The sun—or whatever dim light passed for one—never moved. It hung above the sky like a dying ember, casting long, shifting shadows that never quite pointed the same direction twice.
Aarav limped through the gray wasteland, each step leaving behind footprints that disappeared moments later. His ribs still ached from the earlier battle, bandaged poorly with scraps torn from his shirt and soaked in bitter sap from the spiral-rooted plants he found near a rock outcrop. It wasn't sterile, but the sting meant it worked—he hoped.
He was hungry.
Not starving, but the kind of gnawing emptiness that clawed at his focus and dulled his senses. He hadn't found anything edible—unless bone-beaked lizards or glowing fungi counted. Most of it looked more like chemical waste than food.
Still, something compelled him forward.
Not instinct. Not desperation.
Curiosity.
Because about half a mile from the place where he fought the beast, there was… a structure. Crumbling. Battered. Buried halfway under ash and stone. Like the skeleton of a forgotten cathedral, it slouched sideways, its upper half devoured by time or battle.
It hummed—softly. Just enough to make the dagger at his hip vibrate when he got close.
Inside, it was cooler. Quieter. And bigger than it looked.
The ceiling was gone, the roof torn like paper, but the walls were still covered in carvings. Spirals. Eyes. Runes in a language that twisted as he looked at it—like it wanted to be read but refused to be understood.
In the center of the floor, surrounded by a broken ring of stone, sat a giant, obsidian plate, half-buried in the ground.
Aarav stepped forward.
As soon as his foot touched the inner ring, the air trembled.
A shimmer of energy pulsed from the plate.
And suddenly — he saw something.
It wasn't a vision in the normal sense. Not like a dream. It was more like… falling through memories not his own.
He saw towers of silver stone reaching into a cobalt sky. People in flowing robes and armor engraved with spirals walked across floating bridges. They channeled currents of pure light, bending gravity, shifting matter. Children learned to draw runes in the air, while elder scholars whispered about time threads and dimensional weaving.
This place was beautiful.
Advanced. Alive.
Whole.
And then — he felt the moment it broke.
A massive rift tore through the sky — the same red-and-white spiral scar that now loomed above this realm. An explosion of sound, light, and chaos. The silver towers cracked. The bridges folded into themselves. Time convulsed. People aged or vanished in an instant. Some screamed. Others turned into stone mid-step.
The vision ended as suddenly as it began.
Aarav collapsed to his knees, breath caught in his throat.
"Shatterfold," he whispered, the word coming unbidden.
That was its name once. He could feel it, almost taste it on the air.
A place that wasn't supposed to die. A realm that balanced time and space with such mastery that even gods—if they existed—might have watched in envy.
And yet… something came.
Something too powerful. Too consuming.
It shattered them from within and without.
Left only rot, dust, and creatures twisted by temporal poison.
Aarav sat there for hours, letting the whispers fade from his bones.
And when he finally stood, he knew this wasn't just a wasteland.
It was a graveyard of genius. A ruined cradle of impossible things.
And somewhere in its shattered veins… were answers.