Kael woke slowly, consciousness returning in uneasy layers.

  Cold stone pressed into his spine. Straw scratched at his palms and neck. The air smelled of dust, old wood, and something faintly metallic. For a few precious heartbeats, he clung to the hope that this was just another bad dream—that he would blink, sit up in his own bed, and laugh at how real it had felt.

  The low, uneven ceiling of the watchtower erased that hope.

  He lay still, listening.

  Nothing.

  No birds. No insects. No distant voices. Just the wind whispering through cracks in ancient stone.

  Kael pushed himself upright with a quiet groan. Every joint complained, his body stiff as if it hadn’t rested at all. He rubbed his face, half-expecting to feel familiar sheets beneath his fingers. Instead, dry straw crumbled between his hands.

  “So it’s real,” he murmured.

  The words sounded small in the empty tower.

  He rose and stepped toward the narrow window slit. Pale morning light spilled inside, dull and colorless, revealing floating dust that hung in the air like it had nowhere else to be. From here, the village lay exposed beneath him.

  It looked worse in daylight.

  What the fading light of dusk had hidden, the morning revealed without mercy. Roofs sagged inward as if exhausted. Walls had split and collapsed, leaving open mouths of shadow where people once lived. Paths between the buildings were overgrown, grass reclaiming ground long abandoned.

  No smoke rose from any chimney.

  A knot tightened in his stomach.

  This place is dead.

  The thought unsettled him more than the creature from the night before. Ruins meant time. And time meant whatever had happened here hadn’t been recent or peaceful.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He stayed at the window longer than necessary, scanning for movement. Nothing stirred. The forest loomed at the village’s edge, dark and still, and Kael forced himself to look away.

  Not yet.

  The tower felt safer than the open ground, but safety didn’t mean survival. His throat was dry. His stomach already ached with hunger. Hiding wouldn’t fix that.

  Fear argued for staying put.

  Stubbornness won.

  Kael descended the ladder slowly, testing each rung before trusting it with his weight. Every creak sounded too loud, echoing through the hollow interior. He paused more than once, listening for footsteps that never came.

  At the base of the tower, he stood still for a long moment, axe in hand, steadying his breathing. Then he stepped outside.

  The air felt colder than it should have been.

  He resisted the urge to look toward the forest and focused instead on the village itself. Counting helped. It made things feel manageable.

  Seven structures remained barely.

  A smithy with its doors hanging crooked. A leaning granary whose roof had partially collapsed. A stone well. The rest were broken dwellings, reduced to shells and rubble.

  The smithy drew his attention immediately.

  If anything useful had survived here, it would be inside.

  He approached carefully, senses stretched thin, axe held a little tighter than necessary. The doorway yawned open, dark and silent. Kael swallowed and stepped inside.

  The smell hit him first.

  Rust. Old ash. Stale air trapped for years.

  Sunlight filtered through gaps in the roof, cutting thin beams through the gloom. Broken shelves littered the floor, boards warped and splintered. Whatever tools once filled this place were gone taken, destroyed, or rusted into nothing.

  Then he saw the anvil.

  It stood solid and unmoving in the center of the room, its surface scarred and polished smooth by countless strikes. Kael rested his hand against it, surprised by the cold weight beneath his fingers.

  Someone had worked here.

  Someone had stood where he was standing now, shaping metal, planning for tomorrow.

  The realization left him oddly hollow.

  He searched the rest of the smithy more thoroughly, stepping over debris, peering into corners. Beneath a fallen bench, he spotted a small leather pouch. He picked it up and loosened the string.

  Inside lay a handful of nails.

  Rusty. Bent. Imperfect.

  Kael let out a quiet, breathless laugh.

  “Treasure,” he muttered.

  He slipped the pouch into his pocket anyway. In a place like this, scraps mattered. The difference between nothing and something could mean another day alive.

  When he stepped back outside, the silence pressed in again heavier now, more deliberate. The village felt like it was watching him, not with intent, but with memory.

  Kael turned slowly, scanning every ruined structure, every dark doorway.

  This is it, he realized. For now.

  No guide. No explanation. Just him, a broken village, and whatever waited beyond the trees.

  He tightened his grip on the axe and exhaled.

  “Alright,” he said softly to the empty air. “Let’s survive today first.”