Julius ran. He didn't know where he was going, only that he had to get away. Away from the smoking spot where Charon had stood. Away from the cold, hunting Knight. Away from the ruins that were no longer a shelter, but a tomb.
His small legs pumped, carrying him over broken ground. Stones turned under his worn boots. Sharp bushes tore at his clothes. His lungs burned with cold air and effort. Tears streamed down his face, freezing in the harsh wind, but he didn't stop to wipe them. He couldn't stop.
Behind him, he could almost feel the Knight. He didn't hear heavy footsteps now, not like the Trackers. The Knight moved with a terrifying quietness. But Julius felt its presence like a physical weight, a cold shadow stretching long behind him, patient and inescapable. It hadn't needed the crack in the wall; it made its own path. It would follow. It would always follow.
Harvest. The word echoed in his mind, colder than the wind.
Find the mirrored fragments! Charon's last shout pushed him onward. The key... it's not whole! Scattered... like reflections!
What did it mean? Mirrored fragments? Like broken glass? Scattered where? How could pieces of something be a key? Julius's mind, already reeling with fear and grief, couldn't make sense of it. It was a riddle wrapped in terror, given by a man who had vanished into dust and ozone for him. He had to understand. He had to find them. It was the only thing Charon had asked. It was the only hope he had left.
He hurried down the steep slope. Loose rocks slid and rolled around him as he moved. He risked a quick look back. The Knight wasn't visible on the ridge above. Had he lost it? No. He knew better. It was just… waiting? Tracking? He couldn't afford to slow down.
The land changed as he ran further from the ancient ruins. The ground became flatter, but somehow more desolate. The grey rock gave way to grey, cracked earth. Even the tough, thorny bushes seemed fewer here, stunted and brittle. The wind still howled. But the sound felt different now. It felt empty, like there was a strange quietness hidden in the noise.
He stumbled, catching himself before he fell. He looked down. The ground beneath his feet looked… strange. It was covered in a fine, grey dust that seemed to absorb the weak light. There were no tracks here, not even his own seemed to last long before the dust simply… settled over them.
A shiver ran through him that had nothing to do with the cold. He took another step onto the dusty patch. A feeling washed over him, or rather, a lack of feeling. It was like stepping into a room where all the sound had been sucked out. A deep, profound stillness that felt wrong. It wasn't like the quiet emptiness inside him. This felt… draining. Dead.
He looked around more carefully. A few dead, withered plants lay half-buried in the dust. A large rock nearby seemed to crumble at the edges, looking tired and ancient, more worn than the stones in Charon's ruins. This whole area felt… weak. Sick.
He remembered whispers from the market. Talk of the dying world, of places where the land itself was weak, where souls grew faint. Could this be one of those places? A soul-draining zone?
He took a hesitant step back, off the dusty patch. The oppressive silence lifted slightly, replaced by the familiar bite of the wind. He looked back at the grey, dead ground. It felt dangerous. But… did it feel dangerous to him?
He thought about the Knight. About the Trackers. They hunted souls. They were drawn to the 'spark', the 'light' Sophia had spoken of. Charon said the Knight hunted his 'absence', the Animus Vacuus, because it resonated with the Void.
What would happen if the Knight followed him into this place? A place with no soul energy, a place that drained it away? Would it weaken the Knight? Would it hide his own strange 'absence'?
He didn't know. It was a terrifying gamble. But the Knight was coming. Staying in the open was suicide.
He looked at the edge of the draining zone. Maybe he could travel along its border? Use its wrongness as a shield?
He started walking again, keeping the edge of the grey, dusty land just to his left. He moved cautiously, testing the air, the feeling of the ground. He found he could sense the boundary. The draining zone felt like a hollow echo, a deep emptiness that was different from his own internal quiet. His own emptiness felt… vast, deep, sometimes shimmering with strange lights. This zone felt like… nothing. A hole in the world.
As he moved, he scanned the desolate landscape ahead. Low hills, more grey rock, endless wind. There was no sign of life, no sign of shelter. He was truly alone now. His parents… he pushed the thought away. He couldn't think about them. Not now. Thinking hurt too much, and he needed to be sharp. He needed to survive.
He needed food. Water. Warmth. He had none of these things. All he had was the clothes on his back, the memory of Charon's sacrifice, and a confusing clue about mirrored fragments.
He walked for what felt like hours, the grey light barely changing in the oppressive sky. He kept skirting the edge of the draining zone, the dead silence to his left a constant, unnerving presence. He felt tired, his legs aching, his stomach growling. The fear hadn't left him, but it had settled into a cold knot in his gut, a constant companion alongside the emptiness.
He noticed other patches of the grey dust, some small, some large. These soul-draining zones seemed scattered across the land like a sickness. He learned to spot them from a distance now, the tell-tale grey dust, the lack of healthy plants, the way the air itself seemed to shimmer slightly, like heat haze on a cold day. He avoided them carefully, using them as potential hiding barriers but not daring to enter them fully. What if they could affect him? What if they drained whatever strange energy he did possess, the energy that had flared against the Knight? He couldn't risk it.
As the light began to fail, turning the grey world into shades of black, desperation began to set in. He needed to find shelter for the night. The wind was picking up again, carrying ice on its breath. He scanned the horizon, his eyes straining in the gloom.
There. In between two low, rocky hills, almost hidden in shadow, was a dark shape. It looked like more ruins, but smaller, more broken than Charon's tower. Just a few crumbling walls, maybe a collapsed roof. It wasn't much. But it was shelter.
A small, fragile hope stirred within him. He checked the ground carefully. No grey dust. This small cluster of ruins seemed to be outside the draining zones he'd been following. He approached cautiously, listening intently. No sounds but the wind. No sign of the Knight.
He slipped between two jagged pieces of fallen wall. Inside, it was dark and smelled of damp stone and old dust. It was barely a shelter, just a small space protected from the worst of the wind by crumbling walls. But it was something.
Julius sank to the ground, huddling against the cold stone, pulling his worn tunic tighter around himself. He was shaking, partly from cold, partly from exhaustion, partly from the lingering terror. He was alone. Hunted. With a mission he didn't understand in a world that felt like it was actively trying to kill him.
He closed his eyes, the image of Charon burning bright behind them. Find the mirrored fragments.
He didn't know how. He didn't know where. But he had to try. He curled into a tight ball, the emptiness inside him feeling vast and cold, mirroring the desolate world outside. Sleep wouldn't come easily, not with the Knight perhaps still searching, and the mystery of the fragments pressing down on him. He could only wait, listen to the wind, and hope he survived the night.