/~Contrario~/
I fell through static. Colors bled out of the world and when the silence broke, it sounded like glass cracking under ice.
I landed on one knee and almost immediately, smoke filled my lungs before I even looked up. The air smelled burnt. Metallic. Faintly sweet like scorched circuitry.
I stood slowly and as I glanced around, I realized I was in Nova City but it was not the one I knew.
Not the blinding towers and humming traffic streams. Not the skyrails that pulsed with light and laughter. This place was charred and broken.
Blackened glass jutted from the ground like jagged teeth. Every screen was shattered. Hover pods lay smoldering in the ruins. Streets cracked in unnatural patterns, glowing dim orange where the servers beneath had melted into the foundation.
This wasn't a battlefield, this was the after of a battlefield.
I walked forward, crunching ash beneath my boots. A memory stirred, something just out of reach.
"I've been here before..."
