When they finally climbed over the shattered rise, the air felt strange. It wasn't thin like the sharp cold of a mountain's peak, nor was it heavy and suffocating like the caverns they had just crawled through.
It was different—emptier, as if the sky itself had stopped breathing. Each inhale felt wrong, like they were stealing air that didn't belong to them, borrowed from a world that no longer wished to give.
The silence of it pressed against their lungs, reminding them that even breathing here was an intrusion.
Kaito was the first to slow his pace. His boots dragged across the strange ground, which looked like black glass mixed with burnt stone.
Every step made a sharp crack, the sound echoing far longer than it should have, as if the land itself wanted to remind them of their presence.
