Chapter 18 Fractured

• The days blurred together, slipping past Lucy in a haze of frost, isolation, and routine. It had been seven months since she’d last spoken to anyone—seven months since the last whisper of a conversation, the last fleeting connection with another human being. It was a strange kind of silence, the kind that gnawed at her from the inside, chewing away at her thoughts until even her own mind felt foreign.
• Lucy had done everything she could to keep the isolation from consuming her—medicine drop-offs, careful maintenance of her rooftop greenhouse, tending to the garden inside the Domain, and the constant hum of her vehicles keeping her distracted. But every day, the cold seeped deeper into her soul, not just the world around her, but within her. The quiet was suffocating, and no matter how much she tried to fill the silence, it was never enough.
• She found herself staring out of the window more often now, watching the snow fall in relentless sheets. The same view, the same blank expanse of white, day after day. The familiar streets of Talawan—empty. The distant hum of machinery still clinging to life, but the people? Gone.