Eternal. Immortal.

[Alex]

Tatmadaw BTR-3U in Naypyidaw​

The overhead lights buzzed faintly in the cavernous hall, casting sterile light over a line of soldiers standing at attention in front of various military-grade weaponry and vehicles. Boots clicked on the polished concrete as Chairman Than Shwe walked slowly past them, flanked by high-ranking officers in olive drab. His hands were clasped behind his back and his jaw tight with disdain. He paused now and again to back questions.

"Why is this file incomplete?" He snapped at the man holding a clipboard beside him. "Did you bring me to a classroom?"

"I—" the captain stammered. "No, sir."

"Then get these men straightened out!"

The hall reeked of oil, iron, and sweat. Somewhere near the end of the line, Nanda's hands were trembling.

He was too young for this—nineteen, no older. Slim, with the angular cheekbones his people usually bore. He stood awkwardly at attention, beads of sweat sliding down his neck and beneath the collar of his uniform. His sidearm felt heavier than usual at his hip.

He heard footsteps approaching. The Chairman was nearly upon him.

Now.

He moved without a word. One fluid motion: hand to holster, pistol drawn, arm extended.

A gasp escaped from someone behind him. Than Shwe turned.

The gun cracked. The shot rang out like a cracking sky.

A single echo. One shot.

The Chairman jerked backward as if shoved. Blood burst from his chest, spraying across his uniform in a dark fan. He collapsed, striking the ground with a thud. For one terrible second, nobody moved.

The boy who shot stood there, blinking, eye wide, the pistol still shaking in his hand. His mouth opened slightly but no words came.

"Assassin!" Someone shouted.

A series of gunfire answered. Eight rifles erupted. The shooter's body spasmed mid-air as bullets tore through him. His soul left him before his back hit the ground. His pistol skittered across the floor.

General Zeya was the first to rush forward, dropping beside the bleeding old man. "Chairman! Someone get a medic—NOW!"

Than Shwe's lips parted, dark with blood, gurgling something unintelligible. His eyes rolled toward the ceiling. His body jerked violently.

"What are you doing?!" The general yelled at the others, who had yet to move from the shock. "Get a fucking medic!"

---

9 hours later...

The emergency wing had been cleared. Soldiers lined the hallways, weapons drawn. The door to the surgical theatre swung open. Two young doctors in bloodied scrubs emerged, faces pale.

"He'll live," one said flatly. "But..."

"But?" Zeya asked.

"The damage to his lung and his spine... he might never walked again."

The general swatted his hand and the doctors departed.

General Zeya turned to another who stood silently against the wall. "What now?" He asked him.

"We can't wait any longer. We need to take the city."

"The council will resist."

"Let them." He said. "We're not the only ones. Phones are lighting up all across Naypyidaw. The air force is with us. Signals, too."

"What about the old guard?"

"They'll fold... or run. We won't get a better chance. Nanda's bullet missed the bastard's heart, we have to act now."

Zeya nodded slowly. "Then let's burn the palace to the ground."

 

[Alex]

It started in whispers.

In the quiet break rooms of military hospitals, behind closed dormitory doors, in the diesel-reeking alleys of the capital. No slogans, no loud declarations.

"Is it true? Did someone shoot him?"

"They say he's not dead... but not right either."

"Was it one of ours?"

The regime moved fast. Guards sealed the ministries. Phones and computers were confiscated. An order came down from central command: radio silence.

But the dam had cracked.

---

10:12 p.m.

Colonel Htun Naing stood in a dim hallway beneath flickering overhead lights. His hand rested on the phone receiver, but he didn’t dial. Beside him, Brigadier Kyaw Sann lit a cigarette with shaking fingers.

“We can’t stop this,” Kyaw Sann muttered, exhaling smoke toward the ceiling. “He’s not coming back.”

“Don’t say that.”

“He’s done. You saw the broadcast schedule. They’ve canceled his Sunday appearance. No flags. No statement. Just silence.”

“We have orders.”

“We have a country falling apart.”

Silence.

Then, from somewhere deeper in the building, a young lieutenant burst through the doors—face pale, breath shallow.

“Sir!” he gasped. “The 43rd Battalion—Sir, they’re refusing movement orders.”

Htun Naing blinked. “Refusing?”

“They’re… they’re saying neutrality. They’re not rebelling. They just—won’t obey.”

Kyaw Sann ground the cigarette into a wall vent. “Then it’s starting.”

---

Naypyidaw Airport — 1:00 a.m.

A siren blared briefly, then died. Floodlights cut across the tarmac. The hangars opened with a moan of rusted steel as two dozen armored trucks rolled out, unopposed.

Major Lin Thet Ko, commander of the 2nd Transport Regiment, stood in the control tower, arms folded.

“No shots?” asked his second-in-command.

“No need.”

Below, soldiers in camouflage stood down as others took their places—same uniforms, same weapons, different loyalties.

---

Signal Corps Central — 2:41 a.m.

Captain Thida Aung’s hands danced across the console. Lines of code flickered across the screen. The capital’s secure communications grid—encrypted, firewalled, hardwired through bunkers beneath the hills—shifted its loyalty in fifteen keystrokes.

She stepped back and looked at Lieutenant Ye Lin.

