The silence that followed was thick enough to breathe.
It pressed against his ears, settling over the land like dust.
The corpse of the creature lay twisted on the ground — limbs bent backward, carapace split open, black ichor dripping slowly into the pulsing soil.
The smell was unbearable. Acid and blood. Burnt metal.
Orien stood there for a long time, swaying slightly.
Every breath scraped his throat. His hands were shaking.
He didn't know what to feel — victory, horror, exhaustion.
They all felt the same now.
Finally, he spoke.
"Well… you tried to kill me. Least you can do is be useful now."
He stepped closer, crouching beside the body.
The surface of the carapace was cold to the touch — cold like polished stone left in the dark.
Hard. Dense.
When he tapped it with a shard of crystal, it rang faintly, like metal under tension.
His lips curved in a small, tired grin.
"…That's strong."
He sat back on his heels, staring at the corpse as if it were a puzzle.
He didn't know how he knew it, but his instincts were clear: use everything.
In this place, nothing went to waste.
---
It took him a long time to start.
He found the spot where the plates had cracked, pushed the shard of glass into it, and began prying.
The material resisted, groaning, then gave way with a sharp, wet snap.
A puff of foul air escaped — hot, sweet, metallic.
"Ugh. Yeah… that's definitely dead."
He coughed, covered his mouth, and kept working.
One plate. Then another. Then another.
The substance wasn't just armor.
It was alive, somehow — still faintly warm, humming under his fingers.
Each piece carried that same strange vibration he'd felt in the pillars earlier, like it remembered the world's rhythm.
Hours passed.
He didn't count them.
He just worked.
Slowly, methodically, until his hands were raw and his body screamed.
At times, he almost forgot to breathe.
The repetitive sound of cracking chitin and grinding stone filled the silence, creating its own rhythm — one that felt strangely natural.
He learned quickly.
Where the tendons joined.
Which parts could be cut.
Which ones bled acid.
Twice, he had to jump back as black liquid hissed across the ground, melting the surface.
He burned his arm once, the pain sharp and immediate, but didn't stop.
By the end, a rough pile of parts surrounded him — shattered fragments, bones, fibrous cords that looked like muscle strands.
---
He built his first weapon from instinct alone.
The broadest plate became a shield, curved naturally, heavy but durable.
He used the fibrous cords to tie a handle on the inside, wrapping them until the surface stopped cutting his hand.
The cords twitched occasionally, even detached — a reminder that nothing here was truly dead.
When he struck the shield with a stone, it sang — a short, dry tone.
Solid. Reliable.
"Not bad… for a guy who doesn't even know how to fix his own boots."
Next came the weapon.
He found a long, curved shard of dorsal armor, one edge fractured into something that almost resembled a blade.
He tested it against the stone floor.
It cut.
He tied a piece of tendon around the base, creating a crude grip.
It wasn't elegant.
But it would kill — and right now, that was all that mattered.
---
He sat down when it was done.
Every muscle throbbed.
His arms hung limp at his sides.
The air around him was still thick with the smell of acid and smoke.
He looked at his hands — bloody, blistered, shaking.
A bitter smile crept onto his face.
"Good job, Orien. You're still alive. And you smell like a rotting nightmare."
The sound of his own voice comforted him more than the silence ever could.
He looked at the half-dismantled carcass beside him.
The black flesh shimmered faintly in the dead white light.
Something in it looked… edible.
Or maybe he was just hungry enough to believe it.
He hesitated.
Then sighed.
"If I die from this, I swear I'll come back and bite you myself."
He cut off a thin strip of meat from the beast's flank.
It was rubbery and cold.
He found a crack in the ground where faint heat escaped and held it above the vent for a while.
When he bit into it, the taste hit him like rust and bile.
He gagged.
Forced himself to swallow.
A strange warmth spread through his throat — not pleasant, but powerful.
It settled in his stomach like burning coals.
"…Okay," he murmured, staring at the lifeless plain. "Guess I'm officially insane now."
---
When he finally stood again, hours later, he was a different man.
A crude shield was strapped to his arm.
A jagged blade hung in his hand.
Rags of cloth were wrapped tight around his wounds.
The air hadn't changed.
The light hadn't changed.
But he had.
Something deep inside had shifted — like a door quietly opening.
A faint wind rose across the plain, the first he had felt since arriving.
It carried no scent of decay.
Instead, it smelled faintly of something else.
Something alive.
Orien raised his head toward the endless gray horizon.
His voice was hoarse, but steady.
"Alright, world," he whispered. "Your move."
