The world came back in fragments — light, sound, breath.
Ethan gasped, his lungs filling with air that tasted like metal and rain. He lay on his back, staring at a sky fractured by pale bands of static, like glass holding onto the last reflection of lightning. The ground beneath him was scorched — a plain of ash and glass that once might have been part of Elysium’s upper structure.
He pushed himself upright slowly. His muscles trembled, his head pounding with echoes of light.
“Maya?” he whispered, but the name came out like an ache.
Silence answered him. Then, faintly, a pulse — inside his mind.
I’m here… but it’s quiet.
Her voice — faint, fragile, like the memory of wind through wires.
He exhaled shakily. “You made it.”
Not all of me.
Her presence flickered, a warmth that came an
