The storm is gone, or perhaps it never left.The air hangs thick and heavy, tasting of frost and ash, a bitterness that settles in my lungs and refuses to leave.I step forward across the fractured ground, each footfall loud in the empty world, echoing off ruins that should have been alive.Buildings lean and twist like broken teeth, streets curl impossibly upward, and the sky fractures into jagged shards of black and gray.Ruin Emberfall moves through it all, silent, a shadow slipping across the remnants of what once was.
Flame is absent, vanished into the void, leaving nothing but the memory of warmth.For a heartbeat, I think I see her at the horizon's edge, her hand outstretched, beckoning.I almost reach for it, almost let myself believe she waits for me.But shadows consume her before I can move, and I am left alone once more, the silence pressing against me harder than the storm ever could.
The world feels endless and dead.Air hums with whispers I cannot name, fragments of voices from lives that once were.I hear my own heartbeat, steady but small against the weight of the quiet, reminding me I still exist in a world that no longer remembers me.The ruins stretch endlessly, twisted and silent, as if the earth itself mourns the loss of everything it once held.
A faint glimmer appears far ahead, a candle of light trembling against the darkness.For a moment, something fragile awakens in me, a spark of hope daring to burn.I take a step toward it, feeling my chest lift slightly, the first breath of something resembling relief.The world allows me only a second.
The light shatters, scattering into shards that vanish before they touch me.The wind rises suddenly, cutting through my skin and bone, freezing the spark before it can grow.All warmth, all hope, is gone.The storm has returned—not as rain or hail, but as a memory, a presence inside me that will never relent.Ruin Emberfall staggers against it, but does not fall.
I walk, each step a fight against despair, each breath stolen by the sharp cold and the weight of silence.The horizon is black, unbroken, unyielding.The sky bleeds shadows that curl like fingers, searching, grasping, reminding me that the storm is not gone; it merely waits, patient and eternal.I glance behind me, but the world I knew is gone, twisted into jagged lines and shattered dreams.
A fleeting image of Flame flickers in the corner of my eye.Her hand stretches toward mine.Her eyes burn with warmth and light.For one impossible heartbeat, I believe I am not alone.And then she is gone, devoured by shadows, leaving only the cold and silence in her place.
I fall to my knees on frozen rubble, the wind moaning like a mourning creature, cutting into me with sharp teeth of memory and regret.No one answers my cries.No one waits for me.The world has ended, and the storm remains eternal, feeding on every flicker of hope, every fragile ember of desire, every trace of courage.
I rise slowly, though I know the weight of the horizon will never lift.The black sky stretches endlessly above me, fractured, hostile, unbroken.The storm waits, patient.It always waits.
I step forward once more.I am nothing but a shadow crossing ruins, a whisper in the silence after the hailestorm.And the world does not forgive.It does not heal.It does not care.
There is no hope.There is only me.
And the storm.