The first week after the ridge went quiet, nothing happened.
That scared people more than war ever had.
No towers fell. No sky cracked open. No voice rolled down from the stars to declare a new order. The old channels under the earth stayed dead. The signals stopped. The strange pressure that had sat over everything for so long—like a hand resting on the back of the world—was gone.
And in the space it left behind, people began to think.
Too much, maybe.
Scarlett saw it in small ways first.
