Stepping back through the jagged, molten breach of the Citadel blast doors was a violent transition from sterile containment to feral exposure.
The fierce, howling February wind immediately battered against Ren's towering, two-hundred-and-seventy-pound frame. The heavy, matte-black ballistic canvas of his scavenged military trench coat snapped sharply around his armored calves, entirely failing to conceal the massive, dense silhouette of his Level 25 evolution. The pale, overcast sky had bruised into a deep, sickly purple as mid-afternoon surrendered to the encroaching evening.
For ten miles in every direction, the scorched buffer zone lay dead and frozen, a sprawling ocean of cratered black charcoal and melted glass.
But it was no longer quiet.
