Ryo didn't know when walking stopped feeling like movement.
At some point, it simply became existence.
A body moving forward because stopping felt worse than exhaustion.
Behind him, the village was no longer visible. Not even smoke remained. Only a faint memory pressed into the back of his mind, like something that refused to fade completely.
Ahead… there was nothing.
No road. No direction. No sign that told him he was going the right way.
Only land.
Broken, dry, and endless.
The axe in his hand had become heavier than it should have been. Not because of its weight—but because of what it represented. Every step he took felt like it was being recorded into it, like the weapon itself remembered everything he didn't want to.
Ryo adjusted his grip slightly and kept walking.
The wind was different here.
Not soft.
Not natural.
It cut across the land in uneven bursts, as if the world itself couldn't decide how it wanted to breathe. Dust rose from the ground in thin layers, drifting across cracked stone paths that had long been forgotten.
Ryo paused for a moment.
The ground beneath his feet wasn't normal soil anymore.
It was stone.
Massive, fractured slabs stretching in different directions, like something enormous had once moved through here and left scars behind.
He crouched slightly and ran his fingers over one of the cracks.
Cold.
Too cold.
"…this place…" he muttered under his breath.
His voice felt strange in the emptiness.
He stood again and continued forward.
Hours passed.
Maybe more.
Time had started losing meaning. The sun slowly shifted above him, dragging shadows across the land in long, distorted shapes. Every shadow looked like it could be something alive if you stared at it long enough.
Ryo learned not to stare.
He focused only on walking.
Step after step.
Breathing.
Surviving.
At one point, he found broken structures scattered along the path. Half-collapsed stone pillars. Walls that no longer formed complete shapes. Strange markings carved into surfaces too worn to understand.
They weren't random.
That much he could tell.
They were intentional.
Someone had built this.
Or something had.
Ryo stood in front of one of the pillars for a long moment.
The carving was unfamiliar, but it gave him a strange feeling. Not fear exactly… more like pressure. Like the stone was trying to remind him of something he had never learned.
He stepped back slowly.
"Everything here…" he whispered, "feels wrong."
The wind answered only with silence.
He moved again.
The terrain began to rise gradually after a while. A slope stretched upward ahead of him, leading toward higher ground. The climb wasn't steep, but it was long enough to make his tired body feel every step.
Still, he didn't stop.
Stopping meant thinking.
And thinking meant remembering.
And remembering meant pain.
So he climbed.
The higher he went, the more the world behind him disappeared. The land below became smaller, flatter, distant. It looked less like a place and more like something that had been abandoned by time itself.
Ryo's breathing grew heavier, but steady.
He wasn't strong yet.
He wasn't anything yet.
But he was still moving.
That was enough.
The wind became stronger near the top of the slope. It pushed against him, pulling at his clothes, trying to slow him down. But he leaned into it and kept going.
And then—
The land stopped rising.
Ryo stepped onto flat ground again.
He looked up.
And froze.
At first, he didn't understand what he was seeing.
It didn't look like a structure at first glance.
It looked like part of the mountain.
But it wasn't.
It was built.
Massive stone walls stretched across the horizon, too large to measure with sight alone. Towers rose from within them, standing tall and silent, like they had been waiting for centuries without ever moving.
The entire structure was not loud.
It didn't shine.
It didn't welcome.
It simply existed.
Like it had always been there.
Like it would always remain there.
Ryo took a slow step forward.
Then another.
His eyes moved across the scale of it—walls layered with the same strange symbols he had seen earlier on the broken path. Except here, they were whole. Clear. Deliberate.
This wasn't ruins.
This was something alive.
Something maintained.
At the center of the structure stood a gate.
Enormous.
Dark.
Closed.
It didn't look like it was meant to keep people out.
It looked like it was meant to decide who was allowed to exist inside.
Ryo stopped walking completely.
The wind moved past him, but he didn't feel it anymore.
His eyes stayed locked on the gate.
"…so this is it," he said quietly.
The Edge of the Guardians.
No celebration.
No sound of victory.
Only silence.
Ryo tightened his grip on the axe without realizing it.
His body was tired.
His mind was empty.
But something inside him refused to step back.
Because behind him was nothing.
And in front of him—
Was something that finally felt real.
He took a slow breath.
And walked forward.