The sun was rising over Nova-Aeterna, but its light was a favor, not a right. She had to first cross the huge dome of amber energy that enveloped the city, an etheric shield pulsating with a soothing glow. Below, the American megalopolis stretched, giant with concrete, steel, and cold light.
Nova-Aeterna was an architectural contradiction, a hybrid of despair and resilience. The ancient structures - skyscrapers from before the Towers - were still standing, but their sides were healed with reinforcements of burnished steel and pulsating ducts of bluish energy. Between them, new buildings rose, more massive, with lines inspired by medieval fortresses: interior ramparts, thick buttresses, narrow windows and etheric ballistaerics mounted on watchtowers. Neons and advertising holograms - extolling the latest weapons of the "White Forge" or the regeneration potions of the "Chimists Guild" - flashed against the dark stone, creating an atmosphere that was both futuristic and sinister.
A slight haze, a distant and persistent emanation of the Laziness Tower to the north, veiled the tops of the buildings, reminding everyone of the pervasive threat. In the south, reports spoke of land ravaged by the insatiable hunger of the Tour de la Gourmandise. Nova-Aeterna was an island taken in pincers.
On the main thoroughfares, traffic was a mixture of silent land vehicles, slipping on ether engines, and citizens in a hurry, wrapped in practical clothing. Their faces were serious, marked by a life under constant pressure. A gentle, almost routine alarm sounded, signaling a defense exercise in Sector 7. No one panicked. The children continued to walk to schools, their backpacks also containing ether masks.
The gaze was irresistibly drawn to the Walls. They were not just a frontier; they were the soul of the city, a titanic barrier thirty meters high, encrusted with complex runes that shone with intermittent brilliance. Etheric impulse guns, cold and metallic, were positioned every hundred meters. On the walkways, soldiers from the Army of Protectors patrolled, their light armor made of ether alloy twinkling weakly. They were the first and the last rampart.
Along the inner base of the Wall, scars told an older and more violent story. Deep impacts, blackened by fire, metal plates twisted and hastily re-solved, giant scratches left by monstrous claws. Each mark was a lesson, a memory of an assault that nearly broke the city. Teams of workers, suspended by harnesses, worked tirelessly to plug a new gap, their tools welding the steel with sparks of blue energy.
Further on, in a quieter residential area, stood a more modest but solidly built building: the "Espoir de Demain" orphanage. Its facade was clean, its windows intact. It was a place where the harshness of the outside world was kept at bay, where people tried to cultivate normalcy for those who had lost everything. Behind one of these windows, a determined young man was about to live the most important day of his life. But for now, Nova-Aeterna, in all her bruised greatness, was breathing, surviving, and waiting for her next generation of heroes.