The Unchosen

The silence wasn't empty. It was heavy.

It pressed against the glass of the high-rise skyscrapers in New Zion, a suffocating blanket of absence. Elias Thorne stood on the edge of the rusting observation deck, looking down at the sprawl of neon and steel. In the year 2077, the city was a marvel of sci-fi engineering—hover-cars gliding on magnetic rails, holographic advertisements blinking in the smog—but the soul of the world had been amputated.

Three years ago, the Event happened. It wasn't a bang; it was a deletion.