Chapter Text
The town was silent, blanketed in ash and dread. Each street echoed memories that didn’t belong to you, and yet somehow clawed into your bones like they’d always been yours.
You came looking for answers.
Closure.
But what you found was something else entirely.
He wasn’t supposed to notice you—you were just another survivor drifting through rusted gates and fog-choked alleyways.
But his eyes—if he even had them—
… never left you.
The dragging sound of his steel blade scraping across the ground matched your breath.
Slow. Steady.
You couldn’t stop yourself from glancing back, even though every instinct told you not to.
There he was.
A towering figure, the weight of his presence pressing into the air around you. His heavy, jagged silhouette loomed in the distance, the very air around him thick with the smell of decay and forgotten sins.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.
His presence was enough to shake your foundation.
It was in the way he moved — methodical, purposeful, like a force of nature that had long been waiting for something, someone.
In the way he stood between you and the monsters that weren’t him.
A barrier. A guardian? Or something worse.
Every step you took, he mirrored it —always a step behind, always a presence in the corner of your mind.
A heavy silence weighed down every moment, wrapping you in a tension you couldn’t escape.
And soon, you weren’t sure which side of the nightmare you feared more—the hellish world outside…
… or the man who haunted you inside it.