As soon as daylight fell over the Rusted Lower Continents, it completely transformed the scene in the streets. The people who had lived for years beneath rust-colored fog and artificial smoke were feeling the pure blue of the sky and the warmth of the sun for the first time. Meanwhile, the Sapphire City's sterile, cold marble streets were now overflowing with crowds from the lower levels. The walls had fallen, and humanity's age-old—and equally dangerous—bond with technology had been reforged.
Elias stood still amid the crowd for a while and drew a deep breath. The burn marks around his cybernetic arm throbbed faintly, but the sense of relief inside him outweighed everything else. When Crackhead's lifeless metal body came to mind, still lying on the floor of the central cathedral, he felt a small pang of sadness; yet the droid's final words echoed in his mind: Look, the sky above is shining.
"What happens now, Elias?" asked a young resistance fighter approaching him as he tucked the makeshift tools in his hands into his belt. "AETHEL has shut down, and the shields are down. But the ruling tier above wasn't completely wiped out. Kael and the other leaders escaped."
Elias fixed his eyes on the massive tower at the city's highest point, its energy now cut off. "The leaders may have escaped, but this city no longer belongs to them," he said in a firm voice. "This is only the beginning. The backup memory in the main terminal contains data showing where the other pieces torn from AETHEL's core are hidden throughout the world. If we don't find those pieces, the other cities will be condemned to the same darkness."
The Beginning of a New Path
Amid the ruins remaining from the cathedral's main hall, Elias and his team carried the system's backup data crystals to a safe place. These crystals held the coordinates not only of the Sapphire City, but also of other ancient technologies and magic centers forgotten across the world.
Elias touched the extinguished circuit board in his jacket pocket. He was no longer merely a scrapyard scavenger from the Rusted Lower Continents; he was a Timebreaker who altered the flow of time and code. Amid the cheers of the crowd he left behind, he opened the new map and set out with the team along the road stretching toward the Lost Valleys in the west. The sky was a brilliant blue, and the wind carried them the whisper of new stories yet to be written.