Starsea: The Era of Balance

As a piercing alarm shrieked like a rusty saw scraping across his skull, Lin Hao opened his eyes in a viscous darkness. It wasn’t the familiar pure-white ceiling of a laboratory, but a cracked metal dome. Pale green emergency lights flickered in its corners, tinting the dust floating in the air an eerie fluorescent color. His nostrils filled with the smell of machine oil and rust, along with a faint trace of... blood? “Cough... cough, cough!” A violent coughing fit pulled at his chest. Only then did he realize he was lying on the cold metal floor. His left arm throbbed with piercing pain. The sleeve had been torn open, and a deep wound, nearly down to the bone, was wrapped in a rough bandage. Dark red blood had soaked through most of it.