“It’s done.”

“You’re sure?”

“It routes to a new control node. A backup channel… we’re giving it to him.”

“You trust him?”

“I don’t trust anyone,” she said. “But he’s all we’ve got.”

---

State Television Studio — 5:00 a.m.

The makeup girl offered powder. He waved her off.

General Aung Kyaw Min sat beneath the lights, his medals perfectly aligned, his collar starched, his hair wet from a hurried sink-wash. His voice had grown rough—thirty hours awake, maybe more—but he hadn’t lost his edge. Not now.

He looked at the camera.

He spoke slowly, every word a hammer strike.

"This is General Aung Kyaw Min. Effective immediately, the State Peace and Development Council is suspended."

And then the feed went black.

 

[Alex]

In a shuttered safehouse high in the Karen hills, an old radio sputtered to life. A man in a torn uniform, eyes rimmed red from sleeplessness, leaned in close to listen. He said nothing, just nodded. Outside, in the mist-shrouded jungle, the order rippled down the line in a single phrase passed from mouth to mouth, signal to signal:

"The sky is split."

From the forests of Kayin State, the Karen National Liberation Army moved like phantoms. General Saw Thet Wah, tall and skeletal with a mane of grey hair, stood atop a ridge at dawn, squinting through the fog toward the valley. “We take Hpa-An today,” he said simply. His voice was hoarse, cracked with age and war. He turned to his lieutenant. “No prisoners.”

The 3rd Battalion hit the police barracks first, emerging from the tree line in a wave of gunfire and fury. A young fighter named Kyi Htoo, no older than seventeen, burst through the side gate with a stolen rifle and bayoneted the first officer he saw.

To the west, Chin fighters trudged silently through the mists near Falam. The mountain paths were slick, treacherous, carved by rain. But they moved with precision, guided by muscle memory. Captain Zam Kham crawled up an embankment under cover of night, waited for the convoy’s headlights to sweep past, then gave the signal. The ambush was over in minutes. Vehicles burning. Soldiers dead. Silence again.

In Shan State, mortar fire boomed across the hills as rebels mounted mortars on old Hilux pickups. Shells screamed through the air, tearing holes in military depots. In Myitkyina, the Kachin Independence Army advanced through the alleys and warehouses like smoke. Some government soldiers laid down their arms. Others ran.

The reckoning had begun.

---

Naypyidaw was a city made of matches.

The spark came on the second day, just past eight in the morning. Than Shwe was wounded. The junta was coming apart.

A crowd gathered in Dhana Theiddhi first. The another in Zeya Theiddhi. By the afternoon, there were thousands—chanting, waving banners, lighting candles. But there were no speeches, no songs, only fury.

Inside a teashop, Su Wint Yee struck a match. She threw the molotov into the cab of a military truck. The blast rocked the street, igniting the fuel tank. Two soldiers burned alive. The rest scattered, but not before shooting her dead.

Soon after, the capital was a barricaded maze. Carts, tires, bamboo fencing, shattered glass. Students wielded slingshots from rooftops. A Buddhist monk stood in the middle of the main street with a loudspeaker, intoning the Metta Sutta while the city burned around him.

Resistance cells painted symbols on walls, used burner radios to coordinate across townships. The city became a battlefield.

A colonel had had enough. He and a group loyal to him raced to the armoury of the garrison, unlocking it and handing out whatever they could get their hands on.

Within an hour of that armoury opening, the city's prisons broke open. Political detainees, monks, unionists, street kids with nothing to lose—thousands poured into the streets.

A nurse at Yangon General Hospital stitched a rebel's shoulder with a needle sterilized over a lighter. Then she took her father’s old rifle to the rooftop and waited for the next wave.

The army sent troops, but they found no city—only smoke, barricades, ambushes. One APC was blown apart by a girl with a grenade hidden in a rice sack. The soldiers never saw her coming.

The city was ungovernable. Columns of fire lit the horizon. Fighters hid in alleyways, on rooftops, and in sewer manholes—wherever they could fit.

 

[Alex]

The sun hadn’t yet risen when the first engines rumbled through the smoke-cloaked streets. What light there was filtered through haze and ash—grey on grey, broken by the flicker of fire still smoldering in doorframes and alley bins.

From the northern road came the convoy.

Me Minkhaung stood atop the open bed of a weather-beaten truck, her hands gripping the side rail as the wind swept back her hair. She wore no medals. No crown. Her dark trousers were stiff with dust. A plain scarf was looped around her throat. She looked like any fighter returning from the field—until you saw her eyes.

They were not tired.

Behind her rolled the army. Soldiers in trucks and on motorcycles, covered in ash atop stolen flak jackets. From each and every truck waved a flag: a colourful peacock upon pure white.

People gathered along the road in silence.

As they rode through the city, on every rooftop flew the same flag: white, with a peacock. Drawn on shirts and sheets, and whatever else they could get their hands on.

And then they stopped—at the gates of the old parliamentary compound, blackened by fire.

Me Minkhaung climbed down alone.

There was no formal platform, no ceremony. A few soldiers had built a makeshift dais from scavenged pallets and nailed a wooden plank across the top. The peacock flag was draped behind it, caught in the morning wind.

She stepped up and faced the crowd.