Andreas pushed upward through the rubble with a slow, grinding motion. Stone shifted, sand poured off his shoulders, and broken fragments of brick slid down his armor with dull clinks. For a moment he stayed crouched, one hand braced against the cracked ground as dust drifted through the air like pale fog.
The city was quiet.
Not the peaceful kind of quiet. No distant chatter. No carts rolling across streets. No dogs barking. Only the occasional crackle of fire somewhere in the distance.
Buildings had collapsed into jagged silhouettes. Roof beams stuck from the wreckage like broken bones. Sand had blown through the shattered streets, gathering in shallow dunes between the ruins.
Andreas slowly turned his head, taking it in.
"Right…"
His voice sounded strange in the empty city.
He remembered a saying, something he had heard once long ago.
If you can question your own sanity, then you are probably not insane.
He stood there a few seconds longer, staring at the destruction.
Then his knees gave slightly and he lowered himself onto a chunk of fallen stone. Dust puffed upward as he sat.
A laugh slipped out.
At first it was quiet.
Then louder.
"Yeah… yeah I should enjoy this."
He leaned back slightly, looking up at the grey sky.
"Just forget how I killed people for the first time… fought a fish creature from my nightmares… and a walking…"
He stopped mid sentence.
His hand rubbed his face.
"At least I saw a beautiful woman…"
He paused.
Then corrected himself flatly.
"No… the other one was a man."
Silence followed that statement.
Then he laughed again, softer this time.
After a minute he pushed himself to his feet and began walking. His boots crunched over scattered debris as he made his way toward the orange glow rising from the distant farmlands. Smoke curled into the sky where the fields burned.
The road leading out of the ruined city was half buried in sand, but it was still recognizable enough to follow.
So he walked.
And walked.
And walked.
Time blurred.
After about an hour the tension in his shoulders began to loosen. The rhythm of his steps settled into something steady, almost calming.
Eventually Andreas started humming.
Then the humming turned into quiet singing.
Fragments of poems slipped out between breaths.
"Long roads and longer skies…
Feet that wander, thoughts that rise…"
His voice carried lightly over the empty fields.
As he walked, small stones near the roadside trembled slightly. A few lifted into the air, circling lazily around him. Dry leaves followed, drifting upward as though caught in a slow invisible current.
Andreas barely noticed.
"Step by step the mind grows clear…
The path ahead becomes less fear…"
He slipped a hand into his coat and pulled out a thick wallet.
It was heavier than expected.
He flipped it open while still walking.
Inside were several crisp bills.
He counted them.
"One… two… three… four… five… six…"
Each one read one hundred pounds.
Andreas stared at the money for a moment.
"Huh. I guess this Aldric guy really is rich."
The floating stones slowly rotated around him while the wind carried sparks from the distant burning farms.
"Well," he muttered, sliding the wallet back into his coat.
"At least walking clears the mind."
Another hour passed.
Andreas sighed.
It started small and quiet, an exhale through the nose, then expanded into something longer and more deliberate. The kind of sigh that is less a release of breath and more a formal complaint addressed to no one.
The road stretched ahead of him.
Flat.
Empty.
Identical to the last stretch, and the one before that.
He sighed again.
Then, because there was nothing else to do about it, he started singing.
Not fragments this time. Something more structured. It came out slowly at first, like he was composing it as he went.
"One step more,
And the next one follows.
A dance so simple it is the first thing babies learn."
He lifted one hand absently as he sang, and the floating stones drifted upward in response, trailing after his fingers like curious animals.
"Oh and what better time to dance,
Where the wind sings such a dull song.
One more step after the last."
He raised his arm in a slow arc and the stones swept with it, orbiting wider, lazy and glittering in the grey light. Dry leaves caught the motion and spiraled outward.
Andreas looked at them for a moment.
He smiled lightly.
His boots pivoted on the sandy road. Arms out. The stones swung around him like the slow hands of a clock.
He twirled once.
Then again, with more commitment.
It was not graceful.
But it was genuine.
He came out of the spin facing forward down the road and struck a pose. One foot forward, one arm extended behind him, chin up, like a man about to win a race that had not started yet.
"So in this world, let us dance one more time."
His leg muscles exploded.
Not metaphorically. The tissue separated.
The tendons snapped tight and then did not.
Something deep in his abdomen lurched sideways as the force traveled upward through his body with nowhere left to go, and his organs, which had apparently been held together this entire time by momentum and mild dissociation, made their displeasure known all at once.
He was on the ground before he understood he was falling.
The stones dropped.
The leaves settled.
Andreas lay on his side in the sand with his knees drawn up and both hands pressed against his stomach, which was hot and wrong and pushing back against his palms in a way that stomachs were not supposed to do. Breathing came in shallow, uneven increments. Each breath reminded him that his ribcage was also involved in whatever had just happened.
He stared at the ground very close to his face.
A black goat walked past.
Oh.
He blinked slowly.
The pain. This is different pain. I am not built for this. Why? Why was I so stupid?
His eyes stung as he cried. Tears diluted the blood coming from his open wounds and from the corners of his eyes.