The buildings rose into the sky at heights that made the walker feel small beneath them. Not all of them still stood fully, many were broken, with their upper halves collapsed or toppled against neighboring structures. Others remained more or less whole, but hollowed, with their facades cracked open and dark. Vegetation had moved in everywhere as well. It covered the surfaces in thick layers of green, climbing from the base of each structure all the way to whatever remained of its top.
Ashe had remained glued to the window since the shapes outside had started appearing. She had braced herself against the frame with one hand as though the sight of it required physical anchoring as well, not just a mental one.
The walker, though, seemed completely unbothered. It advanced at its usual pace, triggering the same rhythmic impacts into the soil as she had grown accustomed to.
Eventually she heard Cressa approach and settle slowly beside her until she could see her reflection in the glass, layered over the ruins outside.
"We stopped wondering for some time now," Cressa said, after a while. Her voice was quiet and almost fragile compared to her usual liveliness. "Me and Halen. About the whys and the ifs and the hows. It really doesn't matter, you know, once you think about it."
Ashe looked at her for a moment, trying to see whether she would recognize some form of defeat in her expression. But it felt more like a sense of peace than anything else, one she must have reached through choices Ashe imagined hadn't been easy. She then looked back toward the ruins.
"Someone must have made all of this," she replied, trying to find the right words to accommodate the rush of thoughts she could barely understand herself. "Something must have happened. I can't just give up my memories, whatever they are, without a valid reason. I can't give in to not knowing." She turned her gaze to the nearest tower as it slid past the glass with its upper half almost entirely invisible beyond the mist. "I have to try and figure myself out."
Cressa considered her words for a while then she smiled at Ashe with a genuine smile.
"You fight your war, then," she said, "until you feel the time is right to finally let go." And then her tone changed into something a bit more serious. "But when that time comes, don't forget to actually let go. Otherwise this place will swallow you whole and won't blink twice in the process."
Ashe had no good reply to Cressa's words. After all, she had been around this place for far longer and knew its ins and outs better. But what she did know deep inside of herself was that if she was ever going to belong somewhere at all, then she needed to understand this world first, regardless of the dangers involved. She needed to know what had been taken from her and why, before she could decide what to do with the time she had left. That was the only sequence of things that made any real sense to her.
The walker continued moving through the ruins and with each new section, it all just kept adding to that same question of who could have built this place and what event had been catastrophic enough to end it in such a way.
After a while, it made a wide turn, bringing into view a new section. Only this one stood out in stark contrast to the ruins of Lethon thus far. Bright artificial light emanated from it, revealing infrastructure built within the ruins themselves, one that was using the broken remains of Lethon's towers as scaffolding. Sections of fallen wall had been dragged up and fitted together, forming a barrier of sorts that curved around the area, protecting it.
As the walker approached the metal wall, it slowed and eventually stopped altogether. It began its lowering procedure, the same sequence Ashe had witnessed from the outside when she first encountered it on the open plain. The legs folded in stages and the rest of the body sank toward the ground until its belly rested fully on the earth. A long exhalation of air released from somewhere within the machine, dispersing around in white wisps.
Ashe caught hold of the nearest frame as the compartment tilted slightly, steadying herself until the motion fully stopped. The filaments in the core pillar slowed and dimmed as well, releasing the metal giant from its long effort. It had reached the end of the line and would rest there for a while before making the same journey back in the opposite direction.
Suddenly, as if recognizing their presence, the gate in the metal wall began to slide open from both sides, revealing more of the light that had caught Ashe's attention earlier. It groaned harshly when it reached the end of its movement, the sound echoing into the surrounding silence. On the other side, there was a sea of sound, smell and overlapping voices, a constant clatter of activity. And within it all, people moved in every direction.
Ashe came down from the walker, carefully climbing down the steep staircase from before. When she stepped out through the hatch and her boots met the ground, she drew in a breath of the open air, letting herself settle into this new place.
So that was Railen. She looked up.
Cables ran overhead in heavy clusters, and steam rose from several points, venting through the canopy above. Glowing panels flickered across the space, displaying what Ashe assumed were names for different areas. Everywhere she looked, there was so much activity that she didn't know where to focus first.
She was still standing just outside the walker when Halen appeared beside her. He placed a hand on her shoulder briefly, drawing her attention from the scene ahead.
"Welcome to Railen," he said, smiling. And in that moment, somewhere in the back of his memories, he remembered how that same encounter had been for him all those years back, when just as her he knew nothing about what this world entailed. "Find Moira," he added. "She's the person guiding this place and she can help you. You'll find her in the big building at the center, you can't miss it."
He then released her shoulder and glanced toward one of the crates being moved from the walker's storage.
When you do find her, you tell her Halen says hi."
Ashe blinked at that last part, not quite certain what it meant or what kind of relationship it implied. She looked at him for a moment, trying to read something from his expression but didn't have much time to make sense of it because Cressa soon appeared from the other side of the walker, breaking her trail of thought. She was waving her over as if reminding her not to leave without saying goodbye.
"Be safe," she said, as joyful as ever. "Maybe we'll see each other around soon. This place isn't as big as it looks."
"Thank you," Ashe replied, glancing from one to the other. "Both of you."
Cressa waved her hand again as if saying thanks were kind of unnecessary and possibly a little embarrassing too. Then she turned toward Halen with some new nagging she felt he should be made aware of.
Ashe watched them for a moment, marking them in her memory as the first people she remembered being kind to her. Then she turned away, heading deeper into Railen.