Nothing happens.
Ash waits for it.Hopes for it.Hates himself a little more every time it doesn't.
The soul shards sit in his palm like cold pebbles, dull and unresponsive. He turns them over, one by one, feeling their weight, their density. They should matter. Everything he knows — everything he has ever read — screams that they should.
Power always has a price.Power always leaves a trace.Power never comes for free.
And yet.
Nothing.
He closes his eyes and breathes slowly, counting the seconds like he's seen monks do in movies. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Calm. Focus. Intent.
— Maybe you need to feel them.
— Maybe you need to stop pretending you know what you're doing.
— Or maybe this world just doesn't want you.
Ash grits his teeth and tries again.
Meditation. Visualization. He imagines the shards dissolving, merging, burning into him. He presses them against his chest, against his skin, even against the stump where his arm used to be — because if anything should react, it's that.
Pain answers.Nothing else does.
He laughs, sharp and humorless, and throws the shards against the stone wall of the shelter. They bounce once, twice, and fall to the dirt like trash.
"Figures."
Days pass.
Weeks.
Hunts become routine, stripped of adrenaline and meaning. He stalks weaker creatures, plays territories against each other, bleeds them slowly, finishes them when they're already dying. Meat is taken. Shards are collected.
The pouch grows heavier.
Ash does not.
— You're hoarding disappointment.
— We need them.
— For what? Decoration?
He stops experimenting after a while.
Not because he's given up.
Because trying hurts more than failing.
The anger builds instead — thick, slow, poisonous. Anger at the shards. At the world. At himself. At the silent rules that refuse to acknowledge his existence.
He wasn't asking for miracles.
Just something.
A sign.A reaction.A confirmation that all this suffering wasn't pointless.
But the world remains deaf.
One night, sitting alone with his back against cold stone, Ash finally says it out loud.
"I don't belong here."
The words feel right.
Too right.
The Land of Barrows stretches endlessly around him — mounds of stone, half-buried ruins, silent markers of lives that ended badly. Even the monsters feel… familiar now. Predictable. Manageable in their own horrific way.
That realization scares him.
Because staying means adapting.
And adapting means accepting.
— If we stay, this is it.
— We become part of the landscape.
— Another corpse waiting for erosion.
Ash stands.
He packs what little he has. Meat, shards, scraps of tools, memories he isn't sure are still his. There's no plan. Just a direction — away.
The walk begins.
The terrain changes slowly at first. Stone thins. Ash thickens. The sky loses what little depth it had, flattening into a uniform, oppressive gray. No sun. No stars. No cycle.
Time stretches.
He walks until his legs burn, then keeps walking. He eats less. Drinks carefully. His body moves on habit and stubborn refusal.
The pressure changes too.
The constant, crushing awareness of stronger things — predators, abominations, presences that could erase him by existing too close — begins to fade.
That should be a relief.
It isn't.
— Where did they go?
— Maybe you finally found a place too empty even for them.
— Or maybe this is where things don't bother hunting.
The world grows quiet.
Too quiet.
Eventually, the ground simply… ends.
Ash stops at the edge of existence.
Before him lies an ocean — black, smooth, perfectly still. Not water, not shadow, not void, but something pretending to be all three at once. It swallows the horizon without reflection, without sound.
He stares at it for a long time.
Long enough for anger to drain into exhaustion.
"So that's it," he mutters. "That's where all roads go."
No answer.
Of course.
He sits at the edge, shoulders slumped, shards heavy in his pouch, heart heavier still.
He crossed hell.Lost an arm.Lost pieces of himself he'll never name.
And in the end?
Nothing waits for him.
Ash closes his eyes.
For the first time since waking in this world, he doesn't plan the next move.
"He just waits for nothing, in nowhere."