keeping their regions comparatively stable at the cost of individual freedom, and are feared as much for their methods as they are respected for their ability to hold ground. In contrast, the Quarantine Authority represents the last shadow of the old governments, maintaining heavily regulated zones that preserve the rituals of civilization—identification, rations, and procedures—long after their original purpose has faded. To those inside, the Authority offers protection and predictability; to those outside, it appears stagnant and secretive, more invested in preservation and observation than in rebuilding the world. Faith took new shapes after the collapse, most visibly in the Luminants, who believe survival is tied to exposure, clarity, and the rejection of darkness. They build their communities in open, sun-washed regions and treat light as both a moral and practical necessity, enforcing strict doctrines that leave little room for doubt or weakness. From them splintered the Ash Saints, who took these beliefs to their most extreme conclusion, embracing fire as the only true means of purification and leaving scorched landscapes in their wake. At the opposite end of the spectrum are the Rootbound, who see the collapse not as a curse but as a correction, choosing to live in close proximity to the overgrown world and surrendering control in exchange for a fragile form of coexistence with it. Not all factions seek dominance or transcendence; some simply avoid confrontation altogether. The Canopy Union survives by elevation, constructing suspended settlements above ground level and minimizing contact with the earth itself, while the Burrowed live below the surface in tunnel networks carved from necessity and fear, generations removed from open sky. Along the coastlines and flooded cities, the Floodmark Collective adapts to the rhythm of tides and decay, scavenging what resurfaces and accepting impermanence as a constant. Moving between all of these groups are the Black Current, smugglers and traffickers who recognize no ideology beyond survival and profit, supplying everyone while belonging nowhere. Knowledge itself became a battleground, guarded by the Archivists of Last Light, who believe that memory is the only inheritance worth preserving in a world that has lost its future. They travel lightly, collecting stories, records, and firsthand accounts before they disappear forever, often clashing with factions that see uncontrolled information as a threat. Finally, there are the Night Shepherds, guides and pathfinders who operate where others refuse to go, navigating regions abandoned to darkness and danger with an understanding that borders on unsettling. To some they are indispensable, to others deeply mistrusted, but their existence underscores a shared truth among all factions: the world cannot be mastered, only endured. Together, these groups form the living structure of the post-collapse world—not a new civilization, but a series of compromises, each one shaped by what its members fear most and what they are willing to sacrifice to keep going.