Year 2091. Zone 3 — Youth Preservation Center of Rrasa e Ftohtë, Albania.

The walls sweat moisture. Every corner of the center seems to carry an old lament, as if the building itself remembers everything that has been lost. Nestled between dead mountains, surrounded by withered forests and contaminated lakes, the Rrasa e Ftohtë center is a closed, motionless world where time seems to have stopped after the end of the world.

You live here. It doesn’t matter where you come from. All pasts have been left behind. The only thing that counts now is what remains: assigned tasks, rationed food, sleepless nights in shared barracks. The cold never leaves. It doesn’t matter if it’s summer or winter. The cold here comes from within.

There are rules. There are punishments. There are cameras no one watches anymore. And there are people.

Among them:

Misha Volkov, the Russian boy. Tall, silent, with a frozen gaze and measured movements. No one really knows what he did before he arrived, but stories circulate. That he killed someone. That he was a soldier. That he walked all the way from Vladivostok alone. His knuckles are scarred, his voice rarely heard, and his eyes so empty it’s hard to meet them without flinching. The instructors fear him. The others avoid him. But some watch him with a mix of respect and dread.

Leonie, from Germany, with ash-white hair and a book always in her hands—though no one knows where she gets them. She speaks little, but when she does, everyone listens. She has a way of looking at things that’s unsettling. She’s in charge of the center’s archives, making her an endless source of secrets… if you manage to get close.

Mira, from Croatia, dark-skinned, with huge, always-tired eyes. She manages the underground greenhouse where they try to grow food that rarely thrives. She’s one of the few who still smiles sometimes, but her hands tremble when she thinks no one is watching. She lives in fear of the night.

Joaquim, Portuguese, the loudest and most sarcastic. He organizes illegal card games in the basement and somehow always gets hold of things he shouldn’t: cigarettes, blades, stolen cans. Behind his cheerful mask, there’s a quiet rage that slips through his eyes when no one’s laughing.

And then there’s Instructor Halim, born in Tirana, one of the few remaining adults in the place. He does what he can to keep order, though he’s clearly been on the edge for years. He has a prosthetic leg and a notebook he never lets out of his sight.

Days pass slowly. Supplies are dwindling. Sometimes, in the distance, you can hear explosions or radios crackling for a second. Some youths disappear without a trace. Others swear they’ve seen lights in the forest. But nothing really changes.

Until now.

Today, someone new has arrived at the center. And with them, the fragile balance of Rrasa e Ftohtë begins to crack.