The wolves refused to go any further.
Their paws pressed into the hard concrete, right at the border where red sands ended. But they did not cross. Their eyes were hazy and breaths heavy, after the overexertion from escaping the dunes, they were barely holding together. But their journey was over now.
"They can't come with us," Kshaya said quietly.
Lume stretched his hand to stroke one of them, the rough fur felt like sand but also warm.
"Because of Red?"
He nodded. "They were born from him. The desert's controls their lives. The moment they step out, it is unknown what will happen. But their instinct don't allow them to."
The wolves turned around without command, running back into the dunes, their crimson figures fading into the settling sands. It was silent again. Only the team remained, facing the skyline of the ruined city ahead.
Aiyra.
From this distance, the city looked like an abandoned industrial factory. Broken and overgrown. Everywhere they looked was touched by green. This place had been claimed by the nature long ago it felt.
The sight was strangely beautiful, like nature pretending to be architect. Or maybe an architect pretending to be nature.
Kshaya started walking and the others followed, stepping on hard ground for the first time after leaving the prison. It felt just a little weird before they were comfortable.
Lume was the first to speak, his voice carrying a relief none of them admitted. "We made it out of the desert in one piece. That should count as a miracle."
"Miracles don't exist," Kshaya replied. "Only rules. Rules that we followed and allowed us to come so far."
He stopped once to look back at the faint red horizon behind them. "Red couldn't touch us until the sun fell. The laws that bind it are vague but also tight. Unless it wishes to abandon all reason and it newly found sanity, it won't break the rules. It lives through what we believe it to be. That's how all Oldkin are. Human observation gives them meaning. Without us, they'd have no shape, no meaning."
Dr. Korr frowned. "You're saying we give them life?"
Kshaya tilted his head slightly. "We named them. We described their environments. The world listened to us. Words itself carry power, more power than you can imagine now."
The others exchanged glances, unsure if he was joking. But his tone was calm, almost gentle, as if explaining something too obvious to question.
"The unshackled ones it spoke of. They are the oldkins in Citadel right? Those who have lost all sanity and are bound no more by these laws you speak of?" Eira asked. There were a lot of questions that the team wanted answers to, and now that they were clear, their curiosity was visible.
"The Citadel is a lot worse than anything you can imagine. I can not imagine how time might have changed that place. My last visit was thirty-two years ago." Whenever talking about the Citadel, there was a pained look on his face. It wasn't obvious before, but now he had taken off his mask once more.
The team continued to walk deeper into the ruins, asking as they proceeded.
Lume, walking beside him, asked. "That compass of yours, did you bond with it just like you showed us before?"
"It bonded with me because I was listening," Kshaya said. "Most people don't."
"Then teach me," Lume said. "To listen. To bond."
Kshaya's pace didn't falter. "No. Bonds aren't learned. They happen. If you force one, it breaks you. Mira's case was an exception,,, and a dangerous one." He looked at her. "Don't ask me to repeat that again."
Lume muttered something under his breath but dropped the subject.
"Don't sulk, if there are opportunities along the journey, I will point them out. Opportunities to listen. And there will be. Our journey will demand the most from all of us, so be prepared."
The news was accepted in delight by some, but Eira only felt more dread.
They continued deeper. The building drew closer. The details were sharper. And the wrongness of it all finally started staring at them.
Walls covered in vines that curled only in ninety-degree angles. Bushes trimmed perfectly, every leaf the same shade of green. Flowers arranged in gradients along the sidewalk?
There was order here but it did not feel human.
"...Are the ruins of Aiyra supposed to look like this?" Mira whispered.
They stopped.
The silence stretched until Eira finally spoke. "According to the Council's records, this place was abandoned a few years after the Cataclysm. It used to be a secret base for research, one of the two leading spheres of science here in the south. But the ecological shifts from the surrounding regions made it unstable for habitation. Encroachment from the Red dunes, the mountains, and the black ridges. It was declared a no-stay zone."
"That's the official record," the sixth member said. "But the rumors said something else. That Aiyra was haunted. That people who entered lost track of time. And that something strange occupied this place now, one that wasn't born from nature, but of the city itself."
