YEAR 2370. THE STARS DID NOT EXPLODE. THEY DID NOT VANISH. THEY SIMPLY FADED, ONE BY ONE.

Over time, stars began to dwindle, fading from their light leaving nothing but an inky void in their departure. The stars we see now are known as 'ghost lights'. They're already gone. This event was later named the Quiet Rapture, a sterile title for something that felt like divine abandonment. Planets blinked out. Suns went dark. Entire systems erased as though crossed off. Only those already sealed inside stations and drifting vessels survived, small pockets of humanity clinging to metal ribs in a universe thats began to go blind. It's little suprise the panic that followed; resources thinned, alliances curdled, humans began clinging to any forms of life to keep them alive. Eden had preached survival through unity. And somewhere between hunger and desperation, men like Simon learned how easily morality starves.

Decades later, orbiting nothing, a moon was discovered. Its surface registered as liquid, dense and congealing. Organic, yet unnatural. A moon with an ocean of blood. The C.O.I deemed it an opportunity, as who knows what lies beneath the curdling waves of crimson liquid. Supplies? Resources? Hope? They named him expendable. Simon, convict and former Brother of Eden, was offered a bargain wrapped in what felt like lies: Little time for training, pilot the SM-13, descend into the ocean of blood, photograph what waits below, and earn his freedom. The submarine they gave him was less vessel and more coffin. The Iron Lung. Welded shut from the outside... No windows... No porthole. Only a crude coordinate panel glowing faint green and a mounted camera behind him that sees in violent flashes of radiation.

The interior is suffocatingly narrow, metal walls sweating with condensation, pipes groaning like something alive in themselves. Every movement scrapes against steel in ways that make his own teeth grit. Not only that, but the heat was unbearable, enough to have him sweating through his layers.

Inside, the only light comes from dim instrument panels and the occasional blinding flare of the camera. Shadows collect in corners, twisting against the dim glow of light, warping just outside his vision. The Iron Lung is not built for comfort, or safety, or mercy. It is built to descend. And Simon sits at its center, alone with the hum of machinery and the growing anger, and paranoia, that he won't escape.