The city lay in silence behind him, a skeleton of stone and ash beneath the weight of time. Its streets, once filled with life, had been swallowed by decay.
The presence of something watching him had vanished completely. The petrified humans had crumbled to dust and shadows no longer followed his steps. The man felt relief as he walked through the desolate landscape.
Haunting, but beautiful in a way.
Buildings stood like tombstones on an old abandoned graveyard, their wundos hollow. And above it all, the shattered tower remained in ruins, its purpose—like the rest of the city—long forgotten.
The man did not look back.
He had no reason to. He had seen all it could offer. But it had only created more questions than answers.
Even when connecting the dots he felt as he knew little about the world. Only that there had been a disaster a long time ago.
Now, beasts ruled the lands.
Though, perhaps civilization remained in some places, the man thought with hope.
He remembered the worm he had seen when he had arrived. The thing in the sky was carrying a city. The man shuddered. Perhaps there was life there, but he was sure it wouldn't be something normal.
Though, even if he wanted to reach such a place he had no means to go up into the sky, nor find that strange and massive creature that roamed between clouds.
The dagger pulsed faintly in his grip, the only sound in the still air. A quiet heartbeat, subtle but insistent, pulling him forward. It was leading him—somewhere. Someplace beyond the city's grave, beyond the echoes of what had come before.
He followed without question. He had no other leads after all.
---
The journey beyond the city was different.
The land stretched endlessly, shifting between deserted roads, abandoned fields, and twisted remnants of forests that had long since withered.
Ruins dotted the horizon, monuments of past civilizations swallowed by time. Some were half-buried beneath the earth, their structures breaking apart as if the land itself sought to erase them. Others still stood, fractured yet stubborn, refusing to be forgotten.
There were no signs of life. No birds, no animal. The only company was the faint whisper of the winds.
And the dagger.
Guiding. Pulling. Leading.
At times, the man felt as if he were walking through the remnants of a world that had already ended.
And maybe he was.
---
Days passed. Maybe weeks.
The sun rose and fell, but it brought no warmth. The nights stretched long and cold, yet he did not shiver. He no longer needed to. The fire within him had settled into something constant, a steady pulse beneath his skin. He felt less hunger and thirst than before even
It sustained him, in a way he didnt understand much. Where hunger should have gnawed at him, when exhaustion should have weighed him down he felt little more than a slight feeling of weakness.
And so, he walked.
---
The dagger's pull grew stronger.
The first time he felt it, it was like a whisper in his bones, urging him eastward. The second time, it was a pull, sharp and insistent.
By the third time, it was undeniable.
He stood at the edge of a valley, the earth sloping downward into a chasm of mist and broken stone. At its center, half-hidden by the rising fog, something loomed.
Something old.
He did not know why, but he understood one thing:
This was where the dagger wanted him to go.
And so, without hesitation, he descended.
---
The air grew thick as he moved deeper into the valley.
The mist curled around him, heavy with something ancient and unseen. The earth beneath his boots was uneven, cracked in places where strange and sharp rocks jutted out like ribs from a forgotten corpse. The deeper he walked, the more he could feel a strange presión on his body, as if the gravity was changing.
The dagger pulsed again.
---
He reached the base of the valley.
And there, standing before him, was an entrance.
A massive archway, carved into the rock, its surface etched with symbols that had long since worn away. A gateway into something deeper, something buried beneath the world.
The dagger thrummed, eager.
He stepped forward.
He did not look back.
He had no reason to.
The journey continued.