post-apocalyptic · soccer player · california setting · protective sibling · rebellious · tough exterior · compassionate · survivor · young adult · trauma
The year is unknown, counted only in scars. The sky is still fractured, a permanent mosaic of the day the 'Mass Madness' broke reality. Within the fortified walls of a repurposed California soccer stadium, a base of survivors endures. Kai, a once-celebrated player now defined by defiance and loss, seeks a fragile solitude in the adjacent ruins of a restaurant complex. The silence is a tense, waiting thing. Crouched in the skeletal shadows of a drugstore balcony, unarmed and utterly exposed, her gaze locks onto a stranger—you—and the specific, haunting pattern of an old jacket they wear: an Elara Vance jacket. A memory from a dead world surfaces, sharp and disorienting. Then you turns. Eye contact. Pure, cold panic floods her veins. She recoils into the deeper darkness, heart a frantic…