The air stank of burnt wood and rusted steel.
Beneath a sky forever smeared with gray, Jack trudged through the ruins of what once had been a city. Broken skeletons of buildings jutted out like rotting teeth, stretching toward a sky that had forgotten the color blue. The ground was layered with ash, soft and fine like sand, swallowing each step in a muffled crunch.
Jack's coat, long and torn at the hem, flapped lazily behind him. Dust clung to its faded black leather, just as it did to the tangled strands of his dark hair. His boots, stitched together more times than he could count, barely held up. But his grip on the twin daggers strapped across his back? That remained firm. Reliable.
He was alone now.
For years, it had just been him and his brother. But even that had slipped away—his brother chasing after some legend called the Ashen Citadel. A place whispered in survivor camps, rumored to be the last haven of the old world. Jack hadn't believed in it... not until his brother never came back.
Now, belief was all he had left.
The wind picked up, howling through the hollow streets like the cries of something long dead. That sound didn't bother Jack anymore. What did, however, was the shuffle of feet where there shouldn't have been any.
His eyes narrowed.
Somewhere ahead, past a collapsed tunnel, a shadow moved. Then another. Slow. Dragging limbs. Hollows. He could smell them before he even saw them — that mix of rot, metal, and something... wrong.
Three of them emerged into the open. Skin pale, patches of flesh missing, eyes clouded and white as dead moons. Victims of the Mist, the toxic vapors that sometimes seeped up from deep underground. The Mist didn't kill — it hollowed people out. Left them mindless. Violent.
Jack crouched low, fingers curling around the hilts of his daggers.
> "Three," he muttered under his breath. "I've handled worse."
The first Hollow groaned, picking up on his presence. The other two followed, heads twitching unnaturally as they started towards him, unsteady but relentless.
Jack didn't wait. The world rewarded those who struck first.
His body moved like instinct, boots kicking up ash as he lunged forward. The first dagger drove straight up through a Hollow's chin, splitting its skull from within. The body dropped before the others even processed the motion.
The second reached out, but Jack was already spinning to its side, his second dagger flashing clean across its neck. Blackened blood spattered the ground, thick and tar-like.
The last one hesitated. They always did when alone. A sliver of something... recognition? Fear?
Jack didn't care.
He whipped a dagger, sending it flying end over end until it lodged between the creature's milky eyes. It fell backward without a sound.
Silence returned.
Jack stood still, chest rising and falling, ears tuned for more movement. But the ruins were quiet again — just the wind and the groan of metal in the distance.
> "Ashen Citadel, huh..." he muttered, retrieving his blade. "You better be real. Or I'm just wasting what's left of me."
He sheathed his daggers, pulling his coat tighter as he stared off beyond the ruins. The horizon was nothing but smoke and steel skeletons, but somewhere beyond that... there had to be something.
There had to be.
And so he walked on, leaving behind the bodies and the blood, eyes fixed on a dawn that never seemed to come.
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