Anya Oxi Exclusive -

The world outside the dome is dead. Not silent, but hissing . The Great Rust has consumed the old metals, turning skyscrapers into crumbly orange fossils. Humanity survives on borrowed titanium and ceramic. But Anya has discovered a secret in the atmospheric data: the oxidation isn't decay. It's a hunger .

Flowers made of metal . Soft, breathing, iron petals that turned the wasteland into a garden of oxidized light.

Instantly, a crack forms. The hissing grows louder. anya oxi

"Anya, what are you doing?!"

The rust is alive. It is a slow, sentient breath that wants to convert every molecule of oxygen into iron oxide. And recently, it has learned how to move fast. The world outside the dome is dead

She opens a small vial around her neck. Inside is a flake of pure, unoxidized iron—the last piece of the old world. She touches it to the glass.

Anya Oxi doesn’t run from the storm; she breathes it in. At twenty-eight, she is a climatologist for the last habitable arcology in the Northern Sinks, but her colleagues call her "The Barometer" because the pressure in the room always drops when she enters. She has silver-threaded hair tied in a loose braid and eyes the color of rust—permanently stained from staring at oxidizing skies. Humanity survives on borrowed titanium and ceramic

"Oxi, get back from the glass," comes the voice of Commander Vale over the intercom.