Days trickled on and on, blurring together in an endless cycle of survival. They slept when their bodies demanded it, ate the last morsels of their provisions until there was nothing left, walked until their legs threatened to give out beneath them, and talked to keep the crushing silence at bay. The wasteland stretched before them, unending and unforgiving—a vast sea of cracked stone and dust that seemed determined to swallow them whole.
No monsters showed their faces in this desolate realm. It was as if even the creatures had deemed this place too barren, too hopeless to inhabit.
