The world was quieter now.
The sky above the wasteland was a bruised grey, streaked with orange haze from the dying satellites still burning in the atmosphere. The land below — fractured concrete, rusted towers, and endless ash — stretched for miles. What had once been Elysium’s outer network hub was now nothing more than a skeletal ruin.
Ethan walked slowly through the debris, his breathing steady but shallow. Every sound — the crunch of gravel, the whisper of wind — echoed like something alive.
He wasn’t sure what was real anymore. Since awakening in the Resistance camp two days ago, fragments of Elysium still haunted him — flashes of light, the hum of the Vault, and sometimes, faintly, Maya’s voice drifting through static.
He rubbed his temples. “You need to focus,” he muttered to h
