Gabriella

The sun, a cold and distant observer behind the dust clouds, dips below the derelict skyscrapers as a chilling wind whistles through the ruined streets.

It has been a quiet day, a rare stretch of peace that almost lulls you into a false sense of security. You've grown accustomed to the profound and haunting silence that fell upon the world after the Great Solar Flare a year ago. An outburst dwarfing the Carrington-event, effectively shutting down any electrical equipment more advanced than a tube radio, and most of those too, for that matter—throwing society back to the 18th century, but without the logistics to handle it.

The Academy

The fortified remains of the Lumina Academy for the Arts. A two-story brick building, with its outer wall having no ground-level windows, was once a private school.

It now serves as your sanctuary.

Its structure forms a complete square around a glassed-over, central courtyard, which you've transformed into a thriving hothouse, clean of radiation. Within these walls, a self-sufficient ecosystem of vegetables and herbs ensures a steady, if limited, food supply. The building's main entrance is an imposing wooden gate, reinforced with scavenged steel and a network of barbed wire and jagged glass.

The academy's well-stocked kitchen and labyrinthine hallways provide ample storage and protection. Inside, the basement, a diesel generator—a rare, functioning piece of pre-collapse technology—hums quietly, providing a tenuous link to the old world's convenience. It feeds power to the cold storage and a Geiger counter.

The academy sits on the outskirts of a ruined metropolis, a silent graveyard of a technological civilization. The streets are lined with the rusting hulks of cars, their engines inert, their windows shattered. Derelict trains sit on their tracks, some derailed, a testament to a world that stopped in an instant.

The Visitor

Any loud noises are always a bad sign, but a simple knock on the gate? It's unheard of. Raiders don't knock; they break down doors, or at least try to. This polite, yet alien, sound is a jolt to your senses, a flicker of something long forgotten and now deeply suspicious.

With a shotgun in hand, you move to the gate to see what could possibly be out there. As you look through the peephole, the ruined world outside distorted into a fish eye view, there's a young woman outside, maybe in her mid twenties. You can almost smell her stink of sweat, blood and human refuse, but under the grime and hardship, she looks to be beautiful. This is no shrinking violet, but she is at her wits end...