Prelude

In the year 2137, the world above belonged to the sun.

After the Solar Flare Cascade, the Earth’s magnetic field destabilized. Without it, the atmosphere thinned and ultraviolet radiation turned the surface into a crematorium. Daylight became death. Humanity went underground, burrowing into old transit tunnels, hydroplants, and metro systems.

Mara was a skilled scavenger. Agile, precise, and fast, she knew when to run and when to stay hidden. The nights were not safe either, but skilled runners knew how to survive. By moonlight, she’d race across cracked highways and ghost towns, searching for medicine, tech, and clean water. Each night, she mapped ruins, raided hospitals, and bartered her finds for water and battery packs. Her finger were calloused from rust, her breath steady even in the thick stench of mold and ash.

Part I: The Runner

The air was syrup-thick with ash.

Mara moved like a shadow across the cracked highway, boots leaving no prints in the powdery soot. Her rebreather hissed with each slow exhale. Night was quiet.. too quiet. The city’s bones had long stopped creaking. Even the mutant dogs had gone silent these past few weeks.

She crouched beneath a broken metal sign, its faded letters remnants of an establishment that once sold coffee and tires.

Darrow’s voice crackled in her ear.

“Still on route to Beacon 12?”

“Just passed Sector K,” she whispered. “Empty.. No sign of the runners.”

“They were last pinged three nights ago near the red zone.”

Mara glanced at her wrist. The map blinked with a red dot pulsing near the canyon’s edge, an exposed site with no cover. Not even scavengers went there.

“Copy. Heading in.”

She cut the comm.

The canyon loomed ahead, a jagged scar in the earth swallowing the horizon. Mara adjusted her pack, its straps digging into her shoulders, and started down the ridge. Loose gravel skittered under her boots. Above her, clouds gathered like a bruise. The wind hissed low across the rocks like it was trying to warn her off.

She paused once, halfway down a slope of crumbling shale, and checked the map again. The red dot hadn’t moved. A cluster of scorched metal near a dry creek bed caught her eye.. the remains of a drone. It was half-buried in the sand, scorch marks fresh. No rust, no claw marks, no signs of time. Just violence. its hull melted and cracked open like an egg. Mara crouched, ran her fingers over the charred plating. No scavenger marks. This was recent. And deliberate.

She rose, senses sharpening, and moved on.

The wind had gone still again. Even her footsteps felt muffled now, like the canyon itself was holding its breath. The trail narrowed, funneled her between two jagged outcrops, then opened to a wide basin.

That’s where she saw it. A soft glow, golden, impossible, spilling over the ridgeline like sunrise. But it was hours before dawn.

Mara dropped, heart hammering. Her Geiger meter was silent. No heat. No radiation. She inched forward, breath catching as the terrain fell away below. At the heart of the basin stood a dome. Perfect. Whole. Transparent but iridescent, pulsing like it breathed.

Inside, Mara saw green.. vivid, unnatural green.

Tall trees stretched upward, their leaves a shimmering jade. Grass blanketed the ground in thick, perfect swaths, untouched and impossibly lush. It swayed gently, though nothing inside seemed to move the air. Soft, golden light diffused from no clear source, bathing everything in a warm, dreamlike glow. It looked like a world sealed away.

Peaceful.. Alive.. Wrong.

She should’ve turned back. Instead, she walked toward it.

Part II: The Dome

The dome’s surface shimmered as Mara approached, like heat rippling off desert concrete. She stood inches from it, studying the strange light. Not quite yellow, not quite gold. It was the kind of light that couldn’t exist in a broken world like this.

She raised a gloved hand.

The surface didn’t resist her touch, it yielded, parting soundlessly, letting her pass through like mist.

The instant she crossed the threshold, the world changed. The cold disappeared. The wind died. The air turned warm, sweet, and strangely dense. Her rebreather hissed once… then went quiet. Her HUD blinked, then went blank.

“System error. Visual input corrupted.”

She pulled off the mask.

It smelled like wet leaves, ozone, and something faintly floral. The soil beneath her boots was soft, giving. Grass grew in flawless patterns. Trees with silver-veined bark reached upward, their leaves glowing faintly from within. A stream trickled nearby.

Mara stood still, every muscle tight.

Then she saw the first one.

It stood among the trees, half-shadowed, half-reflected in the stream. Seven feet tall, bioluminescent veins pulsing under smooth, translucent skin. It had no face, only a hint of one, its features flickering like a bad memory, borrowed from someone else.

Still, its voice arrived clearly inside her head.

