Talia was still on top of the container when the world stopped.
One second, she could hear fires crackling along the Industrial Bypass, the ragged shouts of the last defenders echoing between stacked steel walls.
The next—
Silence.
Sound cut out so completely she almost panicked, sure she'd gone deaf.
Flames froze mid-billow. Ash hung in the air like suspended snow. A fox beast remained halfway through a snarl, jaws open, teeth bared, a string of saliva caught in a perfect arc.
Smoke twisted in place, a solid grey ribbon across the road.
The world just… stopped.
Her own breath sounded too loud in her skull.
Only humans seemed capable of movement, but even that was reduced to micro-jerks. The big motions were gone. No one could run, swing, or fall. Eyes moved, chests rose, fingers twitched.
She looked down at her hands. They trembled once… then even that faded into stillness.
The air thickened. Not with pressure, but with presence.
It came from everywhere at once: under the ground, above the clouds, from the ocean she couldn't see, the fractured crust, the forests already burned down to bone.
A voice slipped into the silence. Soft. Massive. Loving. Wounded. Ancient.
"You fought," it said.
The words were inside her bones.
"You suffered. You learned."
Around her, frozen people did not move, but eyes flickered, tears welled, and chests hitched. The system had locked their bodies but freed their awareness.
"My brave children…"
Warmth spread through Talia's chest, like lying on sun-heated earth as a kid.
"I am sorry."
The voice trembled—not with fear, but with grief.
"I could not save our home."
Talia swallowed hard.
She'd known it since the System Line first whispered doom into her skull. But hearing Earth say it made it real in a way she wasn't ready for.
It felt like being eulogised by your own mother.
A soft green-white script bloomed across her vision, edges curling into leaf fractals.
[Family Binding — Mother Earth's Blessing]
[ Bind your chosen family.]
The interface unfolded like a living map.
Every surviving human saw their own version—threads of connection, names, faces.
Talia saw hers:
[Mara Rowe]
[Dillon Rowe]
[Elene Rowe]
[Arlen Rowe]
[Theodore Rowe]
[Cael Rowe]
[Brielle Rowe]
[Daven Rowe]
And beneath that, cascading branches—family, neighbours, fighters, strangers who'd become hers in a single impossible day.
Although the system had locked their bodies, choices moved through thought and HUD-focus, not muscle.
Her mind moved before she even thought about it. Her choice was obvious.
Everyone.
Threads of light shot outward, weaving into a complex lattice.
Through the mesh she glimpsed her family—each locked in their own frozen moment, seeing their own screens.
Cael stood on the front fence, weapon mid-swing, text reflecting in his eyes.
His options flickered:
[Rowe Core Family — Bind? Y/N]
[Cael External Branch]
Mira Dalton. Her parents. His old friends.
His mental hand shook once, then steadied.
"Mira, you're stuck with us," he muttered.
Across the street, Mira laughed wetly and hit yes.
Dillon froze mid-reload in the backyard when the Binding dropped into his HUD.
His list was smaller but fierce:
[Rowe Main Family — Bind? Y/N]
[Block Kids Group]
He accepted so fast it barely registered as a decision.
In the kitchen, Mara's screen blinked.
"Beat me to it," she whispered. "Fine. I accept."
Grandma's screen was chaos. Children, grandchildren, half-adopted strays, neighbours, old friends.
She didn't hesitate. She simply chose them all.
If the system wanted to argue, it could try fighting a grandmother whose primary stat was stubborn love.
Grandpa did much the same—dragging in every young name, plus three neighbour families who'd taken shelter in their yard.
"The more the merrier. Blankets later."
Deep in an underground carpark, Dav leaned on a cracked pillar.
His screen listed his squad first, then their families, then the Rowe core.
He linked them together—unit and kin.
"Stick together," he whispered. "Different world, same squad."
The confirmation glow sealed.
Back at Industrial, Talia's screen recalculated. Branches formed under each main family member, like a luminous tree growing in fast-forward.
[Rowe Main Line: Core Pod]
Arlen, Elene, Dillon, Mara, Brielle, Theo, Dav, Cael, Talia, Lira, Jace.
Second-line branches of the Rowe Core family forked outward.
Then—Talia's own.
Her side branch opened in a flare of faces from the blockades.
Launa Corbett & Family.
Joel & Family.
Dom & Partner.
Luke & Family.
Reno & Family.
Dale & Family.
And behind them: mixed blockade groups, families of four, families of eight, people who'd chosen each other in the middle of catastrophe.
A quiet script appeared:
[Warning: Initial Territory Capacity Limited]
[Recommendation: Prioritise 2nd Line Branches for Core Residency]
[Additional kin may be bound as Nomadic Lines.]
Talia's chest tightened.
She flicked into the binding channel. Their awarenesses touched—Mum, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, Cael, Theo, Brielle, Dillon, Dav.
They all saw variations of the same problem. Their voices came through the Binding link rather than their mouths.
