The fields gave way to cracked stone roads, half-swallowed by moss and time. Wildflowers sprouted through ancient carvings. The air still carried wildflower pollen; sweet, subtle, edged with earth. Birds sang in the background.
No people. No corpses. Just remnants of a city that once stretched for miles.
I reached the edge of the city. There was no real gate or walls.
The sound of footsteps broke the silence. In the area, there were archways, layered stone, and leaning watchtowers. The architecture held rich history.
Buildings lined all sides, their doors long gone. Wind whistled through empty windows, low and constant, like breath through hollow lungs.
Eventually, the road curved down into a wide avenue. Statues crumbled into themselves in courtyard fountains, waterless and full of dry weeds. Somewhere nearby, stone baked under the sun, giving off a faint, dusty heat. I followed the road downhill.
Moving carefully, there were no signs of any threat.
Eventually, I reached a set of stairs, leading into what looked like a temple or central civic hall. Gates; extravagant. Inside, the ceilings still held— high, arched, supported by thick pillars carved with iconography. Inside, the scent shifted— cooler, like old stone and forgotten rain.
I slowed down when I saw them.
Murals. Full-length, detailed ones along the inner walls. Older than anything else I'd seen so far. Frescoes layered over one another. Some colors faded away, but the craftsmanship held.
Moss clung damp to the stones, slick beneath my slippers. The temple's interior was cool despite the heat outside, a chill that settled on my skin like breath from a tomb. The carved stone beneath the frescoes was worn smooth in some places, chipped raw in others.
The first few showed a man— tall, proud, armored in black trimmed with red. His expression was cruel. Sharp eyes, narrowed mouth, a permanent sneer. Behind him, fires. Banners. Soldiers. Tribes bent beneath his boots.
He raised swords over kneeling people. Threw spears into crowds. Stood at the front of parades with chains in hand.
The name etched below was almost gone to erosion, but it repeated again and again, along with the words 'tyrant' and 'conqueror'.
"The First God of War?" How come I can read this?
Isn't this... another language? These are letters foreign to me. I only know English and Mandarin.
... I feel like there's a part of me that still hasn't registered that information.
I manifest the system with my mind, and the devil-cat pops up.
"... What do you need?" It says, rubbing its eye.
"Does the system come with a translate feature? How come I can read this?"
"What do you think?"
"..." What a sassy cat. "After further contemplation, I do believe that is the case."
The next panel showed the same man— this time stabbed through the chest, on his knees, falling. Behind him stood a new figure.
This one bore a sword as well, but his posture was different.
Less flair. Less pride. His armor simpler. His stance still.
The tyrant bled out at his feet.
There was a sharp shift in tone after that. Like the stonecutters had changed.
The next murals were clean, reverent. This new man— 'the Second God of War'— was shown leading armies, always in the front.
Defending cities, peoples, villages, tribes. Raising fallen comrades. Offering his blade to the sky, not to a throat.
Where the tyrant was draped in blood, this one was surrounded by laurels. His hands open, not clenched. The people around him smiled.
A title appeared repeatedly: The Honoured Blade.
Another mural showed him kneeling beside a woman crowned in flowers, her skin warm— a deep dark brown. With eyes closed, her lips were smiling faintly as she cradled his bloodied hand. Above them, the sun was rising, painting the sky a lovely shade of pink and orange.
"She of Grace," it read. "He loved her more than peace."
The next murals were different.
The woman, now faded to near transparency, lay on an altar. The man stood over her, holding her body. Face contorted in anguish.
I kept walking. The hall curved into another chamber. Fewer columns here. The murals darker. Less symmetrical.
The same man stood alone.
No army. No laurels.
He knelt at a grave carved into the base of a mountain. The sky above him bled red. He was older now. Hair longer. Lines carved into his face.
In the next mural, the grave was gone.
So was his armor.
Instead, he wore nothing but tattered cloth, face twisted mid-roar, hands wrapped around someone's neck.
"War against good."
The next showed him covered in blood. Standing in a ruined field. Smoke in the background. Dead soldiers at his feet— some wearing his old colors.
The art had shifted styles again. Less clean. Angrier strokes. Chisel marks deeper, more erratic.
Near the end, there was a depiction of him high above a crowd, arms raised in victory. But the crowd was split— half cheered, half cowered. Some turned their faces away.
The last mural had no title.
Just a jagged depiction of the god's face.
Unsmiling, with eyes spiralling... just like hers.
But where her spirals promised infinite, hungry malice, his seemed... empty. Lost.
And in his hand, clutched so tight the stone was cracked, was a small, crudely carved flower. The same type of flowers "She of Grace" had worn on her hair in the earlier, happier mural.
Time seemed to avoid the eyes and the flower— cleaner there, as if something had wiped them again and again.
Someone had slashed a long crack across his face from temple to chin. Dust had settled deeper in the slash across his face— thicker, dark with years of grime. The way the dirt clung to it made it look fresh— like the wound still wept.
My fingers brushed the mural— grit stuck to my skin, powdery and fine, like bone dust.
I stared at it for a while, then stepped back.
Judging by the transfer of titles, can one take another God's place by killing them?
No real explanation. But the people that built this place had documented the shift— from hero, to lover, then something else entirely.
I left the building and moved around the city.
Still no signs of human life. No 'magic'. But the murals left a story behind, and it wasn't subtle.
One statue near the stairs had its face hacked off— not by time, but by rage.
The stone hand still held a broken sword.
I kept walking.