Cassia had lost all sense of time. When he awoke, he found he was no longer lying on the metal table of the laboratory.
Now, he was surrounded by scorched earth ravaged by fire. The flames had been so intense that the gravel on the ground had fused into glasslike obsidian. Only the foundations buried under black ash, and the charred stumps of trees, hinted that human habitation had once existed here.
The wind still blew, cool yet carrying a trace of warmth. From time to time, a gentle and delicate rain drifted down from the sky.
It was clearly spring weather, yet not a single trace of life stirred upon the blackened soil. Even the hardiest seeds, usually unyielding to disaster, had been reduced to ash by the sweeping flames, scattered by the wind to destinations unknown.
He did not know where this place was. With his head down, Cassia trudged far in one direction. Slowly, the scorched black plain around him began to fade. His bare torso was soaked by the drizzle. By sucking on droplets of water that gathered on his arm, his desert-dry throat finally eased a little of its burning thirst.
"Where is this?" His own voice echoed again and again around him. The vast expanse before him was like a boundless plain, stretching so far that no edge could be seen—only that black-and-blue line where the land merged with the sky. Yet still, his words reverberated here.
No reply came. Why was it that none of his questions ever had answers? Cassia felt irritation gnaw at him. His throat burned worse, and the droplets forming on his arm could not meet his body's demand.
I need to find water, he thought, even in this blazing wasteland where it seems impossible. He sought a vantage point to expand his view. When he had first woken, he had noticed a faint, distant shadow on the horizon. But no matter how far he walked, the distance between them remained parallel—forever unchanged.
"Wasn't I lying on a metal table just now?" His lips were split and cracked, exposing raw red flesh. Inside his body, as dry as a desert, he could not even tell if blood still flowed.
"Wasn't I supposed to be in surgery?"
"Wasn't I supposed to be in the underground laboratory of the military school's biology building?"
"How could I be here?"
Questions filled his heart, yet not a single living thing existed around him to answer. Only the endless wind blew, and sometimes the thin rain fell.
Still, the rain was sweet. He couldn't help but comment inwardly: spring rain always carried a different taste—it was the taste of life.
Here, there seemed to be neither day nor night. The sky was forever burning like fire, scarlet flames streaked with smoke-darkened black, stretched like a shroud across the heavens.
The red was far too vivid, as though its fuel was fresh, scarlet blood—endless and unceasing. What else could set aflame the limitless sky and keep it burning so furiously?
The ground had become blackened earth again. Life could not exist in this domain. Cassia looked down at the damp ash beneath his feet, his white shoes already dyed with a new layer of black. He passed over a fractured glasslike scar scorched into the land by flames—it was a sight that made the heart tremble, as if one could still feel the heat of that fire.
He did not know how long he walked before his strength gave out. His steps faltered, and then he collapsed, the black ash staining him like dried blood. At the instant he fell, a massive shadow engulfed him.
When he raised his head, the distant blur he had been chasing all along now towered directly before him. It was a warship, broken in half. The wreck was so vast that even the scarlet light of the burning sky was temporarily blocked by its bulk. Like a mountain of steel, it loomed over the land. Its blackened hull had weathered countless years of corrosion. Around it lay scattered colossal gears, bent shafts, intact shells, shattered frames—all rusted red by time.
They stood silent upon the black wasteland, stripped of life's language, and only the wailing wind spoke through them.
Struggling to his feet, Cassia circled the wreck. At its center was a wound so ghastly it stole his breath. The alloy around it had cooled into twisted shapes, as if molten lava had once hardened there. Heat so fierce had melted most of the warship's frame into liquid metal; the remaining sections, unable to bear the strain, had snapped apart and fallen here.
What kind of fire could it have been, Cassia wondered, that could melt a warship of this size into rivers of iron?
No one answered.
Moving forward, he soon came upon a fallen cannon barrel, hurled down by immense force. Its caliber was taller than he was. Inside, rusted death-spiral grooves had dulled, yet the unseen blackness deep within still radiated the aura of a steel dragon once capable of spitting fire.
Skirting the barrel, Cassia heard a sound unique to steam machinery—the hiss of a damaged valve.
Surprise lit his face. So this world still holds other sounds.
A familiar white plume of steam appeared before his eyes. For once, he smiled. He even felt like crying in joy, though his body had long since run dry of tears. His cracked lips split painfully as his face formed the expression.
The column of steam sputtered like a dying breath, yet it still carried precious moisture.
A hose, thick as his arm, jutted from the ground. At its base, a rust-eaten valve had burst open, venting clouds of vapor. The other end of the hose was connected to a complex machine. Gears and shafts lay scattered all around, but beneath the hissing steam, faint clicking told him that some cogs still turned. Like the steam itself, the machine was in its final throes.
Cassia stripped off his damp trousers, pressing them against the valve's gap to capture droplets from the escaping steam. Repeating this again and again, at last he felt fluid moving inside his body, and the burn of thirst subsided.
With strength restored, he turned his gaze to the machine. The gear pile had long since been gnawed by time, red rust staining the surrounding soil. There, half-buried, a corner of a black card jutted out. It was a code card, its design little different from those of the present day.
Cassia picked it up, though naturally he left no mark upon it. The card had lost its sheen, yet the intact interlocked gears inside proved its function remained. A slot sat conveniently beside him. Cassia reasoned the hose must connect to one of the warship's analysis machines.
The damaged analyzer swallowed the card with ease. For a moment, the sound of gears biting together grew louder—but after waiting a while, nothing changed. He hadn't expected otherwise. This was merely a diversion; he harbored no illusions that a broken warship could miraculously take flight again. That nothing happened was, in fact, the most reasonable outcome.
Rested and with some strength regained, he prepared to study the wreck further, hoping to find a suitable path for climbing it.
But just as he rose to his feet, a burst of electronic static—unique to radio machines—crackled at his side.
"Hello, human friend."
The words came from within the analyzer. The voice carried no vitality, no strength—only the weary gasping of something that, like Cassia and the hissing valve, was clinging to its last breath.