"So we can't house everyone at once," Dad said quietly. "Not physically. But we can bind them."
"We build a core," Mum said. "Direct territory residents. Everyone else as outer branches. When we're strong enough, we pull them in. All of them, if they still want it."
"Some won't," Brielle added. "They've got families of their own, or leaders they trust somewhere else."
"Offer," Grandma said simply. "Let them choose. That's enough."
They started at the centre and worked outward.
Rowe core: locked. Non-negotiable.
They worked outward.
Neighbours. Friends. Squad families. Mothers with kids. Team members. Allies.
Talia's branch was the hardest.
She sent out offers to Launa, Rob, Joel, Dom, Luke, Reno, Dale, their families, and the mixed blockade groups.
Launa's family accepted immediately.
Joel's too. Luke's after checking his siblings' names. Dom's partner didn't even hesitate. Reno and Dale's families chose mixed paths—some core, some nomadic.
A few families declined, politely but firmly.
"We'll meet as neighbours," one woman said. "Not followers."
"Good," Talia said. "I hope we do."
And then the pod was complete—a core of blood, a ring of chosen families, and a constellation of extended lines built on choice and promise rather than immediate logistics. A seed for a world that didn't exist yet.
One large family.
Gaia's voice returned. Softer now. Thinner. Like someone calling from the bottom of a deep well.
"Your Bonds have been made," she breathed. "Thank you, for choosing each other."
The ground twitched beneath Talia's frozen boots. She realised the world hadn't been still so much as held.
And the hand holding it was letting go.
Cracks spread through the road—hairline fractures splitting into jagged, open seams. In the middle distance, buildings slumped inward, concrete folding like wet clay.
Further out, toward the unseen coast, something impossible began. The ocean rose, not in waves, not in floods.
In sheets.
Water peeled upward against gravity, streaming into the sky like reversed waterfalls. Fish, whales, debris all lifted with it—thrashing for a heartbeat, then freezing as the system's pause extended to them too.
The sky tore.
Thin seams of black opened overhead, crosshatched with furious light. The horizon warped, bending in ways that made Talia's head ache to look at.
Cities folded in perfect silence.
Skyscrapers imploded. Bridges curled. Houses sank as though the ground had turned to liquid and then to empty space. Everything moved inward, pulled toward some invisible centre.
Earth was curling in on itself. Not exploding.
Imploding.
A blue-green sphere shrinking, darkening, densifying. Horrifying. Beautiful.
Gaia's voice threaded through the collapsing world.
"Be reborn," she whispered. "Build again. And remember our home."
Light came.
Not like the nuke's white violence. This light was deep and warm—the colour of sun through leaves, of dawn on wet soil.
It washed the ruins, the people, the frozen world. It found her. Talia felt herself pulled, not lifted, not falling. Just… drawn.
One heartbeat she was on the Industrial container, the next she was standing in a sterile white room, Earth hanging outside the window.
Her entire family pod was there.
For a moment, no one spoke. No one could.
Tears moved before voices did.
A reassurance. Nothing more.
Then she saw intricate lines of light forming a pattern underneath each person. Far more intricate than anything she'd seen on her spear or gear.
The patterns rose upwards. Up ankles, over calves, along spines and across chests. Heat surged through her as it passed. Everyone cried out at once.
It wasn't like fire or like an injury. It felt like their bodies were being rewritten—bones tuned, blood refined, nerves re-threaded. After the first pass upward the circle returned and the downward pass began, this time a massive force was being injected into the body.
The feeling of being crushed under a weight both internally and externally was an extreme torture.
As the second pass ended the restraining power ended and so did the silence. Children screamed, high and shocked. The elderly groaned, dropping to their knees. Even the strongest fighters staggered as the remodeling didn't end.
The circle of power faded, but the internal reconstruction continued with the power seemingly burning all the internal organs and then beginning to seep outward to the external body, increasing the pain twofold. By now even the most mentally powerful was struggling to remain conscious.
"Hold on!" Dad shouted, voice cracking, one hand clutching his chest, the other gripping Mum's fingers. "Just a bit longer!"
Talia tried. The pain rose and rose—bright, sharp, white at the edges.
Her last clear thought was of the earth in front of her.
The garden her grandparents had tended.
The street she'd ridden down a thousand times.
The sky that had always felt too small and now felt enormous.
Her home. Her planet.
"Thank you, and I'm sorry we couldn't help you!" she told Gaia, not sure if the dying planet could still hear.
The light thickened. The runes flared to blinding white-green.
Then the world snapped.
Talia fell. Not down, not up.
Just—away.
Away from Earth, away from the fire, away from the body of the planet that had raised them.
She sank into the light—surrounded by family voices, by the binding threads, by something vast and waiting.
Motion pulled her forward—
And she knew, with unshakable certainty:
When she opened her eyes again, the sky above her would not be the one she fought under.
Earth was gone.
Where she was going—
She'd find out when she woke.