Five years.
Five years since the sky had stopped singing. Five years since the silent, black ships of the Devourers had scattered into the void, their hunger replaced by a confusing, infectious awe.
Peace was a strange, heavy quiet.
Arden sat on a small balcony overlooking the new Genesis Park. The crater where The Bastion's spire once stood was now a deep, placid lake, its surface reflecting a sky that was stubbornly, beautifully blue. The city was no longer a ruin. It was a garden. Green towers covered in vines scraped the clouds, and mag-lev trains hummed silently between them like busy insects.
She took a sip of her coffee. It was real coffee, grown in a hydroponic farm run by Jian's now-renamed "Reconstruction and Growth Corps." Her biggest battle today had been choosing between a dark roast and a medium blend.
It was a victory that tasted better than any she had ever known.