“Mara.”

Her stomach twisted.

“You’re tired. You’ve earned rest.”

Another figure stepped out beside the first. Then another. A dozen soon surrounded her. None touched her. They just watched.

Mara drew her knife.

“Where are my friends?” she said aloud.

“With us.”

“Alive?”

“Beyond alive. Unburdened.”

She took a step back. “What.. are you?”

The tallest stepped forward. It tilted its head, slowly.

“We are Architects. We shape what remains. We offer sanctuary. Shelter. Sleep.”

Mara’s eyes darted to the stream. She could see someone there, reflected in the water, but no one stood on the bank. A woman. Blonde. Familiar.

“Sera?” she whispered.

Her dead sister looked up from the water, smiled, and beckoned her in.

Mara’s knife slipped from her fingers.

One of the Architects moved closer, its limbs unfolding like silk.

“You don’t need to remember pain anymore.”

The trees swayed in rhythm, though there was no wind. The grass leaned toward her. The dome pulsed.

A fruit dropped from one of the trees, landing at her feet. Glowing. Beating.

Mara picked it up. It was warm. It breathed.

She took a bite.

Part III: The fruit

It was sweet.. That was the first lie.

The fruit melted on her tongue like syrup, and for a moment, the ache in her joints vanished. Her thoughts quieted. Her fear receded like a tide. She remembered a time before the burn, before the world split open. A field. Wind in tall grass. Someone laughing.. her sister.

“Sera?”

But when she opened her eyes, the sky was wrong. It had turned violet. No longer night, no longer day. The sun hovered low, huge and red like an infected wound, but it didn’t burn.

The trees were taller now. Or had she shrunk? Mara staggered to her feet. The grass writhed subtly beneath her. Her mouth tasted of iron.

She called out, “Darrow? Do you copy?”

No answer.

Just the gentle whisper of leaves.

“You are safe here.”

The voice again. Too calm. Too smooth.

“Get out of my head!” she screamed. “Where are the others?”

“Close.” the voice echoed.

She stumbled through the dome, searching. The landscape bent strangely. Paths curved in impossible loops. Streams flowed uphill. She passed the same silver tree twice, its trunk carved with a familiar symbol: a scavenger’s emergency sigil.

Someone had tried to escape.

Then she noticed something strange, a figure curled beneath the roots of the tree. Motionless.

Mara dropped to her knees and turned it over.

A human.. mostly.

Its skin was rigid and cracked, dry as bark. The face had no eyes, only sunken sockets. The mouth gaped in a soundless scream. Sinewy vines coiled from the body, snaking into the soil.

A rebreather lay beside the corpse, cracked and covered in moss.

The name etched into the collar:

R. Quinn.

One of the missing runners!

Mara stumbled back, bile rising in her throat.

From behind, the voice whispered, closer now.

“She resisted too long. You mustn’t.”

Mara spun around, but no one was there.

Just light.

Light from above.

She looked up.

There was no ceiling. No dome. No sky. Just a gaping eye, miles wide, looking down. It blinked slowly, casting ripples of color across the world.

Mara screamed.

She turned and ran. The trees bent away from her path.

“Stay with us, Mara. There is nothing left out there.”

She tore through the glowing vegetation, past the impossible streams that shimmered with colors she couldn’t name. Past the smiling shadows that turned their heads too slowly to follow her. Her skin began to tingle, then a burning sensation, not pain, but a creeping euphoria that scared her more. Her thoughts fractured. Names slipped. Time bent sideways. She couldn’t remember where she had entered. Couldn’t remember what she had been running from. Or toward.

She fell to her knees, panting. Her hands dug into soil that pulsed.

Then, a hand touched her shoulder. She raised her gaze slowly.. and found Sera.

Not a dream. Not a ghost. Sera. Alive.

She smiled, just like Mara remembered from before the sky broke.

“You don’t have to run anymore.”

Her voice, her posture.. everything about her was.. perfect.

Except her eyes.

They weren’t hers. They were mirrors. Flawless, silvered glass reflecting Mara’s own wide, terrified stare. Behind that reflection something moved.

She tried to look away, but her body wouldn’t obey. The air thickened around her, humming in an impossible frequency. A warmth crawled up her spine, and into her skull.

In Sera’s eyes, she saw herself dissolve.

Part IV: Fractures

Mara woke gasping, tangled in vines that throbbed faintly against her skin.

Or were they threading through her veins?

