The sun was setting over the jungle.
Or what was left of it.
The canopy glowed in hues of burnt copper and soot-dark green, fractured by streaks of electromagnetic discharge that shimmered like dying auroras. Where the trees had once pulsed in harmony—however erratic, however strange—they now jittered, their signals fragmenting, like a song stuck in endless feedback.
Aouli stood on a ridge, overlooking the valley where the stabilizer had failed. Smoke drifted upward in lazy spirals. Somewhere in the distance, the forest still cracked and moaned with residual energy. He could feel it unraveling—slow, not catastrophic, but real.
Below, the survivors moved. Isla's team was packing up. The remaining gear had been consolidated into hover-loaders and floating sleds, which now hovered inches off the ground, powered by scavenged solar collectors. They weren't speaking much.
He couldn't blame them.
He didn't approach. He didn't say goodbye.
He knew that look—the quiet mourning of people who had lost more than equipment. They had lost trajectory. The stabilizer had been a plan. A path. Now it was gone. And so was the illusion of progress.
He turned as a familiar voice came from behind.
"Hell of a first week on the job."
Kaero leaned against a collapsed tree trunk, chewing something that smelled vaguely like citrus and rust. His rifle was strapped across his back again. His usual smirk was in place, but it didn't quite reach his eyes.
Aouli said nothing.
Kaero glanced toward the valley. "You know they'll probably abandon the sector now. Too unstable. Resources stretched too thin."
"I didn't mean to destroy it."
"I know. Doesn't change that you did."
Aouli looked down. "She says I acted without understanding."
Kaero snorted. "Elysia's never wrong. But she's also not always right, either. She plays the long game. You're still bleeding from the short one."
Aouli sat on a stone, arms wrapped around his knees. His glow was faint and cracked.
"They were trying," he said. "They wanted to fix it."
Kaero nodded. "Yeah. That's usually how it starts."
"I thought… if I could help, just once, maybe it would matter."
Kaero was silent for a long moment. Then he sat beside Aouli.
"Let me tell you something," he said. "Worlds like this? They don't break in one day. They don't fix in one either. The minute you start thinking you're the turning point, you've already lost the thread."
"So what do I do?"
Kaero looked out over the jungle. "You stay present. You learn. You feel everything, and then ask: What's mine to carry? Not what can I fix? Fixing is for engineers. You're something else."
Aouli blinked. "What am I?"
Kaero grinned. "Still figuring that out, aren't you?"
A beat passed.
Then Kaero stood and tapped a silver disc on his wrist. A light opened beside him—thin and vertical, like a crack in the world.
"Come on," he said. "You've seen enough ruin for one reality."
Aouli hesitated.
He turned back toward the forest—toward Maelle, still quiet and thin against the glow of the firelight, Isla talking to her with hands on her shoulders. He had touched something there, even if it had burned.
He didn't feel triumphant.
But he felt changed.
He stepped into the light.