Five years had passed since the last great disturbance in the City of Silver. Time, like the ever-constant fog that cloaked the Eastern side of The Forsaken Land, rolled on with neither mercy nor pause.
The ancient metallic towers that scraped the blackened sky loomed unchanged, their glowing glyphs still pulsing dimly beneath layers of storm-battered glass. Yet within these walls, a new generation had begun to grow.
Among them was a boy named Derrick Berg.
Thirteen years old, with coarse brownish-yellow hair and amber eyes that burned faintly with untamed curiosity, Derrick tugged the strap of his heavy satchel and made his way across the steel skybridge connecting Tower Dormitory Three to the Intermediate Educational Complex.
His personality was a bright and sunny one, that always shone a light on his friends and families days. Though this sunniness came with a hint of naivety.
The sky was as always, a vast plane of darkness that crackled with the destructive forces of lightning, that carried a sharp, cold wind that whistled past his ears. But Derrick didn't mind. He was used to the cold.
The day began with General Education, where stern instructors clad in half-armored robes drilled arithmetic, logic, and rune-based equations into the minds of students seated in concentric half-circles.
Derrick paid close attention. These subjects, though dry, were the foundation for understanding Beyonder Theory and Charm Construction.
After a brief meal of dried moss bread and processed mushroom paste, the second bell called them into Practical Monster Classification. Here, they examined preserved organs and cursed bones under the blacklight of detection glyphs.
Their instructor, a grizzled woman with a pale scar running down her cheek, narrated in detail the weaknesses of various Abyssal-Spawn, Swamp Wretches, and Whispering Fiends.
"If you hesitate," she barked once, " it'll crawl inside your soul and eat your name."
Afternoons were reserved for Devil Studies. Inside the rune-sealed chamber, where every window was etched with Silverite warding symbols, students were only permitted to study the documents under the instructor's supervision. Even then, a Mind-Calming Talisman had to be worn on the forehead.
"Devils are like ideas," the instructor said quietly one day. "They take root in the tongue and spread through desire. Read not with your eyes, but with detachment."
Supplementary Classes followed—Myth Studies often eliciting groans and eye-rolls. But they were mandatory, and the six-member council had reasons: every tale of the Founding, of the Broken Seal, of the Demon Flood served to bind the hearts of the youth to the iron pillars of the City.
Derrick sat beside his best friend Darc, a slightly chubby, dark-haired boy with a nervous habit of fiddling with his rune-chalk.
"You ever wonder if all of these myths are true?" Darc whispered one day during a particularly dull recitation of the 'Lament of Aurmir the Giant King'.
"I think so" Derrick replied, eyes flicking toward the stained-glass window that depicted a woman cloaked in vines standing in a lover's position with a Giant with no face and a full body of dark armor. "There would be no reasons for the adults to lie since we are the next generation that's going to succeed them."
The final hour was the most exhilarating: Combat Drills and Training Grounds. There, beneath the hollow arena dome, students paired off to practice staff technique, glyph-duels, and survival evasion tactics.
Derrick excelled here. He moved like wind across silvered stone, his practice spear weaving arcs of brilliance as training dummies fell to well-timed strikes.
On the third day of the week, he finally made it to Beyonder Foundations, where instructors demonstrated low-sequence rituals in closely monitored environments.
"Never attempt a divination invocation alone unless absolutely necessary," the instructor warned, displaying a blackened, withered hand. "Lest you wish to join the whispers beyond the grave."
Evening came, and Derrick returned to his family quarters in Tower Five. His mother, a quiet botanist working in the Edible Plant Lab, greeted him with a nod. His father, once a combat trainer, now served the logistics council and was rarely home.
The days continued to pass in a boring and uneventful manner, but Derrick enjoyed life like that. That way there would be no surprises and he would always be prepared for what happened next.
On the sixth evening, nobody spoke a word that morning, with his father just not feeling too well.
Derrick continued his days in the City of Silver with the mechanical precision of a gear within a divine machine—school at first light, knowledge pressed into his mind like cold ink into a ledger, and then a silent return home beneath the pale, unyielding skies.
For weeks now, the rhythm of his life remained unchanged. The whispered chanting of teachers, the rustle of monster-hide textbooks, the clang of steel against flesh in the training fields. His thoughts often drifted during lessons, but never enough to earn scorn from the instructors, who valued obedience over brilliance.
Yet that evening, the air at home was different. The scent of boiling water mingled oddly with a hint of burning herbs. As Derrick stepped through the creaking threshold of his family's modest dwelling, the warmth of routine was replaced with a chill that settled behind his ribs.
