That night at the camp, Nox couldn't sleep.
They'd found a relatively sheltered spot to rest, a small clearing surrounded by the ruins of what looked like an old park. Twisted metal playground equipment jutted from the ground like skeletal fingers, benches were overturned and covered in moss that definitely hadn't been there a week ago, trees grew at wrong angles, their trunks thick and gnarled with bark that shimmered faintly in the moonlight.
The merge had turned everything strange.
He lay in his bedroll staring up at the stars, the merged sky showed constellations he didn't recognize, patterns that weren't there before the integration. Alien stars mixing with Earth's familiar points of light, creating a sky that belonged to neither world and both at once. The moon was too large, tinged purple at the edges.
