In a small act of defiance, Kyle made another attempt at arming himself. He tore free a rib from the Glacial Skyscander's carcass, rough and splintered at the edges, then followed after the beautiful stranger and her drifting orb.
The bone, nearly three and a half feet in length and bent at one end, served as a crude weapon in his grip. He swung it about experimentally, the motions clumsy, almost childish, as though he were practising swordplay against the shrieking wind.
Na-Ri watched him for a moment, her expression neither impressed nor amused, before turning back to the path.
Beyond the gale, other howls and roars echoed through the darkness at uneven distances. Yet the orb guided them away from each threat precisely as she had promised, and for twenty minutes they had not once crossed paths with a creature of the ruin.
"If all this ended tomorrow and we were forced to begin anew, what sort of world would you construct?" Na-Ri asked in an even tone, sparing Kyle a sidelong glance.
The young man returned her gaze, unsettled by the question. Never in his life had he contemplated the world reverting to any semblance of normality, a normality that had never truly existed for him since birth. The prospect of rebuilding civilisation struck him as less a practical plan and more the indulgence of a childish reverie.
Even so, he saw no harm in entertaining the discussion. The thought seemed harmless enough, and it offered a diversion, a faint amusement, though he doubted he would ever embrace the necessary burden if such an opportunity arose.
Their journey still stretched on for hours along the road before the promise of a safe bed, and hunger coupled with weariness gnawed at him with growing persistence. Under such strain, there was little disadvantage in allowing his mind to drift into fanciful speculation.
"If I were given the chance to shape the world... I cannot say with certainty. Offer me an example, Lee."
She rolled her eyes before resting her blade against her shoulder as they continued along the path.
"Very well. I believe the world would require extensive farmland for reliable harvests, sources of clean water with proper preservation, secure shelters, and every form of support necessary to render life safer while guiding people towards prosperity."
Kyle scoffed before realising it, his body betraying disdain before his mind could temper the reaction.
'What a delusion... Yes, humanity will surely crown you as their new deity for such generosity.'
Looking at her, he spoke with grim practicality:
"That is your grand design? Huts and potatoes? It sounds less like rebuilding civilisation and more like pressing reset."
The stranger returned his doubtful smile with an unwavering stare.
"And what is wrong with that? The old world collapsed beneath its own excesses and the corruption that festered after the death of the gods. Why do you condemn the thought?"
Kyle leaned on the rib he used as a walking stick and kept his gaze on the floating orb ahead. The word grandeur lingered in his thoughts until its weight settled into meaning.
After piecing it together, he replied slowly:
"The old world was decayed long before it burned. Wealth had been hoarded by the privileged while the rest scavenged, starving and freezing through winter. Countless lives ended before the collapse even began, when wealth itself became a hollow term. Hierarchy no longer rested on slips of paper but on actual strength. One had to fight to eat, regardless of family name or ancestry fifty years past. From what I have heard, those who governed the world — called governments — gorged themselves while residents dwindled into husks. If that is civilisation, why attempt to haul it back from the grave at all?"
Na-Ri was momentarily stunned by his response. It was the same refrain she had heard countless times before. There was no means of verifying it, for all of it belonged to a world that had ended more than thirty years before her birth, in the long years following the fall.
Nonetheless, considering human psychology and philosophy, Kyle was not mistaken, nor were the stories they had both grown up hearing. His words carried the sting of truth, sharpened by the cynicism of someone who had never known the world he so readily condemned.
"...And what is it we have now?" she asked softly. "You call it honest survival. I call it a poor imitation of the same rot, smaller in scale but no less cruel. At least the old world kept the pretence of law. That is what we need to tame humanity again. People could rely on real meat, food that had not expired, and clean water, even if they cursed the men who taxed it."
"Pretense is worse than nothing, Lee," Kyle retorted. "Better a thief who steals to survive than a treasurer who starves you with a smile. You praise law because you think it restrains people. I say it only masks their greed until the gallows loom. Strip it away, and you see them for what they are without disguise."
Kyle spoke from his own experience of a world stripped of law.
All the same, there had been many occasions in his childhood when he had been taken hostage by rules imposed under the guise of protection.
Do this. Do that.
Wait for permission before you sip the water on that table. Stay here. Do not go there, or death will come for you — delivered not by strangers but by those who called themselves family, those who swore to protect you within a shelter, yet became the first to cast you out when danger drew near.
