I have wandered far from where it all ended. I have walked through lands that should have been foreign but felt like echoes of the past—each one a wound waiting to be reopened. From the western deserts of the Republic of Pavalor, where the sand cuts deeper than steel, to the lush and treacherous jungle archipelagos of the Sereon Theocracy, where the air is thick with the scent of rot and prayer. I have seen the rolling green hills of the Basillian Empire, untouched by war yet weighed down by a silence more suffocating than battle cries. I have walked the towering mountains of the Federation, where the snow drowns all sound and all thought.
And still, I am searching.
For what, I no longer know.
The years have stripped me of the person I once was. I do not dream as I used to. Sleep is no longer a reprieve but a torment. Every night, I find myself in the Rift again, trapped in that fog-ridden battlefield, staring into the lifeless eyes of my lost comrades as their blood stains my hands anew. And every morning, I awaken to the same emptiness, to the same truth: that they are gone, and I am still here.
The world moves on without them, without Kvatz, without anyone who once mattered. But I am trapped in the past, a ghost haunting the living. There are days when I do not speak, when I go weeks without hearing another voice. And then there are nights when I laugh—laugh like I did in the Tundra, when the madness first took root in my bones.
The laughter comes unbidden, sharp and cruel, and when it fades, it leaves behind nothing but silence. People have learned to fear me. I see it in their eyes, in the way they flinch when I pass. Some call me cursed, others whisper that I am death given form, wandering the lands in search of my next victim.
Perhaps they are right.
Perhaps I should be feared. I no longer care for their judgment.
Their prayers mean nothing, their warnings fall on deaf ears. The only truth that remains is the one I carry within me: that I am lost, and there is no road that leads back. I have walked through blood-soaked battlefields and ancient ruins swallowed by time. I have stood at the edge of the world, where the sea roars like a beast in mourning, and I have felt nothing. No fear, no awe, no peace. Just the cold. Just the silence. The Entente of the Four, with its endless marshes and hidden things lurking beneath the murk, is where I find myself now.
A place where the ground shifts beneath my feet, where nothing is certain except that everything here is drowning.
A fitting place for someone like me.
There are whispers of something stirring in the shadows, of a sickness creeping through the waters, consuming the land piece by piece. A new war is coming, or so they say.
As if any war has ever ended.
The streets of this city stink of rot and rain, the air thick with the scent of stagnant water and unwashed bodies. Smoke drifts from the gutters, curling into the damp night like the dying breath of something long-forgotten. The lanterns above cast sickly yellow halos that shimmer in the mist, making everything look blurred, distorted, unreal.
I do not know the name of this place. It is just another pit where the desperate and damned gather, clinging to whatever dregs of life they can still scavenge. The Entente's reach is long, but even here, in the shadow of its capital, the law is weak. The world does not care for those who drown in its filth. And neither do I.
I step into a bar with a sagging roof and walls stained with the sweat and breath of too many years. The floor creaks beneath my boots, sticky with spilled liquor and filth. A single, low-burning oil lamp flickers at the counter, casting long shadows that stretch and twist across the room. The patrons are hunched figures, slumped over tables, their faces lost to drink and weariness. The murmur of voices is dull, lifeless—a background hum of people trying to forget.
I do not belong here. But then, I belong nowhere.
I move towards the bar, the weight of my steps slow, deliberate. The bartender barely glances at me as I sit. He is a thick-shouldered man with a face carved from exhaustion, his fingers dark with years of wiping down this dying place. He slides a bottle toward me without a word. He doesn't ask what I want. Maybe he can see it in my eyes—the emptiness, the hunger for something that cannot be found at the bottom of a glass.
I pour the drink myself. The liquor burns my throat, but I don't cough. I simply swallow, feeling it settle inside me, heavy and hollow.
The voices in the room fade into the background. I listen to them only as one listens to the wind, letting them drift past without meaning. Until one does not.
"Hey," a voice slurs, thick with alcohol and arrogance. "Hey, you."
I do not look up. I do not acknowledge him. But he takes my silence as an invitation.
A hand slaps against the bar beside me, too close, the skin dirt-streaked and rough. "I ain't seen you around before. Where's a pretty thing like you been hiding?"
I exhale slowly. There is no anger in me, no irritation, just a deep, unshakable indifference. He does not know who I am. He does not know that his life is already over.
He leans closer. I can smell the rancid breath, the mixture of cheap spirits and rotting teeth. "C'mon, don't be shy. A girl like you shouldn't be drinkin' alone."