And he walked forward — slow, limping, alive —
his shadow trailing behind him, swallowed by the living mist.
***
Silence had settled again.
A silence so deep it almost seemed alive.
The mist around him hung still and heavy, tinted faintly with blue.
Orien sat against a cracked stone, staring at the blade resting across his knees.
The false sunlight shimmered across its uneven surface.
It was an ugly thing — black, jagged, still faintly warm.
If he listened closely, he could almost hear it breathing.
He turned it slowly in his hand, weighing the rough balance.
The blade thrummed under his fingers.
"You're not pretty," he muttered, voice hoarse, "but you'll do."
He lifted his arm, flexing his wrist beneath the weight of the crude shield he'd built.
Chunks of carapace bound together by torn cloth and tendon.
Ugly. Heavy. Functional.
He exhaled.
His hands were raw, his body a map of burns and cuts.
But he was alive.
And in this world, that was victory enough.
---
When he rose again, the air had changed.
Warmer.
Denser.
Carrying a metallic tang, like the breath before a storm.
Before him stretched a slope of cracked earth, blackened and scorched.
The wind carried the faint scent of something burnt long ago — stone, flesh, memory.
He moved slowly.
Each step left a faint imprint in the dust.
The silence was so complete that the crunch of his boots felt obscene, intrusive.
Far ahead, the mist glowed faintly red.
A pulse of light, slow and steady — like the breath of a dying ember.
He followed it.
And as the glow deepened, shapes began to take form in the haze.
Walls.
Towers.
The remains of a castle, melted and collapsed upon itself.
---
The ruins stretched across the land like the skeleton of a dead god.
The blackened stone had warped under impossible heat.
In some places it had flowed like liquid, frozen mid-collapse.
Scattered among the rubble were fragments of armor — fused into the rock, half-buried.
Old sigils still marked a few of them, scorched beyond recognition.
Orien slowed his pace.
The air here felt thicker.
Each breath scraped against his throat.
He stopped beside a fallen archway.
The stone was marked with faint outlines — shadows of people burned into the wall, caught mid-motion.
Frozen screams.
Frozen fear.
A chill crawled down his spine.
"What could've done this…" he whispered.
His eyes followed a line of destruction up a cracked wall.
There, carved deep into the melted rock, were five long grooves.
Claw marks.
Each one wider than his arm.
He reached out and touched the surface.
It was cold — but beneath that coldness, he felt something.
A faint vibration.
Like the echo of a heartbeat that refused to die.
Then the air shifted.
A faint breeze.
A change in pressure.
Something vast was moving above him.
He looked up.
At first, he saw only the clouds.
Then, a shape — enormous, gliding silently through the gray sky.
The ground trembled.
A deep, rhythmic sound rolled across the heavens — too vast to be thunder.
It was breathing.
And then it broke through the mist.
A black dragon.
Its wings unfurled across the sky like two endless blades.
Each movement displaced the air in heavy, slow waves.
Its body was a shadow made flesh, its scales darker than the world itself.
And its eyes…
Two amber suns, alive with thought.
Old.
Patient.
Unfathomable.
Orien's breath caught in his chest.
He couldn't move.
Couldn't think.
The dragon circled above the ruined castle, gliding with impossible grace.
Its wings stirred a storm of ash that fell like rain.
Then the world shook.
The dragon roared.
It wasn't sound.
It was a force.
A vibration that tore through the air, through the earth, through him.
The ground split.
The sky cracked.
The mist scattered.
Orien fell to his knees, hands pressed to his skull.
But the roar wasn't in his ears.
It was inside him.
And within that thunder… a sentence.
> You must slay the Dragon.
Only then shall you awaken as an Initiate.
Kill it... and this memory will end.
Everything stopped.
The world froze around him.
The light dimmed.
Those words — they didn't sound like anything.
They simply existed, carved into his mind.
He gasped for air, shaking his head, but the words kept burning, repeating, echoing.
> Kill the dragon…
or remain trapped in the memory.
His vision blurred.
The horizon glowed red.
The air shimmered like heat above a furnace.
He looked up again — the dragon was still there, gliding through the fire-colored clouds.
Its eyes found him.
And for one impossible second, Orien felt it see him.
Not as prey.
Not as a man.
But as something bound to it.
A reflection.
He clenched his blade until his knuckles went white.
His voice trembled, but it didn't break.
"So that's the nightmare…" he whispered.
"Fine. If killing you is the way out…"
He lifted his head.
The amber light of the dragon's gaze burned in his pupils.
"…then show me why the world feared you."