ZZZ:Through the Frosted Mirror

(Word count: 5580. I'm so proud of myself I'm never doing this again(what's that smell?))

The sky was bruised in hues of violet and ash, the sun lost somewhere behind the smog-tinged clouds that forever hovered over the Hollow zones. Ellen lay atop Empress's back as the massive beast soared through the Ether-scarred skies, wings slicing through the wind with quiet grace. Below them stretched the endless scars of the world — broken buildings swallowed by wild Ether blooms, fissures in the ground where time itself seemed to flicker.

In the distance, the great silhouette of New Eridu rose like a lighthouse in the Void. But Ellen wasn't in a rush to return.

She had just finished a job — not for credits or power, but for a dying man.

A Hollow Investigator, long since written off by his peers, had sought one final request. His body was failing. The familiar creeping horror of E.A.R.S. had taken root in his blood, his Ether slowly turning against him. His skin had begun to pale, his limbs trembled constantly, and his voice shook like leaves in a storm. But his mind... his mind remained sharp.

"I need to see the Black Wall one more time," he had told Ellen. "Record it. Prove to myself that even in my last days... I was useful... in humanity's survival."

And Ellen, whose very name BLACK SUN haunted the most secure wanted lists of New Eridu, didn't hesitate. She didn't care that he had nothing to pay her with. She saw something familiar in his eyes — the same hollow weight she saw in her reflection.

The recording had been easy. Empress made sure of that. But what happened after... stayed with her.

They'd landed on a cliff that overlooked the shifting black horizon of Hollow Zero — where reality folded like broken glass, where Ethereal storms danced in the sky like gods in mourning.

"If there was a cure," she had said quietly, not sure why she said it. "And I knew where to get one. If I brought it to you... would you take it?"

The old man smiled — not bitterly, but gently. Like someone who had already made peace with time.