The sunlight felt wrong. It wasn't warm or comforting. It was thin—weak—as though even the sun couldn't reach the broken earth of this wasteland. Mia shielded her eyes as the group stumbled onto the cracked plain, their breaths ragged and bodies bruised. Behind them, the tunnel's collapsed entrance sat like a scar on the land.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Finn was the first to break the silence. "Well, at least we're not dead." He wiped sweat from his brow, though his nervous laugh sounded hollow. "Yet."
"Give it time," Ruby muttered. She turned, her gaze sweeping the landscape. "We're exposed out here. Too exposed."
The plain stretched endlessly before them—cracks snaking across the earth like veins, dark and empty. In the distance, jagged remnants of cities loomed like teeth on the horizon, the ruins distorted by heat waves. To their right, mountains rose in shadowy outlines, their sharp peaks cutting the pale sky.
