0. Prologue

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The planet Earth was fragile, the most beautiful kind of delicate. Mankind grew to understand that taking something as small as an insect away had the potential to collapse entire ecosystems, even governments. The peace that their ancestors knew is nearly unrecognizable in this time. That peace was also lost because of those same ancestors. The good of the many never seemed to outweigh the good of the few, which in hindsight doesn't seem like peace at all.

The world now is dark, chaotic. Not the dark you'd expect, though, after a cataclysmic event. It came out of nowhere, the eruption in the middle of the sea. Now all that is left is a tainted sky, smog from pollution so dense that you can barely see the sun at noon. The world turned the most beautiful shade of amber, but less than half of the population got to see it.

The remnants of society were deadlocked, not a single country knowing how to rebuild. That's when countries ceased to exist, and a new planetary government pledged to bring order and balance. What the first leaders of this new reality failed to foresee was overwhelmingly simple: the planet is too vast.

Now, nearly a century later, most parts of the world are loosely governed. What no one anticipated are the few remote locations where any kind of government had little hope of sticking. These outliers are no man's land, wild and dangerous settlements where the only laws are individual opinions.

Vicious gangs are the closest thing to enforcement, yet fear has a way of bringing balance and order all the same. The people that were unlucky enough to be born into these territories follow only two well intentioned rules. Although they seem more like commandments, now.

One. Speak to no one, unless of course you know them well enough to be certain they won't harm you. As was said, the world is dark now, especially in cities where violence is a way of life.

Two. Don't go out after sunset, for the most frightening places on the planet turn even more sinister when the light fades over the foggy horizon.

***

I'm really mentally ill for this one guys. Hope you're as sick as I am.

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