The roads didn't welcome us.
They stretched empty and cracked, winding like scars across the bones of the world, half-swallowed by ash dunes and creeping moss. Old empire stones jutted like broken teeth from the ground, their edges weathered, runes eroded to meaningless grooves. Trees stood skeletal along the ridgelines, blackened by old fire, their trunks twisted in silent agony.
The Hollow Marches.
The only road beyond Draal the zealots didn't bother claiming. Too cursed. Too fractured. Too dead.
It suited me fine.
Agro's hooves crunched faintly over the cracked earth, each step uncertain but steadying. His coat still dulled by dried blood and soot, the makeshift saddle jerry-rigged from scraps creaking faint under his battered frame. But he stood. Moved. Carried me away from the ruins.
The first true steps of the journey bled into silence, save for the whisper of ash on the wind and the faint, steady hum of the crown buried deep in my pack.
It never stopped.
A low, constant pulse. Not words, not yet. Just pressure. Like the horizon itself was coiled around my spine, dragging me forward.
I adjusted the sword at my hip—jagged, rust eating through the edges, barely sharp enough to qualify as a weapon. But better than empty hands.
The merchant outpost came at dusk.
If you could call it that.
Three wagons half-sunken into the mud, faded canvas stretched between them like a market stall graveyard. A handful of figures lounged near cookfires, their clothes threadbare, eyes sharp, hands never far from rusted blades or relic-pistols. Traders, smugglers, scavengers—the kind of vultures that fed off the last scraps of a dying world.
I reined Agro to a stop at the perimeter, heart ticking hard under my ribs, fingers brushing the hilt of my rusted sword.
A wiry man with a patchwork coat looked up from the fire, squinting through the ash haze. His face was lined with old scars, one eye cloudy with the telltale burn of relic exposure. He tilted his head, assessing me, then the horse.
"Long way from the bones of Draal," he rasped, voice rough as gravel.
I didn't answer at first—just dismounted, boots crunching through brittle grass, keeping my posture loose, unthreatening.
"Looking for supplies," I said flatly.
His gaze lingered on the crown's faint outline bulging the pack. Too sharp for comfort.
"You've got Shards, stranger?"
I exhaled, pulling a small, battered pouch from my belt.
Thirty-two Ash Shards.
Pathetic. Enough for stale rations and cracked water flasks, if they didn't gouge me. I could already hear Old Lerrick laughing in my skull.
The merchant snorted faint, crooked smile pulling at his lips as he jingled the pouch in his hand.
"Not much. But you look like hell, so I'll be generous."
Generous meant overpriced. But I nodded anyway.
The exchange was quick—hard bread, water skins, cloth bandages for Agro's wounds, wire to reinforce the saddle straps. Bare minimum survival kit.
By the time I turned from the wagons, the pouch was empty.
The world didn't just take your empire, your home, your people.
It took your pockets too.
Agro snorted softly as I secured the supplies, eyes tracking the gathering gloom across the hills. Faint storm clouds curled on the edges of the horizon, black against bruised twilight. The road ahead stretched cracked and uneven, vanishing between shattered hills and the petrified forests beyond.
I ate little that night. Agro, even less. But we kept moving—slow, deliberate, every step forward a defiance.
The Hollow Marches didn't end.
They just bled wider.
Relic fields jutted like splinters from the earth—twisted metal, slagglass half-melted into the stone, faint glimmers of old tech humming weak beneath the ground. The crown pulsed harder near them, faint pressure blooming behind my eyes. Whispers stirred at the edge of hearing.
The first memory fragments.
I pressed on, ignoring the weight settling deeper in my skull.
Night crept in.
Ash drifted. Agro's breathing steadied beside me, stubborn and defiant, hooves crunching over forgotten roads.
The horizon burned faint crimson beyond the ridges.
I adjusted the sword at my hip, worn leather grip rough against my palm, every step a promise.
No power yet. No glory. No grand, heroic rise.
Just hunger. Scar tissue. And the slow bleed of a journey that refused to die quietly.
Agro's ears twitched toward the distant glow, muscles tense under my hand.
The horizon stretched wide.
Unknown. Dangerous. Alive.
I smiled faintly, not with hope—hope's a fool's game—but with something heavier.
The kind of smile that knows the road only leads one way:
Forward.