White walls stretched into pale bands. The red alarm bars became a smear, then a pulse, then nothing that the eye could name. The platform floor blurred under him. Air hardened, then went thin, then seemed to lose all weight. Elias gripped the rails and counted through the shift the way he always had, not because counting helped the machine but because numbers gave the mind a place to stand when the world let go.

The old thrill hit full force. Not joy. Never just joy. A fierce, exact hunger. Time peeled back its masks and became rate, distance, relation. Days and centuries rushed through him in one smooth sweep. Light changed color around the frame. The machine sang at a pitch he had not heard before.

Then the rush broke.

He slammed the brake.

The stop came with a sick lag, a dragging half-second in which his stomach climbed into his throat and his injured side lit up white. The machine steadied by degrees. Wind hit his face.

He was under an open sky.

The sun hung huge and low, no longer yellow but dark red, swollen and tired, like an ember too large to die. Its light spread across a flat shore in weak rust-colored bands. The sea beyond was black at first glance, then deep wine where the light touched it. It moved with long, slow breaths against a strand of dark stones.