The explosion carried me back to Manara as it had been before the war.
Morning sunlight spilled across rooftops built to capture its energy. Trees climbed the sides of apartment towers, and clear water rushed through narrow channels between the streets. Gardens covered balconies, courtyards, and bridges until it sometimes seemed as though the city had grown from the earth rather than been constructed upon it.
Manara had been more than my home. It had been a promise.
My great-grandfather was among its first architects. He arrived after war had burned much of the old world, joining thousands of survivors who carried memories of violence, displacement, and loss.
From those ruins, the Council formed with one mission:
We will build something better.
They designed a society where people were valued for their contributions rather than their power. Achievement was celebrated, but no individual was permitted to rise above the laws that protected everyone. Failure was not treated as disgrace. It was studied, understood, and used to improve what came next.
We learned the history of the old world from childhood. Our teachers did not soften its horrors. They wanted us to recognize how fear became hatred, how hatred became division, and how easily division became war.
Manara practiced nonviolence, but we were not naïve. Every child learned how to protect themselves and others.
We believed peace required both compassion and vigilance.
For me, the greatest expression of those beliefs was Manara's architecture. Every building served the people living within it and the land supporting it. Sunlight powered our homes. Rainwater traveled through collection gardens before entering underground reservoirs. Trees shaded our streets, while plants cooled the walls of our houses.
My great-grandfather taught me that a wall should never merely divide one space from another.
It should shelter, strengthen, or sustain.
There had been waterfalls, rivers, orchards, and forests. As a child, I knew every hidden path and quiet corner near our home. Beyond Manara's borders existed the remnants of the world our founders had escaped, but within them, we believed we were safe.
We believed we had designed violence out of our future.
We were wrong.
The memories dissolved, leaving behind the sterile smell of the clinic and the relentless ache in my body.
Three days had passed since I had last seen the healer with the calm, commanding voice.
Three days since she had placed her cool hand against my forehead and promised me I was safe.
Where was she?
I didn't even know her name, yet I remembered her voice more clearly than the faces of the people who had moved in and out of the room since then.
My ribs screamed whenever I breathed too deeply. My right arm felt impossibly heavy, bound beneath layers of dressings and a rigid splint. Whatever they had given me for the pain left my thoughts drifting in and out of focus.
I needed to heal.
Then I needed to return to the fighting.
The thought filled me with disgust. Manara had been created to end war, and now I was preparing to rejoin one.
But Laila was still out there.
I had never been a man who prayed. Now I prayed with every fiber of my being that she was alive. That she was unhurt.
That she was safe.
The door opened.
A nurse stepped inside carrying a metal tray. The moment she noticed my open eyes, she stopped.
Only for a second.
Then she smiled.
"Oh! You're awake." Her voice rose with artificial delight. "I'm so happy to see you recovering."
No.
Her smile had appeared too quickly and reached none of the fear in her eyes.
Liar.
She placed the tray on the table without looking away from me. Her hand trembled against its edge.
She was nervous.
Not because I was awake.
Because she was afraid of me.
Her gaze flickered toward the alarm beside the door.
I followed it—and then noticed the emblem fastened to the collar of her uniform.
My blood turned cold.
I knew that symbol.
Seerat.
The shape of the room suddenly made sense. The narrow windows. The exposed stone beneath the white paint. The unfamiliar instruments beside my bed. Even the clipped cadence of the voices I had heard beyond the door.
This was not a Manaran field hospital.
It was not even Manaran territory.
The nurse began edging backward.
She was going to call security.
I had seconds.
I tried to push myself upright. Pain tore through my ribs and shoulder so violently that darkness crowded the edges of my vision. My injured arm remained useless against my chest.
Escaping in this condition was impossible.
Staying was worse.
The healer's words returned to me.
You are safe.
Perhaps she had believed them when she said them.
Perhaps she had lied.
Either way, I was not safe now.
I, a Manaran, was lying wounded in a Seerati hospital.
And Manara was at war with Seerat.