Prologue: The Last Refuge
Before the adventure, before the betrayals, before the sky wept fire once more... there was a silence. And in that silence, I built something the world had forgotten.
A home.
They call it Callen’s Rest now — a patchwork shelter of steel and root nestled where the wild overgrowth swallows the old world whole. I found the ruins of a Ranger outpost there, choked in ivy and rust, long abandoned by its keepers. It whispered to me, not in words but in memories — echoes of those who had stood against the chaos before me.
I rebuilt it with my hands. With scavenged solar plates, welded beams, and a forge rigged from a collapsed ISS supply drop. Rainwater filters. Reclaimed soil beds. A perimeter cloaked in thorns and tripwire. It became more than a base. It became my vow. That something good could endure.
And there, in the branches above, I met Ash.
A hawk — once tagged, once programmed, once owned — freed by failure. A ghost of a R.E.N.E.W.O.L. experiment meant to turn wildlife into battlefield surveillance. But the tech didn’t take. Ash chose instinct instead.
I nursed her back from the brink. She perched on my shoulder before I could ask. Her wings catch thermals like a whisper. Her eyes see the lies I miss. She has saved me more times than I’ve saved her. And so, from that moment, we hunted together.
Callen’s Rest stood as my anchor. Ash flew as my sentinel.
Only then did I dare to look outward.
