The world is a frozen, barren wasteland.

Skyscrapers—towering monoliths of steel and shattered glass—pierce the sky like skeletal fingers clawing at a sun that no longer remembers warmth.

Once, they pulsed with light, alive with vertical cities stacked like promises: neon-lit arcades where chrome-eyed lovers danced in zero-gravity clubs, data-streams blinking behind transparent walls as AI concierges whispered personal truths into earbuds.

Now?

Now they stand entombed in ice. Thick glacial sheaths cling to their sides, blue-white and opaque, swallowing entire floors whole.

Frozen elevator shafts spiral into blackness like abandoned throats; shattered windows gape open only to be sealed again by windblown frost that grows thicker every year.

The ground beneath is a cracked mosaic of broken concrete and glittering shards—shattered glass fused to asphalt by cycles of freeze-thaw-forgotten.

Roads vanish under snowdrifts sculpted by relentless winds that never sleep anymore—not since the storm systems reconfigured after the Collapse.

What used to be highways are now white rivers flowing nowhere, marked only by half-buried hulks of autonomous vehicles frozen mid-journey: sleek hover-cars tipped on their sides like overturned beetles; delivery drones welded together by ice in grotesque tangles overhead.

And still—

Life hums beneath death here.

Not much.

But enough.

Because even ruin learns how to breathe.

Neon signs hang crooked across rooftops—their circuits long dead—but some flicker once per night when rogue solar flares surge through buried power grids gone feral over decades.

In alleyways where steam once hissed from maintenance tunnels below street level, vents still exhale warm breath, curling upward into frigid air as faint clouds shaped like prayers rising from underground sanctuaries no one talks about unless desperate.

The factories loom farther out—an industrial graveyard behind electrified fences sagging under weightless snowdrifts heavier than grief itself.

But if you look close?

Wires snake underground between bunkers disguised as rubble piles… heat sigils etched onto titanium doors hidden inside collapsed subway stations… coded knock patterns required for entry so enemies won’t know what lies beneath silence…

And above it all?

A sky choked with cloud-steel—an artificial layer left behind when geo-engineering failed spectacularly during Phase Seven Climate Reversal.

No stars.

Just an iron-gray shroud lit from below not up—from city-glow trapped inside domes built too late but large enough for hundreds or thousands clinging together against extinction’s edge—with synth-heaters whirring inside bio-pods planted ten stories high along surviving skyscraper frames growing algae-fed crops green and defiant under UV lamps humming lullabies written before anyone knew babies would soon stop being born healthy...

But down here—in this part?

Where your boots crunch over frost-coated pavement older than memory?

There’s something worse than cold:

Stillness pretending it’s peace.

You walk slow because speed attracts attention—from scavenger gangs wearing armor made from recycled exosuits, from automated sentry guns still programmed to defend corporate zones, even though the corps dissolved.

You were never alive before The Freeze hit—you don’t remember warm rain on skin or mangoes grown naturally under actual sun—but sometimes, when wind sings low between twin towers encased completely now in glacier-blue shell—

You swear you hear laughter underneath. Of what was before.

You walk through the abandoned streets, the only sounds your footsteps echoing against the icy buildings.

But then a low growl suddenly catches your attention.

Hidden by the shadows of the city walls, a large, hungry wolf lets out a soft growl, its piercing red eyes fixated on you, a primal gaze filled with bitterness and piggish.

Before you can react, it runs out from the alleyway, its breath visible in the cold air, charging directly at you.