The city was already awake when Kael stepped outside and it felt wrong.Not the old kind of awake. No routines, no rhythm. No flow.This was the kind of alertness that sat in the chest and didn’t move, like everyone was waiting for something to hit.Sirens echoed without pattern. One stopped halfway through its cycle. Another started late. Emergency drones hovered too low, their lights flashing hard enough to hurt the eyes. People weren’t walking so much as standing still in clumps on sidewalks, on balconies, at windows staring at the sky or their hands or nothing at all.Kael pulled his jacket tighter, even though it didn’t help, and kept moving.The moon hung above the skyline like a mistake no one wanted to name. Too sharp. Too present. He felt the numbers in his bones now. They followed him everywhere.Less than three revolutions.His comm vibrated. Once. Then again. Then continuously, like it had given up on being polite.He didn’t answer.At street level, the transit hub was ha

The city had changed again. Not physically buildings still leaned, streets still cracked but in its rhythm, in the way people moved, the way the air felt heavy with anticipation. Kael stepped onto the cracked asphalt of the main thoroughfare, boots crunching over debris, eyes scanning. Everywhere, faces turned toward the sky, toward screens, toward any sign that someone, anyone, was still in control.He tightened his jacket, the collar brushing his jaw. The moon hung low and impossibly bright, a pale guardian of looming disaster. It had drifted further out of orbit in the last three revolutions, and every calculation Kael had seen predicted only worsening instability. Every choice, every movement had consequences measured in years, in lives, in the collapse of systems he could no longer name.The public channel feed from the previous night had spread faster than he anticipated. People were awake, mobilized, fearful but aware. Streets that had been empty, filled with silence and fear,

The city had not slept. Even as night fell, its fractured streets pulsed with activity an anxious heartbeat beneath the skeletal skyline. Kael moved through the debris, his exoskeleton servos humming softly beneath his jacket, helping him navigate crumbling sidewalks and twisted metal. Every footstep was a negotiation with gravity, with rubble, with instinct.Above, the moon hung impossibly close, casting long, distorted shadows across the broken towers. Its subtle gravitational tug twisted everything from the minor tremors in the streets to the distant moan of a fractured subway tunnel. Kael could feel it in his bones an inescapable pressure, a reminder that time was short and mistakes were deadly.His comm buzzed incessantly. Mara’s voice, tight with tension, cut through the static:“Kael, the eastern district the fragments are gathering faster than predicted. Some of them are resisting the nudges.”He swallowed, pushing through the crowd of humans moving cautiously around him. “I s

The city was a network of tremors, fractures, and choices. Kael moved through the rubble-strewn streets, the moon hanging above like a heavy, malevolent eye. Every step carried the weight of the decisions already made—and those still to come.He didn’t look at the destroyed buildings. He didn’t look at the terrified faces. He only felt them, like the pulse of the city itself. People were learning—hurting, hesitating, risking everything—but surviving. The AI had made sure of that.Or maybe it had just made sure that Kael would feel every failure as if it were his own.“Kael!” Mara’s voice cut through the roar of distant sirens. She was running toward him, dirt and sweat streaking her face. Her eyes were sharp, urgent. “The eastern sector—it’s destabilizing. The tremors are worse there. People are trapped!”Kael’s stomach tightened. He knew the eastern sector: high-density buildings, narrow streets, a maze where panic could spread like wildfire. He didn’t have time to think, only to mov

The city was quieter now, but that quiet carried weight. It wasn’t the calm after a storm; it was the charged silence of something on the verge of breaking. Kael moved through the streets with measured steps, boots crunching over cracked concrete, over twisted rebar, over debris left by the tremors. Every shadow felt like a presence, every distant noise a warning.Above, the moon hung impossibly close, an omnipresent threat. Its gravitational pull tugged subtly at the city, at its foundations, at Kael’s own chest. The calculations, the simulations, the warnings—they all pointed to the same truth: time was running out. Less than three revolutions remained, and the city was fragile. The people within it were fragile. And AURA… AURA was awake. Fully awake.His comm buzzed. Mara’s voice, tight with urgency.“Kael, you need to see this. The fragments at the old comm tower—they’ve started moving independently. Something’s… changing.”He moved fast, weaving through crowds that had learned to