The boy hesitated, staring at the hand extended toward him. It was not warm flesh but pale bone, stretched thin beneath what little skin remained. To touch it felt unthinkable, yet to refuse felt worse. His heart pounded, though it was not a living heart any longer.
He rose slowly, his legs trembling beneath him. His hand hovered, shaking, before he finally let it rest in the rider's grasp. The touch was cold—so cold that it seemed to seep into his bones.
"Come," the rider said.
The pale horse turned, hooves making no sound on the black earth. The boy followed, his steps heavy, his mind tangled with fear and questions he dared not voice.
They walked in silence. The plain stretched endlessly ahead, unchanging. Dead trees clawed at the sky, their branches like skeletal arms reaching upward in eternal supplication. The ground cracked beneath his feet, yet no echo followed. Even the sound of his breathing seemed swallowed by the heavy stillness.
At last, the boy forced words from his mouth. "What is this place?" His voice was small, almost ashamed against the vastness.
The rider did not look at him. "It is the plain between."
"Between what?"
"Between what was," the rider said, "and what waits."
The boy frowned, his chest tightening. "So this is… limbo?"
The rider gave no name, but the silence that followed was its own kind of confirmation.
The boy's eyes darted around the horizon, desperate for anything but grey. That was when he saw them.
Shapes.
At first he thought they were tricks of the eye—dark smudges against the ash-colored land. But as they drew nearer, they took form. Figures, moving slowly across the plain.
The boy froze. They were people—or what remained of them.
One shuffled past, head bowed, eyes empty, lips moving in a whisper too soft to hear. Another stumbled in circles, muttering the same word again and again. A third sat upon the ground, rocking back and forth, hands clutched to their head as though the weight of memory would crush them.
There were hundreds. Perhaps thousands. Scattered across the land, each trapped in their own shadow of life, each alone in their torment.
The boy's stomach twisted. "Who are they?"
"They are the forgotten," the rider said.
The boy swallowed hard. "Why do they just… wander? Don't they move on, too?"
The rider's hood tilted slightly, as if listening to something only he could hear. "Some cannot let go. Their chains are heavy. They cling to what is gone, and so they remain."
The boy stared at the wandering figures, pity and fear warring inside him. He wanted to approach, to ask them what held them here, but the rider's presence pulled him onward.
As they walked, a woman stumbled into his path. Her eyes were wild, her voice cracked as she screamed, "My child—have you seen my child?" She reached for him with clawed fingers, her face twisted with desperation.
The boy stumbled back, heart racing. Her hands passed through his arm like mist, cold and damp. He gasped, staring as she dissolved into smoke before his eyes, leaving nothing behind.
He turned to the rider, horrified. "What happened to her?"
"She was never here," the rider answered.
The boy's chest tightened. His voice rose, breaking. "What do you mean she was never here? I saw her—she spoke to me!"
"An echo," the rider said. "A memory so strong it took form. But echoes fade."
The boy's hands clenched into fists. His throat burned with questions—questions that tumbled inside him but refused to escape. He walked on in silence, the rider's pale horse leading, the plain endless before them.
At last, he whispered to himself, voice so faint it was almost lost.
"Is this what waits for me too?"
The rider said nothing.