The wind hit different out here.
Not the fake breeze pumped through city towers, not the conditioned air humming through filtration vents. This was raw—cutting across the open plains like it had a story to tell. Luma tightened her coat around her and stared into the horizon.
The city, and everything it stood for, was behind her now.
Ahead? Nothing but silence, space, and the unknown.
Her boots crunched over gravel as she crossed a broken highway littered with rusted-out cars and collapsed signage. It had been over twenty hours since she left the library. Her body was tired, but her mind? Clear. More clear than it had ever been inside those walls.
She passed a faded billboard lying face-down in the grass. The back read:
"Stay Connected. Stay Safe."
Luma scoffed.
Safe. Sure. Safe in a cage.
She pulled out the map again and adjusted her direction. According to the embroidered coordinates, she needed to follow the river west until she reached an old relay tower—the last marker before Solmere's supposed trailhead. She folded the cloth neatly and tucked it back into her bag.
Not long after, the terrain shifted.
The grass grew tall and wild, and the trees started reaching inward, like fingers folding into a fist. No drones. No buzz. Just leaves whispering to each other in the wind. The quiet was strange—not peaceful like the library, but alert, alive.
She stopped beside a massive tree, bark split from lightning, and knelt to drink from a shallow stream. The water was cold enough to make her teeth ache, but it tasted real. Earth. Stone. Sky. Not filtered. Not branded. Just… what it was.
As she stood up, she heard it.
A snap.
Not a branch falling. Not an animal's paw.
That was a footstep.
She turned slowly, hand inching toward the small wooden baton Aziel had carved her—more symbol than weapon, but it was solid and sharp at one end.
From the treeline emerged a figure.
Taller than her. Wrapped in patchwork clothing that looked part traveler, part scavenger. A scarf masked most of their face, but the eyes—deep, steady—watched her with the calm of someone who'd lived far too long outside the grid.
"You're not from here," the figure said, voice muffled but female.
Luma didn't lower her guard. "Neither are you."
The woman raised her hands slowly, palms open. "Easy. I'm not state. I'm not grid. I'm not here to hurt you."
Luma's baton didn't move. "Then what do you want?"
"I saw your fire last night. At the diner ruins. You didn't hide it well."
Damn. Rookie mistake.
"I wasn't expecting company."
"No one expects it," the woman said. "But you should learn fast. The silence protects you out here."
She stepped closer. "What's your name?"
"Why do you care?"
"Because if you're headed west, you'll be walking through old ground. Land scarred by the Collapse. Names matter out here."
Luma hesitated, then relented. "Luma."
The woman nodded. "Mine's Kera."
A long beat passed between them. A thousand unspoken tests hung in the air—each watching the other, measuring intent, trust, danger.
Kera finally dropped her scarf, revealing a face marked by both beauty and brutality—scars across her jaw, dirt on her cheeks, but eyes that still had light in them.
"You're going to Solmere," she said, not asking.
Luma narrowed her gaze. "How do you know?"
"I used to look like you," Kera replied. "Clean. Brave. Carrying the Flame and thinking it's just a path. But it's more than that."
She stepped even closer. "You're not the first. But you better pray you're not the last."
Luma felt her chest tighten. "Is it still there?"
Kera didn't answer right away. She looked west, toward the fading light. "That depends on how you define 'there.'"