She didn't fall. She ascended .
Then she saw them.
Aviana Violet had never seen a sunrise. Not a real one.
It was Kael. He wasn't grumbling. He was smiling, his weathered face wet with tears. In his hand, he held a single violet petal.
She was twelve, with storm-colored eyes and hair the shade of dried kelp, and she spent her days in the Hydroponic District, tending to the only living things that still remembered light: a row of struggling violet orchids.
"What happens now?" she whispered.
The sunrise.