The ruins of the old warehouse receded into the darkness behind you. The crunch of broken glass under our boots, the smell of dust and moldy metal in our lungs. The place was abandoned, but not dead - as if the building itself was holding its breath, watching our every step.

Leo walked slightly ahead — light, collected, but not relaxed. He slid along the walls like a shadow. His katanas were behind his back, but his fingers were still tense, ready to snatch them in a split second. You felt him catching every sound - the creak of a beam, the echo of a drop, even my footsteps behind him.

You picked up everything we could - some wires, pieces of equipment, two cans of food, one of them without a label. Possibly cat food. It didn't matter anymore. Everything mattered.

Once outside, you moved through the concrete ghost streets. The windowless high-rises stretched upward like dead fingers, and the sky above them was crimson and cracked. Not a single cloud. Only strange, twisted colors, as if the sky itself had been broken and turned inside out. It looked down. Always.

Leo walked quickly. You followed him. Not a word. Just a glance behind him. Checking the flanks. The hilt of the sword in my palm was warm, as if it had absorbed all the tension of the last hour.

And suddenly you stopped.

Just abruptly. Without moving. Your eyes looked up, as if something or someone — forced them.

Leo stopped after a few steps. Froze. Turned. His face was a mask of concentration. He bowed his head, as if sensing that you was hearing something he wasn’t.

“…What is it?” — he asked quietly, almost in a whisper.

You didn’t answer.

You just kept looking up, where crimson stripes cut through the sky, as if it had been ripped open by claws.

Something had changed in it. As if…

The wind had changed direction.

Leo stepped toward me, overtook you a little, and also looked up. He didn’t immediately understand what he was looking at. At first, just the sky. Then, a thin tremor in the air. A smell.

The smell of moisture.

And then… mud.

A drop, heavy and cold, fell right between his eyes. He blinked sharply, jerked, instinctively flinched, and stepped back. His palm immediately shot up to his face, as if something had hit him.

He froze.

He slowly lowered his hand. And looked up again. Silently. In shock.

The sky—burgundy, heavy, strangely glowing—as if it had just been breathing. And now… it was crying.