"There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign"
The weight of the silence was heavier than the golden plate on my back. I stood in the center of a kingdom of ghosts, the only thing still pulsing with heat in a sea of cooling iron and grey flesh.
I looked down at my hands. They were stained a dark, crusty crimson—the dried blood of a Romanian soldier I'd used as a human shield. It was a macabre camouflage, a layer of death that had allowed me to breathe while others bled out. With a trembling hand, I slid the black-and-white sword into its scabbard. The metallic shink felt like a final goodbye to the boys I had died next to. I reached into its leather housing, clutching the silver pendant I'd scavenged, and shoved it deep into my pocket.
It was my only compass. My only proof that I had once been a part of a world that made sense.
Turning my back on the slaughter, I began to walk toward the West. For two hours, the only sound was the rhythmic, hollow clank of my sabatons hitting the parched earth. Every step felt like an intrusion. I remembered that old quote about the traveler being the only foreign thing in a land, and it stung. I didn't just feel like a traveler; I felt like a glitch in the universe—a fragment of a modern world stuck in a medieval nightmare.
The plains eventually gave way to a strange, twisted orchard. The trees were tall, their bark pale and wrinkled like the skin of a centenarian. As I moved closer to pluck a few fruits, my heart hammered against my ribs. The knots in the wood weren't random; they were shaped into agonizing human faces, their mouths stretched in silent, wooden screams. It was as if the trees themselves were souls trapped in bark.
I didn't stay to investigate. I grabbed three or four of the deep-red apples—their skin felt like cold velvet—and scrambled away. I collapsed under a nearby ridge, biting into the fruit. The juice was tart and metallic, but as I chewed, my mind drifted.
Was my life back home worthless? The school, the exams, the mundane worries of a sixteen-year-old... they felt like a dream someone else had lived. Is this journey going to decide my value, or is it just a long walk to my own grave? I stared at the purple timer flickering on my retina. If I died here, I was just a nameless corpse in a golden suit.
I forced myself up. My throat was a desert, and the low, steady rush of water pulled me forward like a magnet.
Ahead lay the Malholan Lake.
The water was a beautiful, deceptive teal on the surface, shimmering under the alien sun. I knelt at the bank, my armor groaning as I dipped my gauntleted hands in. I leaned down to submerge my face, needing the cold shock to wake my senses. But as my eyes opened beneath the surface, my blood turned to ice.
Deep within the dark, lightless blue of the lake, two golden spheres ignited.
They weren't eyes—they were twin suns of predatory intent, rushing toward me with impossible speed. Before I could even pull back, a massive weight slammed into my arm. I heard the sickening crunch of metal as the creature's jaws crushed my vambrace and gauntlet, snapping the leather straps like thread.
A second later, teeth like jagged daggers clamped onto my leg, piercing the sabaton and dragging me into the freezing depths.
I was underwater, lungs screaming for air, staring into the face of a prehistoric nightmare. It was a shark, nearly four meters long, with skin the color of a drowned corpse. It was blind, possessing no pupils, yet it moved with surgical precision. It was hunting the scent of the blood I had smeared on my armor to hide from the Minocians. Irony tasted like lake water and copper.
Protruding from its snout was a vicious, obsidian horn, spiraled and sharp enough to pierce plate armor. Its long, whip-like red tail lashed through the water, creating a vortex that kept me pinned. As it opened its maw—a mouth so wide I could easily fit entirely inside like a common fish—I realized the true scale of the horror.
Death was back. It had followed me from the battlefield to the water.
Not today, I roared in my mind, bubbles exploding from my lips.
I reached for my hip, my fingers fumbling against the water's resistance until they hit the hilt of the black-and-white blade. I unsheathed it in a desperate, slow-motion blur. As the shark lunged for the final, crushing bite, I jammed the sword upward with every ounce of my remaining strength. I drove the steel through the roof of its mouth and straight into its primitive brain.
The creature thrashed violently, a cloud of dark, oily ichor filling the water, and released its grip.
I kicked frantically, my heavy golden armor dragging me toward the lightless bottom like an anchor. My lungs were on fire. Just as the darkness began to close in, my fingers clawed into the muddy bank. I hauled myself out, collapsing on the shore, coughing up lungfuls of silt and water.
I lay there, shivering, my vambraces ruined and my leg bleeding—but the timer was still ticking. I was the only lone survivor, standing in a graveyard of a world with no knowledge of the kingdoms that broke it. I was a ghost in golden armor, and my journey had only just begun. I survived, but I had lost my very last hope—my weapon.
[USER: RIAN][09 YEARS | 364 DAYS | 19 HOURS | 10 MINUTES]