It had been two days of walking through an endless white inferno.
Asteria had fought valiantly, rationing the meat of monsters while her body screamed for the water she didn't have.
Now, she was the ghost of the girl who had left the Academy. She was caked in dried, purple blood; her armor was in tatters, forced back into her soul sea to repair. Her hands were raw, her face a mask of sullen exhaustion.
Her hopes were slim, very slim.
Asteria – was dying.
Without water or rest, her core could only do so much to sustain her. She found herself wishing for a mirage – some fake oasis to give her a reason to keep moving – but her [Glass Eyes] were too honest. They showed her only the heat, the sand, and the absence of hope.
Her hope was lost, and her adventure was coming to an end.
Or was it?
Hope, is that what she felt? The desperation of wanting to cling to life, however much she had left?
Then, she saw them.
Lights. Dozens of them, flickering like stars brought down from the heavens. Behind them loomed walls that stood taller than any nightmare creature she had ever seen. The faint, impossible sound of voices – joyful, loud, human – carried on the wind.
'Is this it?' she wondered, her vision blurring.'The last trick of a failing mind?'
Her eyes were closing and her body was too heavy for her legs to carry her anymore.
Her knees buckled in response.
THUMP.
The sand was no longer scorching; it felt like a cold, welcoming shroud. She tried to crawl, her fingers digging into the white grains, a desperate, animalistic urge to cling to life driving her forward for one more inch. One more.
Then, the world went dark.
'Is this all my life amounts to?' was her final, bitter thought. 'Just more feed for the monsters?'
***
"She's waking up."
The voice was foreign, sounding like it was echoing from the bottom of a deep well. It was a voice full of a strange, cautious hope.
Asteria tried to open her eyes, but her lids felt as though they had been fused shut with lead. Her body was an anchor, too heavy to shift.
Where was she? The last thing she remembered was the taste of sand and the smell of her own despair. But now... she felt a bed. There was the weight of a blanket over her – fabric that didn't smell like the desert, but like lavender and old stone.
"Where... am I?" she coughed, her throat feeling like it was lined with broken glass.
"Easy now," a new voice said, gentle but firm. "You're in the settlement. You've been out for three days. To be honest, we didn't think you'd make it back from the threshold."
Asteria finally managed to crack her eyes open. The light was dim, coming from a few tallow candles. She wasn't in a palace or a high-tech infirmary. She was in a room made of rough-hewn stone, the ceiling low and reinforced with ancient timber.
She looked down. She was wearing a simple, oversized linen tunic. Her wounds were bandaged with a clean, white cloth.
"Is this a Citadel?" she managed to whisper.
A woman in her late twenties, her face far too weathered for her age, but kind, leaned into the light. She wore a necklace made of small, polished monster teeth. "Citadel? No, child. You're in the Hollow Oak. We're a long way from any Citadel."
The woman held a wooden cup to Asteria's lips. "Drink. Slowly. You're lucky the scouts found you when they did. Another hour in the sun and you'd have been nothing but a husk for the wind to scatter."
After she finished taking a greedy sip of fresh water, she decided to ask, "But the Citadel is just up North, I can feel it, why haven't any of you left yet?"
The woman sighed, "Because we can't. The Hollow Oak is made up of Sleepers from the past... ten years, I would like to say. Going South is a death sentence and so is the East. We have tried the West because of that tower, but nobody has made it there without succumbing.".
The lady continued, voice sinking lower. "You're right, the Citadel is to the North. We aren't strong enough to defeat the guardian nor the remaining nightmare creature which populates the area. The weakest of them are Corrupted, maybe Fallen at the minimum."
Asteria laughed, a long, loud, crippling laugh. It's all she could do. "So it's all to die for, then?"
The woman didn't reply, her silence said enough.
Asteria's laughter died out as quickly as it had begun, leaving a hollow, stinging silence in the small stone room. The sound had been less of a joke and more of a jagged realization.
'Corrupted? Fallen – at the minimum?'
In the Academy, they had taught her that a Corrupted creature was a nightmare that could level a small city. Even a Fallen monster was something an entire cohort of Awakened would struggle to kill. For a group of Sleepers – people who hadn't even awakened yet – those weren't just obstacles. It was like a mortal man trying to smite the heavens in anger.
"I didn't come this far to become a permanent resident of a graveyard," Asteria whispered, her voice cracking. She looked at the wooden cup in her hands. The water was clear, a miracle in this wasteland, but it tasted like ash now.
The woman placed a weathered hand over Asteria's. "Many have said those words. They are the ones whose names we've carved into the bark of the Oak outside. We don't call this place 'Hollow' because of the tree, child. We call it that because of what the desert does to your spirit if you stay too long."
Asteria pulled her hand away, the violet ink in her soul sea churning with a sudden, restless energy. It didn't care about "Corrupted" or "Fallen." It only knew the hunger; and the hunger wanted her to kill.
"How many of you are here?" Asteria asked, her [Glass Eyes] scanning the room, noticing the fine layers of dust and the age of the stone.
"Forty-two," the woman replied. "Some have been here since before the last Solstice. We survive on the edge, scavenging what the desert spits out and hiding in the shadows of the ruins. We are the forgotten. The Spell sent us here, but it didn't provide a way back."
Asteria sat up, the linen tunic shifting against her bruised skin. She felt a strange sensation – not just the weakness of her body, but a tethering. The "Voices of Joy" she had heard before she collapsed... they weren't joy. They were the sounds of people pretending to be alive because the alternative was too terrifying to face.
Asteria noticed that her blade was missing. She knew it wasn't broken and it wasn't in her soul sea either.
"I need my things," Asteria said firmly. "My sword."
"Your blade is safe," the woman said, pointing to a corner where the [Obsidian Blade] leaned against the wall, its dark surface drinking the candlelight.
She closed her eyes for a moment, sinking deep into her own mind.
Her Core was glowing with a faint, steady violet light.
Opening her runes, she decided to check.
[Spell Fragments: 54/1000]
It was a pathetic number. A death sentence. If she stayed here, she would just be number forty-three on a piece of wood.
"What is the guardian?" Asteria asked, her eyes snapping open, the violet hue shimmering dangerously. "The one blocking the North."
The woman shivered, a genuine look of dread crossing her face. "We don't have a name for it. We just call it the Statue. It stands at the gates of the mountain pass. It doesn't move. It doesn't breathe. But if you step into near... you never step out."