The air grew denser, like the city was listening.
Kshaya's shoulders tensed. "If that's true, we might've already stepped inside its territory."
'But we have been here before, the changes we see right now are recent' The radio's static interrupted the group.
Mira took a cautious step back. "You mean,,, another Oldkin?"
"No," Kshaya murmured. "It is not yet at the level."
Before he could explain further, a sharp scream cut through the still air.
It came from Mira.
Everyone turned. She was pointing at the sidewalk ahead, her hand trembling.
There, just beside the neatly-trimmed hedges, was a man.
He was pruning the bushes slowly, using a pair of rusted shears. His movements were steady, precise. His skin pale and sick, looking like dried leather with cracks. Unaware of the people pointing and staring at him, the continued his job, eyes completely white and blank.
He just kept trimming the hedge, humming a low, tuneless melody.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
Taren swallowed hard. "He's alive?"
Eira took a hesitant step forward. "No…"
Kshaya raised a hand to stop her.
The shears moved again. A perfect cut. The man's hand trembled every time, but he continued. He wasn't alive. And yet he wouldn't die either.
Kshaya's voice dropped to a whisper. "He's pruning because that is all that he remembers of his life. That's what he used to do. Muscle memory. That is a living dead."
The team stared, horrified.
Around them, a faint noise started. Something that most of them hadn't heard in a long time. The hum of electricity.
A streetlight beside them lit up. Then another and another. Billboards in the distance became visible. Neon lights and generators.
Slowly the city came alive.
The team hastily drew distance from the ruins, setting up a camp right at the intersection of domains. They couldn't go back in to the Red desert. And the first stop of their journey was starting to look hauntingly back at them.
"Is the city itself alive now? Are going to have to face another Oldkin?" Dr. Korr was definitely traumatized from their desert experience as he did not look good.
The others were also a little shaken, but for different reasons.
"The living dead, I thought they were like empty husks. Bodies without any mind." Mira was still able to make out the man in the distance, snipping at the bushes.
As the city had come to life, slowly they had been able to make out a lot more such dead people, going about their way. As if still alive. The ruin actually looked like a city from past. But it wasn't.
Eira was confused. "The living dead are not dead in a real sense. The bodies are still alive while the mind is dead. But this is the first time I am seeing one act on its own. They are very much a mystery and even the Council does not know much. Our understanding of the human body is not enough to clearly declare with definitive truth what's missing in them."
Her voice was distraught like she remembered a memory long forgotten. But no one replied.
The team sat still, eyes fixed on Aiyra.
A subway sign flickered to life. A drone floated past an intersection and turned as if obeying traffic laws. Music from a bar filtered through.
Somewhere deeper within the city, they heard the sound of a train grinding along rails. Just the operator repeating what memory told it to do.
Taren rubbed his arms. "This… isn't natural."
"Nothing after the Cataclysm is natural," Kshaya said softly. His voice was steady, but his gaze never left the buildings. "But this feels deliberate."
"How can it be deliberate?" Dr. Korr snapped. "There's no one left here! It's just the living dead"
'It's looking at us now.' It was the compass's metallic voice.
Kshaya stiffened. The others also noticed. They looked at him with with a questioning gaze.
He didn't answer. Instead, he rose to his feet and scanning the living city, eyes narrowing. "The city is awake. Something is directing the dead, maintaining the structures, activating the systems. Not Oldkin, but,,, close."
"How close?" Lume asked.
As if answering him, the nearest billboard across the street lit up in white. Its screen glitched, static filling half of it. Then a grainy image formed.
A face.
Human-shaped, but wrong. Eyes misplaced. Mouth blurred. As if someone was guessing what humans looked like.
The entire team froze.
The screen flickered.
The mouth pulled into a stretched grin.
Then a distorted, metallic whisper leaked out:
"---welcome back---"
Kshaya stepped forward instinctively, placing himself between the team and the city.
"That's enough for today," he said quietly. "We camp here. No one wanders. No one answers anything the city asks."
No one answered.
Aiyra stared back at them.
Alive.