The wind howled through the skeletal remains of what was once a proud city. Now, it was nothing but crumbled stone, twisted iron, and broken spires rising like the bones of some long-dead titan. Ispenholm—the last bastion of Ashwael's old world—had stood at the edge of the Bleeding, a city that had once shielded the land from the horrors beyond. Now it was a husk, an echo of its former glory.
Seris stood on a fractured bridge, staring out across the ruins. Below her, the River of Tears—a dark, sluggish flow that had once been pristine and full of life—now carried the remnants of a world that could not escape its fate. It was said that the river had once been a place of healing, where the sick and injured could find solace. Now, it was tainted, thick with the remnants of those who had come to die and never left.
She had forgotten the exact day she had lost her title as Warden of Ispenholm, but she remembered the feeling. The sick, slow dread that crept into her bones as her oath was broken. They had called it The Bleeding, and in the wake of it, she had watched her people crumble, as if the very air had turned to ash.
Now, she wore the remnants of her armor—the cracked breastplate and rusted pauldrons—scattered with the grime of the ruined world. The silver insignia that once marked her as a protector of Ispenholm had long been lost, buried beneath layers of dust and time.
Her fingers twitched at the memory of what she had once been, but the feeling was hollow. The world had taught her that memories were unreliable, like the flickering embers of a dying fire. It wasn't her past that defined her now. It was the void that had opened before her, and the path she could no longer avoid.
"Are you still watching it?" a voice rasped behind her.
Seris didn't turn. She knew the voice, its gravelly tone, the weight of its presence. Toren.
He had been following her for weeks, always lurking in the corners of her vision, always silent unless spoken to. She had never asked him to come. He had simply appeared after she had left the ruins of Alvoris, a city even older than Ispenholm, now swallowed by the Hollow. He had offered nothing more than a cryptic warning when she had asked him why: "The Bleeding has begun, but it hasn't finished. Not yet."
"Still watching," she replied, her voice hollow. "Still waiting for something to change."
Toren stepped up beside her, his mismatched eyes—the left one silver, the right a hollowed black pit—squinting against the swirling ash that passed as the world's air now. His face was pale, almost transparent, the hollowing of his flesh a reminder of the terrible cost the Bleeding had taken on all who were close to its edges. He was a man possessed, no longer entirely himself, but something else, something older. The whispers had begun taking their toll on him.
"You won't find what you're looking for here," Toren said softly, the Hollow's voice mixing with his own. "You can stand at the edge of the world, but it won't stop the fall."
Seris gritted her teeth, the words biting harder than she expected. She had grown tired of hearing how it was too late, how everything had already been lost.
"Maybe," she said, her gaze never leaving the horizon, where the broken sun hung like a bloodshot eye, barely clinging to the sky. "But I can't stop searching. Not yet."
Toren was silent for a moment, and she could feel his presence beside her, the tension between them thick, like something unsaid, something broken. His fingers twitched at his side, an involuntary movement—one that came and went, as though something inside him was trying to escape, or perhaps, trying to return.
"You're chasing ghosts, Seris," he said, his voice distant. "The Oath is a myth. It doesn't exist anymore. And if it does... it isn't what you think."
Her grip tightened on the sword at her hip, the rusted steel heavy in her hand. She had never spoken of the Oath aloud, not to him or anyone else. It was too dangerous to hope for something so impossible, so deeply tied to the unraveling of the world. But there it was, a flicker of thought in the back of her mind—a legend, a whisper, a promise.
The Oath of the Last Warden. The artifact that could undo the Bleeding. Some said it was the key to restoring everything, others said it was the final seal of destruction. And if it was true, if it was real, it could save what was left of Ashwael, or it could hasten its end.
She spoke the words anyway, her voice quiet but firm. "I don't care what it costs. I'm going to find it."
Toren chuckled softly, but it was a laugh tinged with despair. "You think you can control it? You think any of us can control it? The Bleeding is more than just a curse. It is... it is the truth of the world now. We've all been changed by it. We're no longer what we once were."
Seris shook her head, but her eyes didn't leave the horizon. "Then I'll change again."
Her voice was cold, distant. And when Toren didn't respond, she knew he understood. She had been fractured by the world's decay just as much as he had. But she refused to be swallowed whole.
Far below, across the River of Tears, a shape shifted—a flicker, a shadow, something that didn't belong. A reminder of the Hollow, always watching, always waiting. Seris didn't flinch. She had seen worse, been to darker places, and she was done running.
"Tomorrow," she said, her voice low. "We move out. Find the Oath. And end this."
Toren's eyes flickered briefly, the Hollow's whisper curling in the depths of his pupils. "If we must," he murmured.
The wind howled again, and the city, what remained of it, seemed to groan in response.