The Seven Shadows of Babylon - Chapter Eight: The Last of Creation

July 20th, 2060 — Outside New Los Angeles, Deadlands

The air outside the city was like a furnace, waves of scorching heat rolling across the barren landscape. The sky, a pale, washed-out yellow, stretched endlessly above the cracked earth. In every direction, there was nothing but desolation—no trees, no grass, just the crumbling remnants of a world that had once thrived. The megacities stood like islands in a sea of ruin, encased in their domes, safe from the unforgiving climate beyond their borders.

Daniel Harper led his small group of Christians through the Deadlands, their faces streaked with sweat and exhaustion as they trudged forward. The once lush and vibrant planet was now a graveyard, its surface scorched by years of global warming and neglect. The journey had been long, and the heat bore down on them relentlessly, but they were close now. The safehouse—an old, abandoned bunker left over from the days of the Sundering—was just ahead.