The sun was a ghostly disc hanging low in the sky, veiled by an endless expanse of ash-gray clouds. A dry wind swept across the Wastelands, carrying the stench of decay and the faint whispers of things better left unseen. Eris sat perched atop a crumbling stone pillar, the remains of some ancient structure long swallowed by time. His gaze wandered over the desolate expanse, his ghostly gray eyes half-lidded, unfocused.
His fingers absently traced the jagged edge of a broken shard of glass he had found earlier—a worthless relic of a forgotten era. He flipped it over in his palm, watching the dim light catch its surface. A wry smile tugged at his lips.
"The world wasn't always like this," he thought, his mind wandering. "Or at least, that's what the stories say."
He leaned back against the pillar, staring into the choking haze that passed for a horizon.
"They say there was a time before the Awakening, before the Spire of Awakening split the sky and turned the world inside out. Back then, people didn't have to worry about abominations clawing their way out of the ground, or their own shadows trying to strangle them in their sleep. Must've been nice, I guess."
The shard in his hand caught a glint of crimson from the setting sun. Eris frowned and hurled it into the dust.
"But then the Spire came, and everything went to hell. The gods woke up—or so the churches claim. The Old Ones, the gods, the Fallen... Everyone's got a different version of the truth. All I know is that one day, the sky turned to fire, and the world hasn't stopped bleeding since."
He glanced at his hands, calloused and scarred from years of scavenging and surviving. "The Awakening gave some people Crests. Powers. Purpose. They got to be Saints and heroes. The rest of us? We got this."
Eris gestured vaguely at the Wastelands, as if the desolation itself was a reflection of his thoughts.
"This cursed patch of dirt, where every breath tastes like metal and every shadow's got teeth."
He paused, his expression unreadable. "Funny thing, though. Nobody talks about the ones who didn't survive the Awakening. The ones the Spire twisted, broke. Turned into those things." He motioned toward the horizon, where faint, lurching silhouettes prowled in the distance. Their grotesque forms moved like nightmares given flesh.
The wind howled, scattering loose debris across the cracked ground. Eris sighed and pulled his ragged cloak tighter around his shoulders.
"They call it a gift. A divine blessing. But I've seen what this 'gift' does. It burns people up. Turns them into monsters, or worse. It's all a gamble, isn't it? The Spire plays dice with our lives, and the gods? If they're out there, they're just watching and laughing."
His stomach growled, a sharp reminder of the grim reality of his existence. He reached into his satchel, pulling out a scrap of dried meat that he'd scavenged days ago. It was tough and tasted faintly of rot, but he chewed it without complaint.
As he swallowed, his thoughts turned darker. "Sometimes I wonder what's worse—dying out here as just another nameless body, or being one of the Awakened. Power sounds nice, sure. But every Crest I've seen comes with a price. Burnout, madness, corruption. The Wastelands don't let anyone escape clean."
He stood, brushing the dust from his tattered pants. The horizon was darker now, the first tendrils of night creeping across the land.
"Doesn't matter, though. This is the hand I've been dealt. No Crest, no power, no prophecy. Just me, a half-dead scavenger with no future and barely a past. Maybe that's for the best. Let the Saints and the heroes play their games. I'll stay here, in the dirt, where I belong."
His gaze lingered on the distant Spire, its faint, sickly glow barely visible through the clouds. It stood like a silent sentinel, a monument to everything that had gone wrong.
"Yeah," he murmured to himself. "Let them have it. The gods, the Crests, the wars. I'll stick to surviving. Beats dying for a cause I don't even understand."
The distant howls of abominations echoed across the Wastelands, their cries a haunting reminder of the dangers lurking in the night. Eris turned away from the sound, his steps deliberate as he melted into the shadows.
For now, survival was enough.
The morning in the Wastelands wasn't marked by sunlight. Instead, it was a slow shift from oppressive darkness to a dim, sickly pallor that barely illuminated the desolation. Eris awoke beneath the husk of a derelict cart, the metal long corroded and fused with the cracked earth. His breath misted in the chill air, though the taste of it was acrid and bitter.