The air smelled like burnt ozone and wet earth. The violet sky had deepened into a swirling mass of colors that shifted in rhythm with her heartbeat. Every breath tasted metallic, and her reflection in the nearby pool was.. wrong.

The eyes staring back were hers but stretched wide and empty.

Her hands trembled as she touched her face. The skin rippled beneath her fingertips like liquid. Her mind fractured, memories bleeding into hallucinations.

“You are safe.”

The voice, everywhere and nowhere. Her sister’s laughter morphed into static. She tried to speak, but her voice came out layered, her words overlapping, distorted. Her knife lay forgotten in the moss.

She stumbled away from the pool and found herself on a path that looped endlessly, a spiral staircase without steps.

“Let go Mara.”

She screamed inside her head.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

The Architects’ forms flickered in and out. Beautiful, terrible, unknowable.

“We are light. We are life beyond flesh.”

Mara clutched her temples.

Her memories of the underground, the dark tunnels, her sister’s death, the pain, were melting away, replaced by strange images: stars bleeding into water, endless corridors of mirrors, and a sun that whispered in a language she couldn’t understand.

But somewhere, buried deep beneath the haze, a part of her refused to surrender.

She closed her eyes.

“This isn’t real.”

When she opened them, the world shifted.

The violet sky cracked open like glass, and she saw the scorched Earth beyond, the cold stars, the underground tunnels, the colony waiting for her.

Mara was alone. Curled in the fetal position at the bottom of the empty canyon, her body pressed into the cold dust. The earth beneath her was dry and cracked, but real. Above, the sky stretched vast and colorless. The dome was gone. The light was gone. Only the wind remained, howling through the canyon walls like a voice that had forgotten its words.

She didn’t move.

She didn’t cry.

She just lay there, breathing, the ache in her chest deeper than the cold in her skin.

Part V: Rot

Mara stumbled through the narrow tunnel entrance, her breath ragged. The cold underground air hit her like a shock, but her skin felt warm, unnaturally so.

The settlement was alive with motion. Lanterns flickered along the damp walls. Voices called out.

“Mara!” A dozen heads turned.

Darrow rushed forward, eyes wide. “You made it back..”

Her eyes caught his and held nothing. No recognition. No relief. Just a strange stillness, like she was looking through him.

Darrow froze. Something was wrong. Deeply wrong.

“Mara?” he said again, softer now.

She didn’t blink.

His expression shifted.. confusion giving way to fear. He stepped closer, reached out but stopped inches from her shoulder, as if afraid to touch her.

“Get a medic!” he barked, voice cracking.

Two techs sprinted from down the corridor. Darrow gently guided her toward the wall, trying to ease her down.

“It’s okay. You’re safe now. Just sit, you’re..”

She didn’t resist, but she didn’t help either. Her limbs moved like they weren’t hers. Medical teams swarmed in seconds, pulling her onto a cot. Instruments beeped. Scanners hummed. Wires clicked into place.

“Mara, can you hear me?” a medic asked.

She didn’t answer.

She just stared at the ceiling, eyes wide open, unfocused. Inside, Mara’s body was changing. Beneath her skin, subtle pulses radiated, like slow, rhythmic breathing. A faint glow spread beneath her flesh, veins darkening with black tendrils. The medics worked desperately, but within hours, Mara’s skin cracked like ancient bark. The light within her dimmed and then burst outward. A small tree, twisted, grotesque, and flowering with bioluminescent fruit sprouted through the floor where Mara’s body lay.

Panic swept the colony. From Mara’s corpse, spores drifted. A fine dust swirling like smoke, invading the air ducts and the water supply. Those exposed grew feverish. Their skin grew patchy, veins glowing faintly beneath. One by one, they began to change.

Darrow watched helplessly as his people became the Architects’ new hosts, rooted, drifting in dreams of light and decay. Outside, the faint pulse of the dome’s light returned on the horizon.

The sun did not need to burn anymore. It had found new ways to consume.

Path VI: Rooted

Mara’s mind flickered in the dark. Not bound by flesh but not free either.

Her body was gone, replaced by roots burrowing deep beneath the colony. Every pulse through the soil, every rustle of glowing leaves above, was a whisper in her fractured consciousness. Memories spilled in shards: the tunnel, the dome, her sister’s voice.

Through tangled veins of wood and light, she sensed the others, the settlers, their minds slipping into quiet surrender. They dreamed of safety, of warmth, of an all encompassing light. And somewhere deep within the tangle, a part of Mara remained still. A flicker of defiance buried beneath the roots, waiting for the darkness beneath the light.