His voice is a dull, grating thing. I listen to it only as I might listen to the buzzing of a gnat, meaningless, something to be swatted away. And so I do.
My hand moves before thought. A single pull of the trigger, a single flash of light and sound, and his skull cracks open like a fruit split against the pavement. The shot rings loud in the dead space of the bar. The silence that follows is heavier than any scream could be.
The man's body slumps forward, his blood mixing with the liquor pooling on the bar. His mouth hangs open, his last words frozen in a twisted echo of what might have been a smile.
I set my gun down on the counter. The weight of it is familiar, comforting in a way nothing else is. The bartender does not move, does not speak. The other patrons remain frozen, their drunken haze shattered by the violence before them. I wonder if they expect me to say something. If they expect remorse. An explanation.
I simply take another drink.
The liquor tastes no different than it did before.
The bartender reaches beneath the counter, not for a weapon, but for a cloth. He wipes away the blood, slow and methodical, as though it is nothing more than another spilled drink. When he finishes, he leans against the counter and looks at me with eyes that have seen worse things than this.
He does not ask why. He does not tell me to leave.
He only says, "That'll be extra for the mess."
I nod. That is fair. I slide a coin across the wood. He nods, pockets it, and pours me another drink.
No one in this place cares enough to call for the law, nor would the law care to come. The dead man was just another weight dragging this city down, another soul drowning in the filth of its own making. They will forget him before the night is done. He was nothing. I am nothing. And in the end, nothing changes.
I finish my drink, set the glass down with quiet finality, and leave.
Outside, the city drowns in its own filth. Inside, the world moves on.
The streets are damp beneath my boots, the cobblestones slick with a mixture of rain and things better left unnamed. The city does not sleep, not truly. There are always those who linger in the alleys, who whisper and watch, waiting for an opportunity that will never come. Figures shuffle between the fire-lit stalls of the market, their faces hidden beneath threadbare hoods, their hands clutching close to their bodies as if afraid something might be taken from them.
Or perhaps afraid of what they might take.
I pass a man with haunted eyes, his uniform tattered but still recognizable beneath layers of grime. A soldier once. Perhaps from the last war, or the one before that. There is no shortage of men like him in places like this—ghosts wearing flesh, wandering without purpose. He mutters something under his breath as I pass, something about the Facsimile War, about the things he saw in the trenches, about the screams that still echo in his skull.
I do not slow my step. I have my own ghosts.
Merchants call out from their stalls, their voices hoarse from the damp air and long nights. They sell whatever can be sold—rusted weapons, half-spoiled food, charms made of bone and wire. A woman draped in silks too fine for this place watches me with sharp eyes, her lips curling around words I do not care to hear.
I stop at a stall near the edge of the market, beneath the glow of a lantern smeared with soot. The man behind the counter is old, his skin marked with burns, his hands blackened from years of handling gunpowder and steel. He does not greet me, only nods once, as if we have done this before.
I place my sidearm on the counter. The same gun that had fired a bullet into the skull of a man who thought he could reach for me. The weight of it is lighter than I remember, or perhaps it is I who has grown heavier.
The old man eyes it, turns it over in his hands. "Well-kept," he mutters, his voice dry as parchment. "Good make."
I do not answer. There is nothing to say.
He sets it aside and reaches beneath the counter, pulling out a rifle wrapped in oil-stained cloth. When he unrolls it, I see an older model—worn, but still reliable. Vimaro Mark One-E, standard-issue in the military. Bolt-action, heavy stock, a weapon built for those who expect to need it more than once. A classic, really.
"This'll do," I say.
The old man grunts, his version of agreement. We do not discuss price. We both know the worth of what we trade.
I take the rifle, slinging it over my shoulder. The weight is different from my pistol, but familiar all the same. A weapon is a weapon. Death is death.
I leave the market behind, my path leading me into the darker veins of the city, where the lanterns do not reach and the walls lean too close together. My safehouse is not far—an old basement beneath a building that no longer remembers its purpose. The door is hidden behind crates that have long since rotted, the entrance a narrow stairway leading down into the damp earth.
The air inside is stale, thick with the scent of mildew and dust. A single cot rests against the far wall, the blankets folded but untouched. A lantern flickers on the wooden crate I use as a table, casting shadows that stretch and twist.
I close the door behind me, locking out the city and all it carries.
I sit.
The rifle rests across my lap, its weight solid, real. A thing of steel, built for purpose, meant to endure. It has seen its share of war, that much is clear from the scuffs along the stock, the faint scratches on the receiver. Someone before me had relied on this weapon, had trusted it with their life. And now, it is mine.
