The cloud sitting over the central city was red and black.
The weather had been behaving wrongly all day. Not storm wrong. Something else. Light coming down the colour of old bruises, and the air holding still in a way that made the whole sky look like it was waiting. The dormitory windows threw the strange light across the floor in long, discoloured rectangles.
School Central had been shut for a week now, but the dormitories still had students in them. Nowhere else to send them, and no roads worth sending them down. The corridors outside were quiet in the particular way of a place that had stopped expecting ordinary days.
Azure sat on her bed folding clothes. The fabric was soft under her hands, ordinary, the kind of task that filled the hours when there was nothing else left to do. Vapour sat opposite her on a small plastic chair he'd dragged in weeks ago and never taken back. The chair creaked whenever he shifted.
