Five years had passed since the transformation. In the isolated zones where pure humans had chosen to remain, time moved differently. While the rest of existence had restructured itself into something that transcended conventional physics, these preserved spaces maintained the old rules. Gravity still functioned as it always had. Time moved in one direction. Death was still final.
Dr. Sarah Chen stood in the observation chamber of Sanctuary Seven, one of the largest preserved zones, watching the boundary between the old reality and the new. It was visible as a kind of shimmer in the air, a place where the rules changed. On one side, humans could still see the sky. On the other side, the sky had become something else entirely. Something that reflected multiple realities simultaneously, tha
