EPISODE 4: Whiteout Lattice ## Chapter 1: The Wind That Eats The wind arrives without warning, the way a furnace door fails. One moment the ash ceiling hangs low and dull, orange vents pulsing beneath it like the raft’s slow heartbeat. The next moment the world turns white and cuts. Abrasive grit screams across the fused scoria plates. It is not snow. It is powdered glass and pumice flour whipped into a horizontal saw. Maren Calder feels it strip the top layer of skin from her knuckles before she can raise her arm. The taste hits at the same time—sulfur sharpened by silica, battery acid mixed with hot sand. She spits and the spit turns gray on contact with the air. “Move!” Her voice comes out raw, shredded by the same grit. “Halcyon sub-bay. Now.” Rook Venn already has Jory by the collar of the oversized coveralls. The kid stumbles but keeps his feet. Sixteen years old and he has learned the raft’s first rule: never fall when the surface is hungry. Isha Tan is slower. The cannula hisses under her nose; the portable cylinder rides her hip like a second, failing lung. Dr. Naima Farouk shoulders the medical duffel and half-drags Isha toward the dark shape that used to be the research cutter. Pax Delgado brings up the...