Collapsed Realm, The

di Willem van der Houtgoed (Autore)

Celestial Publishing, 2025

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. The morning mist clung to the skeletal remains of what had once been Amsterdam's financial district, weaving between the twisted metal beams and concrete slabs that jutted from the earth like the bones of some ancient leviathan. Maya Chen adjusted the straps of her weathered backpack and checked the radiation detector clipped to her belt. The soft clicking reassured her that this section of the ruins remained relatively safe, though she knew better than to trust the device completely. Three years of scavenging had taught her that the old world's poison lingered in unexpected places. She picked her way carefully through the debris field, her boots finding purchase on chunks of masonry that had once formed the walls of banks and corporate headquarters. Nature had begun its slow reclamation here, as it had everywhere since the Collapse. Vines threaded through broken windows, their green tendrils offering the only color in a landscape of gray and rust. Small trees had taken root in the cracks of what had been sidewalks, their roots slowly but inexorably breaking apart the concrete foundations of human ambition. The silence was what struck visitors to the ruins most profoundly. Maya had grown accustomed to it over the years, but she still remembered those first months after emerging from the bunker, when the absence of traffic, of voices, of the constant electronic hum of civilization had felt like a physical weight pressing against her eardrums. Now she found a strange peace in it, broken only by the distant call of birds that had adapted to this new world and the occasional crash of a weakened structure finally succumbing to gravity and time. Maya was twenty-six, though the harsh years since the Collapse had aged her beyond her chronological years. Her black hair was pulled back in a practical ponytail, and her clothes were an eclectic mix of pre-Collapse outdoor gear and post-Collapse improvisation.

• Autore: Willem van der Houtgoed
• Durata in (hh:mm:ss): 01:29:42
• Anno edizione: 2025
• Editore: Celestial Publishing
• EAN: 9798318289620

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