Atlas slowed. His shadow stretched thin beneath the glass walls that rose around them — cracked mirrors of a forgotten world.
Michael had gone ahead, his golden wings flickering in the haze. The others followed close, boots scraping through dust that glittered faintly, like ash and light mixed together.
The silence was wrong. It wasn't empty anymore.
It was listening.
A sound came — faint, mechanical, too even to be natural.
A chime. Then another.
From somewhere deep in the ruins, an electronic voice whispered, ...Welcome back...
Eli turned sharply. "Did you hear—?"
"Yes." Atlas's voice was flat, but his chest was tightening.
That phrase. That voice. He had heard it a thousand times — the tone of automatic doors at the station he used to pass every morning, half-awake, clutching cheap coffee and hollow dreams.
He swallowed hard. "Stay close..." he said.
The path ahead bent between two collapsed buildings, glass windows shattered inward like eyes gouged out.