He stretched, joints popping, and pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders. Dust clung to his skin and clothes, a second layer of filth that he no longer bothered to scrape off. Cleanliness was a luxury reserved for the dead.
Eris's stomach growled, a sharp, insistent reminder of his first task for the day. "Scavenge or starve," he muttered to himself. It wasn't philosophy, just the simple truth.
The Wastelands stretched endlessly in every direction, a shattered panorama of jagged rocks, bone-dry earth, and twisted remnants of a world that had once known prosperity. Blackened spires of long-dead trees clawed at the sky, their branches stripped bare and brittle. The air shimmered faintly in places, betraying pockets of corrupted magic, unstable and deadly.
Eris moved quickly and silently, his boots crunching over debris. He knew better than to linger in one spot too long. The Wastelands had a way of noticing stillness, and the things that prowled its endless expanse were always hungry.
He crouched beside the remains of a fallen structure, perhaps a house or a watchtower in a time long forgotten. The stone was scorched black, the metal beams twisted like a giant's discarded toy. Picking through the rubble, Eris found a few scraps of metal and a broken blade that might fetch a trade at one of the scavenger camps—if he made it back alive.
"Better than nothing," he muttered, slipping the items into his satchel. His eyes scanned the horizon, always moving, always wary.
A low, guttural growl froze him mid-step. It came from somewhere to his left, where a cluster of rocks jutted out like the broken teeth of some ancient beast. Eris dropped to a knee, pulling his cloak tighter around him to blend into the shadows.
From the crevices of the rocks, the abomination emerged. Its form was a grotesque parody of life—a humanoid shape stretched and distorted beyond recognition. Its skin was translucent, revealing black veins pulsing with corrupted essence. Its head was a mass of shifting, bulbous eyes that blinked independently, searching, hungering.
Eris held his breath, his heart pounding against his ribs. He clutched a jagged piece of scrap metal in one hand—not a weapon, but a last resort.
The creature sniffed the air, its elongated limbs moving in jerky, unnatural motions. A glistening tongue slithered out from its maw, tasting the faint traces of life carried on the wind.
Eris's mind raced. "Stay still. Blend in. You're nothing. Just another shadow." It was a mantra he'd relied on countless times, though the margin for error was as thin as the air he dared to breathe.
The abomination moved closer, its bulk scraping against the rocks, leaving a trail of viscous ichor that hissed and bubbled as it touched the ground. Eris's grip tightened on the scrap metal.
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the creature turned away. A distant noise—a faint echo of some other unlucky scavenger or wandering beast—caught its attention. With a guttural hiss, it loped off into the distance, its malformed limbs carrying it with disturbing speed.
Eris didn't move until the creature was a speck on the horizon. Only then did he let out the breath he'd been holding, his body trembling with the effort of remaining still.
"Close," he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. Too close.
He resumed his scavenging, but his movements were quicker, sharper, his senses heightened by the close encounter. Every shadow seemed darker now, every sound more sinister. The Wastelands played tricks on the mind, but Eris had long since learned to trust his instincts over his senses.
By midday—or what passed for it—the weight of the satchel over his shoulder was a small comfort. Broken tools, scraps of cloth, a handful of dried herbs that might still have some potency. Nothing remarkable, but enough to survive another day.
He found a narrow crevice in a rock formation and slipped inside, his makeshift shelter for the night. As the sun dipped lower, its pale light gave way to the blood-red hues of twilight. The Wastelands came alive after dark, and not in ways anyone wanted to witness.
Eris lit a tiny flame, just enough to warm his hands. The flickering light cast long shadows on the stone walls around him, shadows that danced like the ghosts of all the things he'd lost.
He leaned back, staring into the fire. His stomach was still empty, his body still aching, but he was alive. For now, that was enough.
And in the distance, beyond the veil of ash and the wails of the damned, the Spire loomed, a faint, sickly glow on the horizon. It was a reminder that even in the Wastelands, there were worse things than starvation.