Every time I got closer, I realized that what I was standing on wasn't just a battlefield… but an open mass grave, where no one had been buried, and no one had been granted the honor of staying alive.
There was no victor here, no defeated everyone had fallen. They fell fighting with everything they had, with their teeth if necessary, with their nails, with a blind hope in some goal… a goal perhaps even death itself had forgotten.
The corpses escalated from scattered hundreds, to piled thousands, to a sea of rotting human flesh. They were stacked atop one another like layers of a corrupted mountain. There was no air left to breathe; the air itself was polluted, heavy, saturated with the stench of coagulated blood and decaying flesh.
Every inhale was proof of what happens to those who lose.
Every exhale was an admission that I was still alive… though I did not deserve it more than they did.
Swords were embedded in bodies as if they had grown from them. Arrows rested in split skulls, in stiff mouths that had long ceased screaming. Armorpierced, burnedand things that could not be categorized… limbs that did not belong to their owners, twisted metal fragments as if exposed to unimaginable heat, and symbols carved into bones that I dared not understand.
What I approached was not merely a field… but a city standing behind this hell, silent.
A city watching.
I stopped for a moment, stared at its distant walls, and wondered:
"Is what I'm doing courage… or foolishness?"
"I have to do it…"
My voice came out faint, exhausted, as if it belonged to someone else living inside my chest.
"There's no choice… not after everything that's happened."
I continued walking, lifting my feet with difficulty from between the bodies, stumbling over severed arms, avoiding faces whose eyes still stared open at the sky. I picked up a less rusted sword here, a wearable piece of armor there. I took a dark cloak from one of them that hadn't yet been touched by decay and wore it instead of these filthy hides clinging to my skin like a mark of shame.
Every step was a betrayal of the dead.
Every piece of equipment I took was an admission that I lived at their expense.
"Forgive me…" I muttered, not expecting forgiveness.
This field was merely a grave before a city deliberately left behind it.
Why were the bodies left like this?
Was it a warning?
Or a display of power?
Perhaps the city ahead possessed enough strength to spill the blood of an entire army without scratching a single wallor perhaps it was inhabited by creatures that claimed to be human.
It didn't take long for me to see one of those "things."
It was tall, hunched, as though its back had been broken under an ancient weight. Its skin was gray and translucent, revealing black veins pulsing beneath it, like a web of darkness slowly moving inside its body. Its head had no eyes, only long slits on either side that trembled like gills searching for the scent of life.
Its mouth…
Its mouth opened vertically, a long slit from chin to mid-face, filled with many short, uneven teeth resembling broken blades.
One of them drove its fingersending in five bony hooksinto the belly of a relatively fresh corpse.
It didn't tear it apart violently… it opened it slowly.
Deliberately slow.
It pulled out the intestines as if they were a long thread of fabric, watching them slide out until the body was completely emptied. Then it made a sound…
A sound like laughter, but wetter, stickiercloser to a gurgle in a throat filled with blood.
The others approached. A whole pack.
They shared the feast in broken silence, accompanied only by the sounds of chewing, as if they were having a quiet dinner on a cold evening.
To me, this was a graveyard.
To them… it was an endless banquet.
I froze in place when one of them raised its head toward me.
No eyes… yet I felt its gaze pierce through me.
It inhaled, the slits on its head tremblingthen… it ignored me.
I breathed slowly.
"Seems this body of mine doesn't satisfy your hunger…" I whispered bitterly.
"All you want is easy prey… dead prey… something that won't make you exert yourself."
There was no courage in my voice. Only something closer to self-contempt.
Yes, the creature before me seemed lazy… but it was lazy because it was full, not because it was incapable.
And I was not tempting prey.
Not yet.
"Stay cautious…" I told myself. "Instinct doesn't need a reason to change."
I continued moving, trying not to make a sound, passing by the pack absorbed in their feast. Every step was a gamble. Every breath was a possibility of becoming my last.
After what felt like an eternity, I saw something rising among the bones.
It was a tower…
A tower made entirely of human bones.
Skulls at the base, ribs interwoven like pillars, vertebrae arranged with grotesque precision. It wasn't random; it was deliberate construction.
And at its peak… a flag.
It wasn't cloth.
It was skin.
Human skin, stretched and dried, its edges hanging as if they still remembered their owner.
I got closer.
Written on it in dark red script, uneven and fluid, as though the writer had used a finger instead of a tool:
"The city belongs to the Temple."
Something cold ran through my veins.
The Temple.
The word echoed in my head like an old resonance.
I saw a dark room, chains, screams that were never allowed to escape.
I smelled dampness, rot… and burned flesh.
"Temple…?" the word escaped me like a confession.
"Is it the same temple that imprisoned me… and tortured me?"
I paused, gripping the sword until my knuckles turned white.
"Or is it another… worse one?"
I raised my gaze toward the city again.
Silent.
Still.
Waiting.
"If it is…" I muttered, my voice carrying a tremor I couldn't tell was fear or hatred, "then I will enter this city… even if I become another corpse added to this tower."
The wind passed through the bones, producing faint scraping sounds, as if the dead were whispering for me to enter.
It didn't matter…
All I had to do was approach the gates that were… open?
I stopped in place, as if the ground had been pulled from beneath my feet.
"W-why… why are they open?"
The gates weren't broken, nor torn down, nor marked by siege. They stood tall, intact, and wide open… as if the city was inviting me inside.
Or waiting for me.
My suspicion multiplied. I picked up a heavier shield than before, wide enough to protect my back, and fastened it tightly. I gripped my sword and entered slowly.
…
Silence.
Not ordinary silence.
