CHAPTER XXIII - The Last Dawn Together

The sky no longer belonged to Earth.

Not in the way it once had.

The atmosphere that stretched above the planet still carried clouds, light, storms, and the slow passage of weather, but the balance that had once sustained life across continents had long since disappeared. What remained now was a wounded imitation of an older world, a fragile shell held together by failing systems that continued functioning more from momentum than stability.

Far beyond the northern horizon, enormous layers of ash-colored cloud drifted across the morning sky.

Their movement was slow.