Kelvin turned slightly, his armored form casting a long shadow over Hope as he spoke.
"Follow me." His voice was calm but firm. "If you want to survive."
Then, without waiting for a response, he started walking.
Hope hesitated for a moment, glancing around at the ruined battlefield. He didn't trust this man—he didn't trust anyone—but he also wasn't an idiot. He had no idea where he was, no weapons, no supplies. The logical choice was clear.
With a quiet sigh, he pushed himself up and followed.
As they walked, Hope finally had a chance to take in his surroundings properly. The initial chaos of survival had left him too focused on running, hiding, and fighting to truly absorb where he had ended up. But now, with the immediate danger passed, he looked up—
—and froze.
The sky above was vast and dark, stretching endlessly in all directions. But it wasn't the darkness that made Hope pause. It was the moons.
There were eight of them.
Seven smaller moons surrounded a massive central one, as though they were caught in an eternal orbit. They glowed with an eerie, pale light, illuminating the ruins in an otherworldly glow. Some of the smaller moons had jagged cracks running along their surfaces, while others seemed impossibly smooth, their light strangely distorted.
A chill ran down Hope's spine.
What kind of sky was this?
His mind struggled to process what he was seeing. Back in the waking world, the sky was familiar—one sun, one moon, predictable and unchanging. But here… here, even the heavens were unnatural.
"What kind of place is this?" he muttered under his breath.
Kelvin didn't answer, continuing his steady march forward.
Hope tore his gaze away from the impossible sky and looked around. The land itself was no less unsettling.
The ruins stretched far and wide, broken remains of a city long since devoured by time. Crumbling towers stood like skeletal remains, their once-proud structures reduced to hollowed-out husks. Some buildings were half-submerged in the cracked ground, as though the earth itself had tried to swallow them whole. Others bore deep scars—massive gouges, shattered walls, blackened scorch marks—as if they had endured a war unlike anything Hope had ever imagined.
A war fought with weapons that left no survivors.
His boots crunched against the debris-strewn ground as he walked, his eyes scanning the ruins. There were no signs of life. No plants, no animals, nothing. Only broken stone, shattered glass, and an eerie silence that clung to everything like a thick fog.
A city long dead.
And yet… it didn't feel empty.
Something lingered in the air, something unseen but undeniably present. A weight pressing down on his chest, making his instincts scream at him to keep moving, to stay quiet, to be ready to run at any moment.
The Veil's voice echoed in his mind.
"Welcome, contestant, to the Ashlands."
Hope clenched his fists.
He was in the Ashlands now. There was no waking up from this nightmare. No running back to the outskirts.
He was here.
And somehow, he had to survive.