A dense silence, as if the air itself had been emptied of vibration. No creaking wood, no fluttering cloth, no whisper of wind through the alleys. Even my footsteps felt muted, as though the ground swallowed sound before it was born.
"Nothing…"
I looked right and left. Houses still standing. Open windows. Half-closed doors. Abandoned carts in the middle of the roads.
An entire city… emptied of its inhabitants all at once.
"No one… or at least that's what I think."
I felt no presence.
Heard no breath but my own.
No heartbeat but mine.
"Strange…"
What exactly happened here for all of them to fall before a city with no one in it to protect it?
Did they defend emptiness?
Or something that wasn't human to begin with?
A thought slipped into my mind, cold as a needle.
…What if what I think is true?
If that Temple is the same one… and if it was destroyed… then perhaps
"No…"
Maybe this entire city was nothing more than a storage.
Raw material.
Bodies to be consumed in order to create something greater.
"They succeeded…" I whispered.
"But what did they leave for the god to worship?"
I suddenly stopped, clutching my head.
"Don't think like that, elia."
I smiled bitterly.
"The god doesn't need you… you are the one who needs him. That's the logic, isn't it?"
I let out a short, hollow laugh.
"Yes… they were all offered as lab rats. Stripped of their names, their lives, their humanity… to create the perfect body."
I looked around me.
"And so it became a nameless city."
The word "nameless" echoed inside me more than it should have.
Then an idea came to me…
Maybe… what I will build will be here.
Maybe this city will be its headquarters… or at least its beginning.
A nameless city.
A city that can be reshaped from nothing.
"I'll stay out of its sight…" I muttered.
"And I'll build here… an empire greater than I ever dreamed of."
I raised my head.
"Here, the throne will be built."
But…
A sound.
Faint.
Very faint.
Like fingernails scraping against stone.
I froze.
I didn't hesitate.
My hand moved on its ownI drew the bow and released an arrow with a speed that made the air whistle around it. The strength of my arm alone was enough for the arrow to shoot out like a bullet.
A scream.
I approached quickly.
What I hit wasn't an animal… and wasn't fully human.
A lower body like a spider's, with multiple twisted legs, twitching violently.
And an upper half that was human… thin, naked, with a pale face and wide eyes filled with tears.
"What the hell is that?!"
It was crying.
Crying like a small child.
With a trembling hand, it held the arrow lodged in its shoulder, trying to pull it out, screaming between broken sobs.
"W-wait…"
I stepped closer.
It's… a child, actually.
Its features were small. Its voice thin.
But its body… deformed, twisted, split between two kinds of existence.
I froze.
Then I heard rustling around me.
I turned.
People.
They emerged from the alleys, from the windows, from the shadows. Some looked normal… ordinary humans, but their faces were pale, their eyes sunken.
Others… were deformed in different ways; extra limbs, gray skin, faint black veins beneath the surface.
I stepped back.
But something pulled me from behind.
I looked.
The corpses.
The corpses that were outside the city… had begun to crawl.
Broken arms wrapped around my legs.
Stiff fingers gripped my armor.
Jawbones without lips clamped onto the edges of my cloak.
I was surrounded.
"What is happening here?!"
I tried to fight.
I cut off a head.
I crushed a skull.
But they were dead.
And the dead do not fear.
One death means nothing… if the rest rise.
Suddenly the crowd parted, and an old man appeared.
He looked on the edge of the grave; his back hunched, his skin wrinkled like dry hide left under the sun. But his eyes… his eyes were sharp, alert, filled with a terrifying certainty.
He stepped forward.
"Submit, stranger."
His voice did not tremble.
"You who chose to harm our people…"
He stared at me for a long moment.
Then his eyes widened.
"Wait… you… you are him."
He fell silent for a moment, as if an old memory had awakened within him.
"One of the Temple's slaves."
I felt the weight of the corpses increase until I fell to my knees.
"The fighter who killed all his rivals with utter brutality."
He smiled faintly.
"I truly admire that ferocity… but…"
His gaze sharpened, and he leaned closer to me.
"How did you reach here from such a distant place? Escape is impossible for someone like you."
I didn't answer.
Then I muttered, "Or maybe… yes, they…"
The old man's expression changed suddenly.
Realization struck him like lightning.
"At last…" he whispered, his voice beginning to tremble.
"The god has come. The god has come…"
He raised his head toward the sky.
"And you… you have been sent."
I looked at him, breathing with difficulty.
"Yes."
I smiled coldly.
"I was sent by a god. So… let me go."
He was silent for a moment.
Then… he laughed.
A deep, hoarse laugh, filled with something like pity.
"Yes… you have been sent."
He stepped closer.
"As an offering."
My heart skipped a beat.
"You… are the offering."
I looked around me.
Their faces.
All of them were looking at me with the same expression.
Anticipation.
Hope.
Hunger.
Even that deformed child… had stopped crying, and was staring at me with shining eyes, as if seeing salvation.
"Yes…" the old man said, his voice rising.
"You are the cure to our condition. By sending you to us, he offers you to uswe who have long awaited him."
Their murmurs grew louder.
"At last… with the Temple's success… we have returned to our era."
My fingers trembled.
"The darkness that devoured our minds for so long will finally fade."
The old man raised his arms.
"So that our glory may return… we, the mages… and survive the massacre."
Mages.
So they were not victims.
That absolute gentleness that governed their logic… was not mercy.
It was blind faith.
The faith of the Temple… which had been destroyed, without anyone realizing its fall.
They looked at me as one looks at salvation.
But I saw something else in their eyes.
They did not only want to be saved.
They wanted… to consume me.
I tightened my grip despite the restraints.
"I will not be anyone's sacrifice…" I whispered and this time, my voice did not tremble.