Three months after The Trial of the Mosaic.
Mosaic City was no longer just a city; it was an impossible ecosystem.
Arden stood on the balcony of the Chronos Institute tower, sipping a coffee that—miraculously—tasted like real coffee, not the synthetic sludge from military rations. Below her, the city breathed with a chaotic, beautiful rhythm.
The morning sky was a soft lavender, adorned by two moons now locked in a stable gravitational dance. On the horizon, the glass spires of the Mirror District reflected sunlight onto the Rust Sprawl's grimy tenements, which were now softened by bioluminescent hanging gardens.
On the streets, former Black Ash soldiers patrolled alongside Corporate Sector androids. They didn't like each other—that much was clear from the two-meter gap they always maintained—but they weren't shooting each other. It was progress.
"You look like a queen surveying her kingdom," a voice said.