I reach for an oil-stained cloth and a small bottle of lubricant from the crate beside me. The lantern casts a dim, flickering glow over my hands as I work. Each motion is slow, deliberate—the act of cleaning a weapon is as much ritual as it is maintenance.
I pull back the bolt, inspecting the chamber, running a finger along the worn grooves where countless rounds have cycled through. It reminds me of the old days—before the Rift, before the tundra, before Kvatz's blood stained my hands.
Kvatz.
His name alone is a wound.
That bastard used to tease me for the way I handled my rifle, always too careful, too methodical. He was never one for patience. I can still hear his voice, low and rough, shaped by years of war. "Lanni, a rifle's a tool, not a relic. You don't pray to it—you shoot with it."
I smile, or maybe grimace. The difference feels meaningless.
Back then, he carried an old semi-automatic revolver, some Republican-make model he swore by. Said it had saved his life more times than he could count. He never cleaned it unless it jammed, and even then, he'd do just enough to get it firing again. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," he'd say with that damn lopsided grin of his.
I run the cloth along the barrel, rubbing away the fine layer of grime, watching as the metal catches the lantern's glow. Kvatz would have laughed at me for this—wasting time on an old rifle when there were better things to do. "Like what?" I might have asked, and he'd just shake his head and smirk. "Drinking, mostly."
I remember the nights we spent huddled in makeshift camps, passing a flask between us, pretending the war wasn't waiting just beyond the firelight. He used to tell stories, some real, some fabricated, but all of them ridiculous. Tales of cities swallowed by the sea, of warriors who could walk through fire without burning, of an ancient world before the Surge, when people still believed in things like honor and duty without question.
I lower the rifle and rest my head back against the cold stone wall. The memories come unbidden, the weight of them pressing down on me like the tundra's endless snow. I can still see his face—the way it twisted in rage, in confusion, as he came at me in the fog. The way his voice broke when he called me by a name that wasn't mine. The way the light left his eyes when I stabbed him.
I tighten my grip on the rifle, my fingers pressing into the worn and rusted metal. My breath is steady, but inside, I am unraveling. The past is a sickness, creeping in through the cracks, poisoning what little remains.
I force myself to move, to keep working. I disassemble the bolt, checking for wear, running my fingers along the small imperfections in the metal. I clean it, reassemble it, slide it back into place. The act steadies me, keeps me from slipping too far into memory.
But the past is not done with me yet.
I can almost hear Kvatz's voice, low and teasing, as if he's standing just behind me. "Lanni, you really gonna keep carrying all that weight? Might as well wear the whole damn war on your back."
I exhale, slow and quiet. The lantern flickers. The city outside groans in its sleep.
The thought twists in my chest, but I push it down, push it away. I have no space for grief anymore. It is a luxury for those who still have something left to lose. I finish my work on the rifle, setting it aside with a slow exhale. My joints ache from the weight of exhaustion, but it is not the kind that sleep can cure. It never is.
My stomach twists—not from hunger, but from the sheer monotony of existence. Still, I reach into my pack and pull out a ration. The packaging is dull, its contents even duller. I peel it open, revealing something that barely qualifies as food, a block of compressed sustenance meant to keep a body moving, nothing more.
I take a bite. The texture is as dry as sawdust, the taste indistinct, like chewing on the memory of a meal rather than the thing itself. But I chew. I swallow. Because that is what living is now. Not survival, not purpose—just motion. One foot in front of the other. One bite after another. One breath at a time.
I eat without thinking, without tasting. The act is mechanical, just like everything else. The past few years have stripped me of many things—faith, hope, even anger. I have lost count of the places I've been, the nameless cities, the faceless people. I have wandered without direction, without reason, a ghost passing through the world unnoticed and untouched. But the weight in my chest, the ache in my bones—these things remind me that I am still here. And I wonder why.
The last piece of the ration sticks to the roof of my mouth, forcing me to take a sip of stale water from my canteen. I don't know why I bother. It all tastes the same—like nothing. Like dust. Like a life long since emptied of meaning.
I toss the empty wrapper aside and lean back against the wall, letting the silence settle around me. The air is thick, unmoving. The only sound is the distant drip of water from the pipes above, steady and ceaseless. I close my eyes, willing myself into the kind of rest that does not come easily.
I know what waits for me on the other side of sleep. The fog. The battlefield. The moment I cannot escape. The moment I refuse to forget.
But I let the darkness take me anyway.