She considered his point with a measured pause. Her curiosity about him grew sharper with every exchange.
His world — the darker, unseen face of the fallen age — was not something she could wholly grasp from words alone.
After all, had not everyone witnessed their share of the dark side?
Frankly, what she saw in him was the outlook of a sadist and a narcissist with a fractured mind, a man incapable of leading or reconstructing civilisation even if granted absolute authority. Such a mindset would corrode into monstrosity, and that was the bitter reality.
Her persistence in drawing him into small conversations was little more than an attempt to probe his inner self, but with each attempt she uncovered only greater shadows.
There was, however, value in recognising the fragment of truth within his words, even when shrouded in bitterness, self-hatred, and contempt both for humanity and for himself as one of them.
"So you would prefer beasts?" she asked. "A life spent chasing scraps, brawling over puddles of clean water, dying before thirty? You call that honesty?"
Kyle cast her a glance.
"It is real. Perhaps uglier than your blueprint, but real. At least no one conceals themselves behind false order."
Silence stretched between them as they walked. This was not a quarrel but a collision of visions. What unsettled her most was that he did not argue from ignorance like so many others.
In this age, education had died, and most people stumbled in darkness, unable to voice their thoughts beyond instinct.
For him to speak with such certainty, he must have absorbed the tales of raiders, men he sometimes mocked as fools while hiding from them, waiting for his chance to steal scraps to prolong another day in the brutal world.
Her own past remained unspoken, its details withheld.
But it was clear that they had been raised on different fragments of the same song, each convinced the other had misheard its tune.
"I once spoke with an old woman who had lived through the collapse and survived years of chaos," she said evenly. "She swore there was a food called bread, and it was cheaper than bullets. Imagine that — stomachs full before the day was half done. Tell me that is not worth pursuing."
His eyes dropped back to the rib he used as a crutch, and he felt nothing from her words. That reality had never existed for him. It resembled fantasy more than memory, a story from a world beyond his grasp.
"And I spoke to a man who claimed that residents would step over the dying rather than pause a moment to help. That was civilisation as well. Do you want it back? Very well. But do not delude yourself into thinking it was golden." Kyle lied, for he had never spoken to anyone who had said such a thing in his entire life.
It scarcely mattered, since she could not possibly know it was a fabrication. Besides, it remained a plausible reflection of what humanity was capable of. People often behaved that way.
The floating orb shifted its course as a growl carried from further along the road. They followed it into a narrow valley, having crossed the expanse of the desiccated seabed, which had consumed considerable time.
The beautiful stranger spoke again with indifference:
"It is not about dragging the old world back intact. It is about discerning what had already destroyed it long before Qi Corruption arrived. Scale and avarice ruined it, and those forces persist even now. Abandon the notion of states and build towns. Forget palaces, raise hearths. Teach that the land belongs to those who labour upon it, not to paper titles or hollow authority."
Kyle found himself compelled by the vision she presented. It was neither naïve nor utopian. Instead, it was austere, grounded, and within reach.
Her strength in this debate lay in how she rendered survival not as an obstacle to meaning, but as its cornerstone.
"And who guards it? Who prevents the first wretch with a sharper blade from seizing your town and crowning himself lord? You call it rebuilding; I call it granting tyranny a new set of bricks."
Kyle did not reject her vision of rebuilding the world. He dreaded it because it preyed upon his insecurities, and fear bore as much force as hope.
In the end, nothing rebuilt in this world will endure if mankind is given another chance, for humanity itself will be the hand to tear it down before anything else can. They fashion their own destruction and dress it in the name of law.
True balance had only now been achieved through raw power, for neither wealth nor statutes governed people any longer.
Creatures of the ruins wandered the land, and men sought survival by destroying them while also struggling against Corruption.
The sole commandment was to kill or be killed.
The pair abruptly ceased their argument and halted their steps the moment the orb did likewise.
Its glow revealed two figures advancing through the darkness, beneath a hill, oblivious to the watchers above.
One lay insensible upon a wooden slab, while the other dragged forward with weary effort towards a distant river.
The sky once more began to brighten, casting a gradual wash of light across the land.
Na-Ri dismissed her floating orb and extended her blade with deliberate precision as her gaze settled indifferently upon the two figures in motion.
It became apparent that the night in this realm endured for scarcely an hour, far shorter than the day.
A pale cast of light from above traced itself across the backs of the two survivors.