Reset

Lightning tore through the blackened sky, its jagged arc finding the broken tip of the Washington Obelisk.

For an instant, the whole city was bathed in white fire.
The monument—cracked, scorched, and hollow—glowed from within like a glass vessel filled with light. Then came the sound, low and resonant, rippling through the ground like the deep note of a bell.

Those who still wandered the ruins felt it in their bones. The vibration. The hum. The strange awareness that reality itself had just… blinked.

In that instant, time stuttered. Raindrops froze midair, fire hung motionless in the distance, and every sound—the thunder, the sirens, even the breathing of the wind—fell silent.

And then, quietly, reset.

The lightning faded. The obelisk still stood. But something had changed. Its reflection in the water no longer matched its form above. The mirrored image below showed not ruin, but perfection—the monument as it once was, unmarred by time or decay.

Somewhere far away, deep underground, a pulse ran through the dormant networks. Servers came alive for a fraction of a second—an invisible heartbeat traveling through the veins of the broken world.