He saw her—his mother—standing silently in the kitchen, her back to him, steam rising like mist from the iron pot she tended. Her hands trembled only slightly as she measured out a bitter concoction of bloodgrass and ashroot.
His gaze turned, and dread snapped across his heart like a taught wire. His father—once a stern man of deep voice and stronger discipline—lay in bed beneath thin covers, motionless except for the strained rise and fall of his chest.
Derrick didn't speak. He didn't need to.
With a clatter, his satchel of schoolwork fell to the floor. Books slid out like forgotten relics. He rushed to his father's side, knees hitting the wood beside the low frame of the bed.
"Father…" His voice cracked, not from youth, but from something old and raw within him. "What happened? Why didn't you send word?"
His father's eyelids fluttered. A weak breath escaped his lips, dry and rusted. His mother turned, finally, her face wan with fatigue and lips thin with worry. She didn't answer, but the glance she gave him said enough.
Derrick reached out and grasped his father's calloused hand. It was cold.
His mother came into the scene with a bowl of herbal soup. "Drink, you need your strength to get better."
Hearing this, Derrick's face brightened. "So father will recover?"
Derrick's mother slowly caressed his face, giving an expression that made it seem like she saw all of the vicissitudes of life. "Yes, your father will recover. We are survivors after all."
He smiled happily and tightly embraced his kind-hearted mother.
Three days later, the affliction claimed another.
His mother collapsed in the garden, a bowl of bitter root broth shattering on the stone path as her body gave way. Derrick heard the noise from inside and sprinted to her side, panic rippling through his limbs like a thousand insects clawing under his skin.
She was breathing—barely. But her eyes were distant, unfocused, as if they no longer belonged to someone tethered wholly to this world.
By nightfall, she too had taken to bed.
The whispers in the city began soon after. Neighbors turned their eyes. Some offered dried herbs wrapped in waxed paper. Others said nothing at all, only shut their doors a little quicker than before.
The healer came at dawn the following day. The lightning strikes in the sky began to slowly fade away, a sign that nightfall was to come.
A robed man with threadbare gloves and a bone medallion depicting the Sigil of the Creator. His eyes were tired. Not from lack of sleep, but from the sheer familiarity of despair.
He examined them both in silence, lighting incense and pricking their skin with silver-tipped needles. Lastly, he hung a silver pendant from a small rope, and whispered a sacred incantation into it. When he finished, a despairing frown settled across his face.
When he stood, he did not speak immediately. Instead, he studied Derrick—the way a priest studies the altar before delivering grim news.
"It's called the Hollow Sickness," he said at last, voice flat. "One of the older diseases from the forgotten epochs. It hasn't claimed any victims for decades, but I guess your parents were just some of the unlucky few. But you don't have to quarantine, because if the disease targeted you, you would already be afflicted by now."
Derrick felt as though the light had gone out in the room, though every lamp still burned.
"Can it be cured?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
The healer did not respond. Instead, he opened a pouch and began mixing mild sedatives, placing them on the table beside a basin of water. "They won't suffer..much," he murmured. "It eats at the inside of the human bones rapidly. They'll grow weak and sleep a little more every day, until they finally just pass on. You can feed them this sedative to make it hurt a little less."
"No," Derrick said, with clouded eyes.
The healer blinked, but did not argue.
"No," Derrick repeated, louder. "You're wrong. You have to be wrong. My father was once a Knight of the Southern Patrol team. My mother survived the winter famine. They don't just… fade and die. Not like this."
The healer bowed his head slightly. "I'm sorry."
Derrick's breath caught in his chest like a knife. The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to lean in closer, listening, hungrily. He turned toward his parents—two figures lost in the haze of affliction, drawn and pale, their breathing shallow.
He sank to his knees beside their bed.
"This isn't how it's supposed to happen," he whispered. "You taught me how to survive the dark. You taught me everything there is to know about anything! You taught me how to enjoy life in this cursed city…"
His mother stirred faintly, her hand groping for his. He took it, his fingers trembling.
"I haven't even graduated yet," Derrick said, voice cracking. "I haven't become a member of the Exploration team. I haven't earned my first mark. You were supposed to see me take the oath, damn it!"
He pressed her hand to his face.
"You said we were survivors."
Neither of them answered.
The silence broke something inside him—a hollow soundless rupture, like the cracking of ancient stone deep beneath the city.
"I won't let you die," Derrick said quietly, teeth clenched with tears cascading down his face.