The moment they stepped past the village's crumbling gate, Florian felt it.
The air shifted.
Not just cold—no, that would have been merciful. This was something else. A weight, thick and suffocating, curling around his lungs and pressing into his skin like unseen fingers clawing at his very being. Each breath dragged heavier than the last, as though the atmosphere itself sought to hold him in place, to drown him in the silence.
The village was dying.
No—not dying. It was already dead.
The houses were little more than rotting husks, slumped like forgotten corpses left to decay. Roofs had caved in, the skeletal remains of wooden beams jutting out like shattered ribs toward the sky. Doors hung from their hinges, some missing entirely, leaving gaping black maws where entrances once stood.
The cobbled streets had crumbled into uneven dirt, buried beneath debris and the remains of a past long abandoned.
And yet—
They were awake.
Before dawn.
