The world hadn't ended — not completely. But after the Great Calamity, the pieces of it no longer fit the way they used to.
Villages stood in silence. Rivers reversed. The gods, once close, had gone cold. And whispers spread — of a place where the dead walked and the shadows remembered every name they ever consumed.
The Dead Forest.
Nnamdi first heard of it from an old griot near the ruined shrine of Amadi. The man sat cross-legged beside a cracked drum, blind in both eyes but seeing more than most.
"They say the heart of the forest beats with stolen life" the griot rasped. "Something ancient woke up during the Calamity. Something angry."
Nnamdi didn't ask questions. He only nodded and set his feet on the path east, toward the place no sane man dared go.
Ifeanyi was already waiting.
The hunter had heard the stories too — not from griots, but from survivors. Children rescued from the salt mines, their eyes haunted, their words broken.
"They came from the forest," they whispered. "The shadow-men. And they'll come again."
So when the two warriors met once more — under the blood-red sky of the wastelands — there were no greetings. Only a silent agreement.
They camped beside a cracked riverbed that night. No fire. No food. Just sharpened blades and the sound of jackals howling at something unseen.
Before dawn, they walked.
Past the desolate farmlands where crops had turned to ash.
Through broken roads littered with rusted machines and bones.
Across forgotten battlefields, where the air still hummed with the cries of the fallen.
And finally, to the edge of the world — where green once grew, but now rot reigned.
The Dead Forest loomed ahead. Silent. Starving.
Ifeanyi pulled a red cloth from his pouch and tied it around his arm. A ritual. A promise.
"What's that for?" Nnamdi asked.
"To remind the forest I have something to lose," Ifeanyi replied, eyes fixed forward. "So I'll fight harder to keep it."
And with no more words, they stepped into the dark.
Because some men run from the horrors of the world.
But others — like Nnamdi and Ifeanyi — walk straight into them.