He adjusted his gas mask. Through the lens, the shadows were deeper now—heavy, crushed blacks that hid things the old world’s light couldn't. Every puddle of oily water reflected a sky that seemed to be mourning.
The sky over the Exclusion Zone wasn't blue anymore; it was the color of a bruised lung.
When Kael toggled the , the world lost its luster, and for the first time, it looked honest. The oversaturated greens of the overgrown radiation forests collapsed into a sickly, desaturated olive. The sunlight, once a golden lie, became a cold, piercing white that washed out the horizon, making the rusted skeletal remains of the 1.45 industrial district look like a graveyard of giants.