Four months ago, Cadogan emerged from his basement to dead world, ravaged by loss of life, prolonged darkness, and extreme cold. Isolated, and torn between grief and confusion, Cadogan began to aimlessly travel across his country's frozen carcass, becoming more beast than man as he did. The sun's loss was only the beginning; disaster after disaster seemed to occur, and though he had many close calls, Cadogan's health seemed mostly unaffected—even when he was hurt, he recovered far too fast for a man his age. Still, lost in a hopeless stupor, Cadogan failed to recognize that there was more at play to his continued survival than luck.
Sometime in his wanderings, Cadogan happened upon a pair of siblings who had also managed to eke out an existence in the unforgiving waste. They were the first survivors Cadogan had met in months: only when he tried to introduce himself did Cadogan realize he hadn't heard his own voice since before the collapse. The thought was frightening, and the introductions awkward, but the young travelers' company slowly provided Cadogan with an opportunity to break free from the primal, uncaring state of mind he had developed, and once again grasp at some semblance of normality.
After a month or so of travelling together, their small encampment was encircled by beasts in the night. Cadogan thought them to be wolves, though the creatures seemed twisted and changed by the apocalypse. Though they managed to beat the beasts back with makeshift torches and spears, one of the siblings, a young boy, was attacked during the standoff and his leg was badly lacerated by the creature's maw. For three vagrants stumbling through the apocalypse without medicine or training, it should have permanently crippled him at least, or, more probably, been a fatal wound. Instead, Cadogan felt drawn to it, a strange and warm sensation undulating beneath his fingertips. Without reason or explanation, Cadogan wordlessly reached for the boy's leg and, at the slightest touch, the ravaged skin and gouged flesh began to regenerate before their eyes. It wasn't until the other of the two siblings called out in surprise that Cadogan realized he was encircled by soft motes of pale gold light.
For a little while afterwards, Cadogan tried to make sense of his new abilities, but found he could not. After all, nothing had made sense since the sun disappeared. Cadogan would've called himself pragmatic in the time before the end. Still, ravaged by curiosity and a renewed sense of purpose, he dove into the strange new magic at his fingertips, slowly convincing himself with every new discovery that the explanation lay beyond the material.
In the third month, Cadogan's travelling troupe had expanded, and one brisk morning, as they painstakingly struggled across a slew of newly-formed hills, the survivors saw it: a yet untouched hamlet at the base of the nearest hill and, at the center of it all, tall, steepled churchyard silhouetted against the gold rays of the rising sun. Suffused with a sudden revelation, Cadogan fell to his knees and began to nearly weep with joy. It wasn't—couldn't be—a coincidence. The world had been judged and found unworthy, but for whatever reason, and by whatever divinity, he had been delivered to a dystopian promised land, and—most importantly—chosen as its reclaimer.
