A/N: Note that I am using AI to modify the lines. I didn't edit much. But I will do so later. For now, I don't have enough time due to my studies and I am doing these in my limited free time. The plot and the conversation are all written by me. Sometimes, a little adjustment from the AI. Nothing much. Hope you enjoy it.
When I finally edit the chapter, I will remove the 'A/N'
INFO -
1. Thoughts are within '__' and in Italic characters.
And conversations are within "__" and in Bold characters.
Question - Do you want me to keep the thoughts and conversations in bold character or not? For now, I am keeping them in Bold character but it might change in the future.
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The plaza was too quiet.
That kind of quiet that didn't feel like peace, but absence — like sound had been stripped away, layer by layer, until only stillness remained. The false sun hung overhead in its endless golden pause, illuminating a world that should have moved on by now, but never did.
Riva walked its center like a caretaker in a graveyard that hadn't finished burying its dead.
Around her, the survivors moved — but moved wrong.
Solas was curled up in a shadowed alcove. At first, the symbols smeared on the wall looked deliberate — spirals, numbers, slanted letters in rhythmic order. But the further they sprawled, the messier they became. Lines doubled back, overlapped, collapsed into nonsense.
His hand spasmed—nails splitting against stone—as he dragged another jagged line."It's not… not a loop," he muttered, almost choking. "It's a—" His finger slipped, ruining the pattern. "—spiral. Tighter. Tighter. Can't… can't…"
He didn't look up.
He hadn't blinked in hours.
Across the square, Lira was hunched beneath an old awning, cradling a frayed sleeve like a child. Her lips moved soundlessly in the shape of words — lullabies only she could hear. When Riva gently tried to take it from her hands, she didn't scream. She simply froze.
Every muscle in her body went rigid. Her grip locked. Not clutching—seizing. Her eyes glazed, pupils blown wide, as if the child she saw had just stopped breathing. — like a glass doll's. Not resisting. Not reacting. Just… gone.
Riva let go. Slowly.
The rocking resumed.
Inside the old mess hall, two figures stood before a cracked mirror. One of them, Daro, had scratched his own face open two nights ago. His twin stood beside him, blade shaking in hand, carving the same line — but slower. Shallower. Uneven.
The pain made him flinch. But he didn't stop.
They weren't copying each other anymore. They were chasing symmetry—not to match each other, but to match something behind the glass
Riva passed them — and the others. Each a ruined piece of a jigsaw puzzle that no longer fit reality. One muttered, not to himself, but to something unseen, answering questions no one had asked. Another dug trenches in the dirt with a stick, convinced he'd find the next gate beneath the plaza if he just went deep enough.
One woman had stopped speaking entirely. But not because her voice was gone. She stood at the camp's edge, unmoving, her lips twitching like broken tech. Not forming words. Just shapes.
Mouthing numbers—no, names—no, just teeth clicking like a broken transmission. Her eyes never blinked. Her gaze never wavered — fixed on something distant and invisible.
Riva had once tried to follow her line of sight.
She stopped trying.
She turned to the last of them. Kael stood near the firepit, rifle across his back, sharpening a blade with endless motion. The others called him "The Watcher." He spoke rarely, but his mind hadn't frayed yet — just hardened, like steel weathered too long in blood. Dren handled the barricades, Mira the wounds, and Yaren — young, soft-voiced Yaren — cleaned the floors every morning like they'd somehow be dirtier than the madness around them.
Then came the coughing.
Riva froze.
It came from the north corner — behind the medical tent.
She sprinted across the stone, her boots slapping against hollow concrete. When she rounded the corner, she found Marin slumped against the wall, shivering, sweat beading along his brow. His shirt was peeled back, revealing a jagged wound across his ribs — blackened veins crawling—not spreading, but writhing—like something beneath his skin was mapping its escape
Riva's stomach twisted.
"Marin—what happened?" she demanded, already grabbing for bandages. "Why didn't you come to me?"
Marin smiled. It was the kind of smile people gave when they'd already accepted something you hadn't yet said.
"Didn't want anyone to panic," he said quietly. "Besides… we needed morale. Couldn't have them see another one fall."
She bit down on the curse in her throat.
"This venom... How long have you been hiding it?"
He didn't answer immediately.
"Three days," he said after a moment. "I thought maybe… maybe I could hold it off. Just long enough for a break. A real one."
She tore open a vial of anti-toxin, injected it hard into the line of his neck. It wouldn't be enough — she knew that. But pretending helped her hands stop shaking.
"You idiot," she hissed, brushing damp hair from his face. "You absolute idiot."
His hand caught hers, squeezing weakly.
"Better me than one of them."
Something in her chest cracked — not broken like glass, but bent like metal, warped by pressure that never stopped. She wanted to scream. Cry. Shake him.
But she held it together. Barely.
Then—everything stopped.
The air thickened.
Not wind. Not sound. Just pressure — like the world was holding its breath.
Boots echoed.
Slow. Measured. Not loud, but absolute.
Riva looked up.
And through the misted arch of the gate, he stepped through.
His coat was untouched by the filth around them, moving with silent authority. The heavy silence of the plaza didn't shift because of sound — but because of him.
Bootsteps cut the silence—not echoing, but slicing sound away, as if the world held its breath to obey. Each one clicked into place, deliberate. Final. Like the cocking of a gun in a room where no one dared move.
Riva turned sharply, her hands still pressed to Marin's fevered chest.
She expected… someone from the town.
But this—
This wasn't one of them.
The figure emerging through the haze was younger than she'd thought. Unscarred. Composed. Not limping, not shaking. He moved like the trials hadn't touched him. Like they couldn't.
His gaze swept the plaza once. Not with curiosity — with calculation. Measuring. Reading.
Then his eyes landed on Marin.
On her.
He stopped walking.
And the world stopped with him.
No sound. No fire crackle. Even the breath of wind that never came seemed to vanish.
All eyes turned — the broken ones, the lucid ones, the watchers behind doors and tattered tents. They stared at this new arrival as if some predator had entered the den, too poised to be safe, too clean to be real.
His presence wasn't loud. But it was impossible to ignore.
Riva stood slowly. Her hand went instinctively toward the hilt at her side, though she didn't draw it. Not yet.
"...Who are you?" she asked, voice low. Controlled.
The man tilted his head slightly, not like someone confused — but like someone deciding whether or not to explain himself.
Then, he answered.
His voice was quiet.
But something in the air bent around it.
"I'm the Maker," he said. "The Law Maker."