Eris stumbled into the hollow of a derelict building, its jagged walls leaning like drunken sentinels against the horizon. The distant howls of beasts echoed through the Wastelands, but here, within this fragile sanctuary, he allowed himself a moment to breathe.
His chest heaved with exertion, his limbs trembling from the day's events. The crude makeshift bandages wrapped around his wounds had begun to bleed through, the dull ache a constant reminder of his brush with death. Yet, for all the pain, it was the memories that clawed at him the hardest—the twisted faces of the cannibals, the swirling monstrosity that had torn them apart, and the unholy orchestra of screams and cracking bones.
Eris slumped against the crumbling wall, the cold stone leeching the warmth from his skin. He clenched his fists, staring down at the blood and dirt caked on his fingers.
"Survived another day," he muttered, his voice barely audible over the sigh of the night wind. "That's worth something, isn't it?"
He reached into his scavenged pack, pulling out a half-rotted blanket. Its foul stench was a small price to pay for the illusion of safety it provided. Wrapping it around himself, he let his head fall back against the wall, his eyes drifting upward to the jagged remnants of the ceiling.
The sky beyond was a smear of black and grey, with faint pinpricks of light struggling against the choking darkness. He hated the nights in the Wastelands. They were too quiet, too vast, like the world itself was holding its breath before devouring him.
As his body relaxed into the numbness of exhaustion, his mind wandered, unbidden, to the past. To the faces he could barely remember. To the fleeting warmth of voices that had long since gone silent.
The Wastelands, for all their cruelty, had taught him one thing above all else: there was no such thing as salvation. There was only survival.
Eris pulled the blanket tighter around himself, trying to ignore the gnawing emptiness in his stomach and the cold that seeped into his bones. His eyes fluttered closed, but sleep did not come easily. Every sound outside—every scrape, every distant growl—set his nerves on edge.
"Tomorrow," he murmured, his voice a fragile thread. "I'll find more scraps. Something better. Just... one more day."
And yet, as his consciousness began to waver, a dark part of him whispered that the Wastelands wouldn't let him live to see many more.
Eris found himself in a place that was neither here nor there—a space suspended between memory and dream. The air smelled of wood smoke and old leather, warm and comforting, so unlike the acrid stench of the Wastelands.
He was sitting cross-legged on the ground, a boy again, his hands clasped around his knees as he stared up at the old man before him. The man's face was a tapestry of deep lines and scars, his eyes clouded but still alive with a flicker of mischief. His beard was long and scraggly, peppered with grey, and his voice carried the weight of ages, rich and deep like the hum of distant thunder.
"The old world," the man said, leaning forward, his gnarled fingers tracing shapes in the dirt, "was nothing like this cursed land. There were cities as tall as mountains, their lights brighter than the stars themselves. The people didn't scavenge or hide. They thrived."
Eris remembered the way the firelight danced in the man's eyes, casting shadows that made his features seem larger than life. He had always spoken with such conviction, painting pictures so vivid that even the desolation of the Wastelands seemed to fade away.
"What happened to it all?" young Eris had asked, his voice soft, hesitant. He knew the answer but wanted to hear it again, as if repetition could make sense of it.
The old man's smile faltered, his expression growing heavy. "The Awakening," he said, his voice tinged with sorrow. "A pillar of light that touched the heavens and cracked the earth. It gave us power but cursed us in the same breath. The Spire brought ruin, boy. Its energy... it twisted the world, broke it apart piece by piece."
He paused, his hand hovering over the dirt. "And now, we live in its shadow, its corruption. The beasts, the abominations—they're just fragments of what was unleashed that day."
"But there were heroes, weren't there?" Eris's younger self had asked, his eyes wide with hope. "People who fought back?"
The old man chuckled, a sound both warm and bitter. "Heroes? Maybe. Saints and gods, they called them, wielding powers beyond mortal reckoning. But where are they now, boy? Where were they when the Wastelands swallowed the world?"
Eris felt a strange ache in his chest as he listened to the words echo in his dream. He had heard this story a hundred times, but now, older and hardened, it felt different. The hope he once clung to felt naïve, a relic of a childhood that never truly existed.
The old man leaned back, his gaze distant. "Remember this, Eris," he said, his tone softer now, almost tender. "The world owes you nothing. It's a cruel, uncaring thing. But sometimes... sometimes, even in the darkest night, a spark can light a fire."
Eris stirred, his eyes fluttering as the dream began to fade. The old man's face blurred, his words slipping away like smoke in the wind.
And as Eris opened his eyes to the cold, desolate reality of the Wastelands, he couldn't help but wonder if that spark the old man spoke of would ever find him—or if it had long since burned out.