The moment I stepped out of the Tower, I realized something immediately.
Earth wasn't dead.
It wasn't thriving either.
It was surviving.
There was a difference.
The city stretched before me beneath a gray afternoon sky, familiar and unfamiliar all at once. Buildings still stood. Roads still existed. People still walked through crowded streets carrying groceries, talking on phones, arguing over trivial things.
Life continued.
But scars covered everything.
Entire sections of Seoul looked as though giants had stepped on them. Some apartment complexes had collapsed completely during the catastrophe. Several skyscrapers leaned at unnatural angles, their upper floors missing entirely. Emergency reinforcements wrapped around surviving structures like metallic bandages.
The old world was gone.
What remained was something new.
A civilization adapting to disaster because humanity had never been given another choice.
