CHAPTER 3: A NEW WORLD
The world did not return to what it had been before. It couldn’t. Too much had been broken, too much had been lost, and yet, something new had taken its place. The ruins of Chicago still stood as scars of the war, shattered buildings and fractured streets marking the battlefield where everything had changed. But above it all, the sky was different now. Clear. Endless. Balanced. There was no lingering darkness pressing against it, no unnatural weight suffocating the air. Instead, there was a quiet calm that stretched far beyond the horizon, something deeper than peace, something permanent. It was subtle, almost impossible to describe, but those who had been there could feel it. The world was no longer tipping toward chaos. It had found its center again.
Kevin stood
