The sun hung low in the sky, a pale disc swallowed by ash-gray clouds. Its weak light did little to warm the Wastelands, only casting long, restless shadows across the jagged rocks and twisted remnants of a world long dead. The wind swept across the cracked earth, dry and biting, carrying the smell of rot and faint whispers that made the skin crawl. Eris perched on a crumbling stone pillar, letting the ragged folds of his cloak flap against the gusts. His gray eyes drifted over the desolation, tired, indifferent, but always alert—the kind of gaze that had learned to see everything and trust nothing.
He turned a jagged shard of glass in his hand, letting it catch the dim, cold light. Useless, broken, beautiful in a way only the world's ruins could be. A smirk tugged at the corner of his lips, a small rebellion against the bleakness surrounding him.
"World wasn't always like this," he muttered under his breath, though he didn't really believe it. Stories had a way of twisting themselves into comfort for fools.
He let his gaze drift to the horizon, where dust and haze blurred into the sky. The ruins around him—splintered stones, skeletal trees, shards of metal—looked like the bones of some long-forgotten beast. The Wastelands had a way of staring back at you, a reminder that the world had never been kind and that it owed no one mercy.
"They say there was a time before the Awakening, before the Spire split the sky and turned everything upside down. People didn't have to watch abominations claw their way out of the ground, or worry about shadows moving on their own. Must've been nice."
His hands flexed, rough and scarred. The map of years spent scavenging, surviving, and losing. Every mark told a story he didn't want to hear.
"The Awakening gave some people Crests. Powers. Saints, heroes, the whole show. The rest of us?" He swept a hand across the desolate landscape. "We got… this."
The wind rattled his cloak as he gestured at the ground, at the cracked soil, the jagged rocks, the skeletal trees reaching like hands clawing for the heavens. "This cursed patch of dirt, where every breath tastes like iron and every shadow has teeth."
His eyes caught movement at the edge of the haze—lurching silhouettes, unnatural shapes twisting as they moved. Abominations. Creatures that had once been human, perhaps, or not human at all, now parodies of life, limbs bent at impossible angles, flesh stretched and scarred in ways that made the stomach turn.
"No one talks about the ones that didn't survive," he muttered softly. "The ones the Spire twisted, broke… turned into those things."
The wind picked up, sending grit into his eyes. He pulled his cloak tighter, a feeble shield against both cold and the world itself.
"They call it a gift. A divine blessing. I call it a lottery where you lose if you're alive. Spire rolls the dice. The gods? If they're watching, they're laughing."
A growl in his stomach reminded him that philosophy wouldn't fill it. He dug into his satchel and pulled out a scrap of dried meat. Tough, bitter, faintly rotten, but enough to survive another day. Chewing, he let his gaze drift to the horizon, to the haze and the ruins, to the whispering shadows.
"Sometimes I wonder… what's worse? Dying out here, a nameless corpse, or being Awakened? Power sounds nice until it fries your mind. Every Crest comes with a price: madness, corruption, burnout. No one walks out clean."
Night crept across the horizon, stretching shadows across the jagged landscape. Eris rose, brushing dust from his tattered pants, adjusting the folds of his cloak.
"Doesn't matter," he muttered, voice low. "This is my hand. No Crest. No power. No prophecy. Just me—a half-dead scavenger. Let the heroes play their games. I'll stay in the dirt, where I belong."
His gaze lingered on the Spire, faint and sickly through the clouds. A silent sentinel, a monument to everything that had gone wrong.
"Yeah," he whispered. "Let them have it. The wars, the Crests, the gods. I'll stick to surviving."
The Wastelands answered with distant howls, the cries of abominations echoing across the broken land. He melted into the shadows, boots barely making a sound on the cracked earth. Survival—for now—was enough.
When light finally crept across the Wastelands, it came as a pale, reluctant wash rather than the sun. Eris awoke beneath the rusted husk of a derelict cart, the metal fused with the earth, corroded by decades of neglect. His breath misted in the cold, acrid and bitter, and dust clung to him like a second skin. Cleanliness had long been a luxury for the dead.
"Scavenge or starve," he muttered. Simple truth.
The Wastelands stretched endlessly, jagged rocks, dry earth, skeletal trees clawing at the sky, pockets of shimmering corrupted magic—unstable, unpredictable, deadly. Eris moved quietly, boots crunching over debris. The Wastelands had a way of noticing stillness, and predators were always watching.
He crouched near the ruins of a long-forgotten building, sifting through rubble. Metal scraps, broken blades, shards of ceramic—small fortunes in a place where survival depended on ingenuity and luck.
A low growl froze him. From the jagged rocks, a creature emerged—a grotesque parody of life. Translucent skin, black veins pulsing with something dark and unholy, multiple eyes blinking independently, searching, hungering.
Eris pressed against the rocks, scrap metal in hand.
"Stay still. Blend in. Nothing," he whispered.
The creature sniffed the air, limbs jerking in unnatural motion. A glistening tongue flicked from its mouth, tasting the faint traces of life that clung to the wind. Then, distracted by some distant noise, it sloped off, leaving a sizzling trail of ichor in its wake.
Eris waited, tense, until the creature became a speck on the horizon. Then he moved faster, sharper, senses taut. Every shadow seemed darker, every sound sharper. The Wastelands had tricks for the unwary, illusions meant to disorient or terrify, but instinct had kept him alive longer than luck ever could.
By midday, his satchel was heavier: scraps of metal, cloth, dried herbs, a handful of trinkets that might fetch a trade. Enough to survive another day. He slipped into a narrow crevice to wait out the night, the crimson twilight bleeding across the land like blood on broken stone.
He lit a small flame, barely enough to warm his hands. Shadows danced on the walls, twisting into shapes reminiscent of the lives he'd lost, the people who had once been something before the Wastelands claimed them. Stomach empty, body aching, but alive. That, for now, was enough.
The Spire loomed in the distance, faint and sickly, a constant reminder that even here, in the heart of the dead world, worse things waited than hunger.