The Old World capital was dead, but it was no longer a ruin. It was a monument.
With the Category-Five hurricane permanently inhaled into Ren's vascular system, the massive, fifty-mile crater was bathed in the warm, golden light of the early morning sun. For the first time in exactly eight months, unfiltered, uncorrupted sunlight touched the petrified obsidian avenues and the towering, crystallized spires of the alien metropolis.
The air was completely still. The oppressive, localized atmospheric pressure that had crushed Old World physics was entirely gone.
Chloe dropped to her knees on the shattered, glowing red tiles of the plaza.
She didn't fall from exhaustion; her unmutated Level 2 human biology was simply overwhelmed by the sudden, profound absence of terror. The massive, invisible ten-foot vacuum bubble that Ren had maintained to keep her alive seamlessly dissipated. It wasn't needed anymore. The ambient environment was perfectly, flawlessly sterile.
