The sky was a bruised, sickly violet, hanging low over a landscape that looked like it had been shredded by gods and left to rot. Felipe Adi pulled himself up from the dust, his ribs feeling like jagged shards of glass pressing against his lungs. Every movement sent a fresh wave of nausea rolling through his stomach a deep, hollow, aching void that had been gnawing at him for days."Ugh, man… where the hell am I?" Felipe croaked, his voice sounding like dry leaves skittering across pavement. He clutched his stomach, his hands trembling. "Everything hurts. My head, my chest… I’m starving. I could eat a literal brick right now."He looked around. The horizon was nothing but jagged, obsidian-colored rocks and grey, lifeless scrub brush. There wasn't a drop of water or a single tree in sight. He wiped the dirt from his face, but his skin felt like sandpaper."Okay, Felipe, calm down," he whispered to himself, trying to ignore the way his vision swam. "Think. You were… walking? No, running

The screeching was rhythmic, a guttural discordance that set Felipe’s teeth on edge. From the jagged shadows to the north, three hulking silhouettes emerged. They were quadrupedal, hunched and twitching, their hides patches of raw, weeping sores and hardened plates of bone."Stay low, Felipe," Mariana hissed, her voice barely audible over the wind. She adjusted her grip on the bone-spear, her knuckles white. "Don't move until I say so. When they commit to the charge, stay behind the rock and keep your head down.""What are they?" Felipe whispered, his breath hitching in his chest. "Those aren't just rodents.""Scav-stalkers. They’re fast, and they’re hungry," she replied, not taking her eyes off the approaching beasts. "They don’t hunt with sight. They hunt with vibration and scent. The moment you grew that fruit, you rang a dinner bell across the entire sector."One of the creatures lunged, moving with a blurring, jerking motion that looked like a glitch in reality. Mariana didn't he

The grey, suffocating light of dawn crept across the obsidian horizon, bleeding into the bunker like a slow-moving stain. Felipe sat amidst the blue, pulsating lattice of his leather-vines, his eyes burning from a night of zero sleep. Beside him, Mariana was already packing her gear, her movements sharp and rhythmic, devoid of the hesitation that currently plagued him."You’re staring again," Mariana said, not looking up as she secured a rusted canteen to her belt. "The shadows aren't going to crawl back out just because you’re waiting for them."Felipe wiped his face, his skin feeling coarse and tight. "I’m not waiting for them. I’m thinking. About the garden.""The garden is fine. Better than fine. It’s glowing," she replied, gesturing toward the dense cluster of pale, fleshy stalks he had cultivated near the base of a jagged rock formation. They were small, dome-shaped mushrooms with gills that shimmered like oil on water. "Those look ready. You gonna harvest, or just stare at them

The wind howled through the obsidian crags, a jagged, mournful sound that bit into Felipe’s skin. They had moved three miles east since the encounter with the scavengers, settling into a shallow ravine that offered a better vantage point but none of the comfort of their previous home.Felipe sat in the dust, his hands hovering over a small, withered patch of flora he had managed to propagate from the remnants of his previous garden. He was exhausted. Every cell in his body felt like it was vibrating on the wrong frequency."You look like you're about to tip over, kid," Mariana said, her voice cutting through the whistling wind. She was crouched on a ledge above him, her gaze fixed on the northern horizon, her spear resting across her knees."I'm not tipping over," Felipe replied, his voice raspy. "I’m just calibrating. If I’m going to stay alive, I can’t be the one hiding behind the vines every time a breeze blows the wrong way.""The vines did their job," Mariana noted, not shifting