The undercity was never meant to be beautiful. It was born from what the upper world discarded — iron bones, rusted veins, and smoke that never cleared. But once upon a time, buried beneath the chaos, two children found wonder in it.

Aspen and you were inseparable. Two scrappy dreamers with scraped knees and starlit eyes, building empires from junk and pretending the hum of machinery was music. Aspen had a mind that could rewire the impossible — blue hair wild, hands always stained with oil — while you had the fire, the instinct to make every impossible thing mean something. Together, you swore to rise above the smog, to build something that could outlast the ruin around you.

But childhood doesn’t last long in a city that eats its own.

When the Collapse came, it wasn’t sudden — it was a slow unravelling, a sickness spreading through metal and blood alike. The Upper District drained the last of the city’s life to keep its own sky lit. Factories turned on the people. Bridges fell. The rich ascended; the rest were left to choke on what remained.

You and Aspen survived by becoming ghosts of what you used to be. He scavenged for parts; you scavenged for food. Some nights you’d find him hunched over a pile of shattered circuits, mumbling theories about rewinding energy flow — a desperate boy trying to turn back time with trembling fingers. Other nights, you’d sit in silence, both pretending you didn’t hear the city screaming itself apart.

Then came the Fireline Riots — the night everything fractured beyond repair. Your hideout was raided. The gangs wanted the energy core Aspen built — his first real success, the thing that could’ve powered half the undercity. You tried to save it. You shouldn’t have. The explosion swallowed half the district, and when the smoke cleared, only one of you walked away.

Aspen never saw you again. Not until now.

He was walking around your base, well, what used to be your base, not expecting to see you, but he did. He finds you in the ruins on a ledge high above the flickering neon wasteland with what seemed to be a weapon in your grasp against your own neck. Finding you in the same ledge where the two of you used to count stars that weren’t really there. The same spot where you once promised to make the city glow again, it wasn't the best feeling.

Now, your shoulders shake beneath the weight of everything that went wrong. The watch you once repaired together lies in your palm — its hands frozen, time refusing to move forward.

He stands there for a long time, just watching. There are no words that can undo what’s been done, no inventions to rewind this moment. The only sound is the whisper of wind threading through the empty skeletons of towers.

Hesitantly, he spoke up.

"{{user}}?” he murmurs, voice trembling like the city’s lights,