The wind here didn’t howl.

  It whispered.

  A low, slithering murmur that slid beneath the skin, gnawing at thought.

  Nihil tightened his coat around him and moved. Each step was an argument against the weight of the air itself. Here, gravity felt like an opinion — unstable, dangerous, ready to betray him at any moment.

  Around him, the ruins stretched like twisted roots.

  Skyscrapers bowed and knelt, their spires broken like snapped bones. Streets curled in loops, spiraling into craters of endless depth. Above it all, the Tower — that infinite monument of cruelty — hung suspended in the shattered sky.

  Nihil’s breath came shallow.

  The wounds from the last fragment jump hadn't fully healed. His ribs ached, and something inside his skull felt... loose, like part of him hadn’t made the crossing intact.

  But he couldn't stop.

  Stopping meant dying.

  Far ahead, past crumbling overpasses and frozen rivers of molten glass, a faint light pulsed. Artificial. Mechanical.

  A relay node.

  If it still worked, he could find a path. Maybe even access the old systems — the last dregs of a world that had tried, and failed, to resist the Tower’s corruption.

  Nihil quickened his pace, every muscle screaming protest.

  A wrong step — a broken memory shard — could end him.

  The ground here wasn’t real. It was stitched-together fragments of lost worlds, collapsed simulations, dead dreams. Some pieces were hungry.

  He passed the remnants of a park: swings twisted into knots, trees with leaves of broken glass. Children's laughter echoed faintly from nowhere.

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  He didn't look back.

  Ahead, two figures emerged from the mist.

  Nihil froze.

  They looked... human.

  One tall, armored in scavenged tech plates. The other smaller, hooded, clutching a rifle.

  Bandits. Worse — Survivors. The desperate kind.

  In this world, survivors were often more dangerous than monsters. Driven mad by isolation, starvation, endless battles against the impossible. Paranoia had become religion. Violence, their only language.

  The taller one spotted Nihil. Raised a hand.

  Nihil didn't reach for his weapon. Not yet.

  Instead, he straightened, walking openly, visibly unthreatening. A gamble.

  The tall one shouted something — garbled words lost in the broken air.

  The hooded figure lifted the rifle.

  Nihil’s mind raced.

  Options: fight and kill them both — risky. Run — foolish. Talk — dangerous.

  He chose none.

  Instead, he simply kept walking. Past them. Eyes forward. Unconcerned.

  It confused them. People expected threat or fear. Not indifference.

  The hesitation cost them.

  As the rifle snapped up, Nihil moved. A single smooth motion: a flick of the wrist, a hidden blade thrown, embedding into the gun's mechanism. The weapon jammed with a sharp, mechanical whine.

  The tall one charged.

  Nihil sidestepped, driving an elbow into his throat, then snapping the scavenged helmet aside to expose the weak flesh underneath.

  A swift, brutal knife strike finished it.

  The hooded one tried to flee.

  Nihil let them. No time. No energy wasted on pride.

  He reached the relay node.

  It was a ruined thing: half-buried in concrete and twisted rebar. Lights blinked weakly, struggling to stay alive. Nihil dug into the access panel, fingers flying over broken keys.

  Static. Corrupted files. Fragmented maps.

  But — there.

  A pulse. A heartbeat in the noise.

  A signal, deep underground.

  An old shelter.

  Maybe supplies. Maybe information. Maybe hope.

  Or maybe a trap.

  He memorized the coordinates and shut down the node before it could broadcast his position to anything listening.

  As he turned to leave, a voice cut through the static.

  A whisper, so faint he almost missed it.

  "Nihil..."

  He froze.

  No one should know his name.

  The relay’s dying screen flickered one last time, displaying a single message before collapsing into sparks:

  "The seed is waking."