Two Shadowfalls had passed since the gates of The Axiom Directorate closed behind Vira.
Vira no longer could tell if time was passing by normally, or if something about The Remnants had begun bending it.
Nights and days blurred into the same gray smear of ash and silence, broken only by movements somewhere hidden in The Unknown. Things Vira never saw—and frankly tried his best to not think about.
Sometimes he'd wake up already standing, sometimes he'd swear he had been awake the entire time.
The world did not feel empty.
It felt aware, almost alive.
Vira moved through it like something unwanted, something foreign.
The ruins stretched endlessly in every direction, collapsed structures leaning into each other like exhausting bodies refusing to fall… almost like a dead penguin huddle.
Ash and sand drifted through the air in spirals, collecting on his shoulders, his hair, his skin, almost as if the wasteland was trying to bury him alive.
Vira didn't speak anymore, he had no need to… He had to keep what sanity he had remaining and talking to oneself was not going to help achieve that.
Vira also learned quickly that sound was dangerous here. Any sort of noise he would make sent vibrations through the air, he could visibly see the ripples until they went beyond his vision… he didn't want anything to find him here.
Every step Vira took felt like stepping through Tar, and it was horrifying.
The way the ground occasionally vibrated faintly beneath him, as if something far larger than the ruins was shifting… following him.
He told himself that it was nothing.
That was the easiest thing the poor boy could do.
His body felt wrong most of the time now, not injured, not healed, something in between. As if it no longer recognized him as its owner. Beneath the bandages, his skin would occasionally tighten in faint pulses, like a second heartbeat trying to sync itself with his own.
He tried not to think about it.
He didn't have anyone to talk to.
****
It happened without warning the first time.
Vira was crouched desperately trying to drink from a canteen he found on an old carcass of a soldier.
He could only pray that it was water.
*click*
Almost seeming to teleport Vira dove underneath the remains of a transport frame, barely breathing, barely thinking.
Something out there had moved, and that didn't happen out here… Unless it was a Nullborn.
Finally after what seemed forever more of the same noise could be heard, and almost like a dragging sound… uneven and unlike footsteps. More like something being pulled across the ground by weight that didn't belong to it.
Vira didn't look, something told him looking would be a death sentence.
The air changed, not the temperature or sound. Something more subtle, like reality itself was shifting under the weight of the Nullborn.
Then—the movement outside stopped.
Nothing.
No movement, no "footsteps", no dragging, no sound of anything alive or otherwise.
Vira held his breath until his lungs burned.
minutes that felt like hours passed, nothing seemed to happen.
Then the weight outside slowly continued moving again—unbothered, as if whatever had been there simply became uninterested.
He never saw it.
But afterward, his abdomen wouldn't stop vibrating for hours, like something inside him had been starving.
****
Now in the present, Vira was walking to what seemed to be nowhere, he could only hope to find other signs of a civilization, or just simply another person. One could only have Hope.
Then the sensation returned, it was faint at first and then sharper.
Not pain exactly, but pressure building up in his core, building in places a heartbeat shouldn't reach. Vira stopped walking instinctively, his fingers tightening around the rusted blade he carried more out of habit than usefulness.
The ruins around him felt different again, still… too still. Even the ash in the air seemed to hesitate.
Somewhere ahead a screech could be heard.
'Crap, crap, crap, c-crap!'
Vira knew running wouldn't save him, it stopped helping a long time ago… He backed himself into the remains of a MBT, forcing himself into the shadowed interior where sight meant less and instinct mattered more.
The walls were cracked open, exposing him to the outside in thin slits of light and ruin.
The vibration in his abdomen deepened.
Like something answering something else.
Minutes later a sound followed, wet, uneven, wrong in a way his mind refused to fully digest.
Something entered the structure, it was different from the others that simply walked by him, this one was hunting him.
Vira pressed himself against the wall, blade raised without conviction or confidence in himself or his strength.
The air tightened, and then—
The thing outside stopped directly in front of the opening.
For a long moment, nothing moved.
Then it moved, not forward but inward.
Its body folded strangely into itself, joints bending with wet cracking noises as though its skeleton had been assembled incorrectly, and forced to compensate and try to correct themselves.
Several elongated arms twitched beneath its torso while strips of pure black flesh hung loosely from its frame dragging across the floor like torn clothes soaked in blood.
Vira couldn't breathe, he couldn't think, he didn't know what to do.
The vibration in his abdomen seemed to be going insane as it intensified violently.
The creature screamed, it wasn't loud at first, it began as something raw and uneven like dozens and dozens of dying voices trying to force themselves through its throat. Only it was too narrow to contain them.
The screech enveloped reality around it, warping it as it traveled through air, Vira felt it before he fully heard it. The noise clawed through his skull his spine before making his ears bleed.
The walls around the MBT trembled.
Then the Nullborn moved.
The walls of the MBT exploded outward, Vira barely registered the creature accelerating before the entire structure around it violently repulsed away from its body.
It wasn't destroying the building, it's like reality itself rejected its existence.
Every step collapsed the space around it.
"MOVE!"
Vira hurled himself sideways a split second before the Nullborn shredded through his very being. The impact alone shattered the floor as the Nullborn broke through the wall of the MBT through support pillars of the building behind it.
It didn't slow down, it was fast—way too fast.
Panic flooded Vira's body instantly, adrenaline coursing through his veins.
He scrambled across the ground desperately, hands slipping against ash and broken glass while the vibration in his chest became agonizing. His thoughts and feelings fractured apart under pure instinct.
'I can't fight it, I can't fight it! I'm going to die!'
Behind him the creature twisted unnaturally fast, the sound of bone grinding against itself echoed throughout the ruined structure as its distorted limbs snapped back into place. The Nullborn shrieked again before launching forward.
The floor below and above it imploded.
Vira ducked instinctively as chunks of concrete exploded over his head. One piece slammed into his shoulder hard enough to spin him onto the floor.
Pain erupted through his arm instantly.
His blade slid away into the darkness and his eyes widened in pure terror.
"N-No!"
The Nullborn was already upon him.
Vira forced himself backward desperately as one of the creatures elongated arms smashed into the ground beside his skull.
'That was close, too close!'
The Nullborn's mouth split open, or rather where a mouth should be, it was faceless with just rows and rows of endless teeth.
The rows of teeth shifted endlessly as it opened its mouth, black thick saliva—or what seemed to be saliva poured from its face, the smell nearly made Vira vomit.
It smelled like death and rotting flesh.
Vira's body and mind screamed at him to run, but another part of him, something cold and terrifyingly aware understood the truth.
He had to kill it.
But running, especially in a straight line would be the last thing he'd ever do, the creature was faster, stronger, and more durable.
But he was human, he had something The Nullborn seemed to lack and that was conviction.
Sure, The Nullborn wanted to kill him, perhaps it even wanted to devour him.
But those were its instinct, its natural way of thinking, Vira wanted to live.
He had to live.