Chapter 110

The Faraway People had always come. They arrived when the world seemed ready for something better, for something beyond the grasp of ordinary men. Their presence was an unspoken thing, felt but never seen.

Each time they struck, it was as if humanity had been building itself up, reaching toward something—until it was suddenly erased, forced to begin anew. The worst part was that no one could remember them. Time erased their marks from history. The memory of the devastation faded as if it had never been. The endless cycle continued, and no one knew why.

Zane sat in the crumbling library, the only place in the town still standing after the storm. A ragged curtain of rain blurred the window, but the night felt heavier than just the weather. His fingers traced the edges of an old journal he'd found among the wreckage of a shelf that had collapsed under the pressure of the storm.

The pages were damp but readable. The ink was smeared, but something in the handwriting disturbed him. The words felt too familiar. They seemed to follow a pattern, a pattern that matched something that had been happening for years. But Zane could never put his finger on it.

The town had seen better days. At one point, it had been a symbol of progress—a new world of technology, bustling streets, buildings reaching higher than they had before. That was before the Faraway People came.

Now, the streets were empty, the buildings cracked and hollow, their steel skeletons exposed like the ribs of a corpse. There were no survivors, just remnants. Everything had been wiped away.

He had heard the stories, of course. Everyone had heard them. The whispered tales passed down through families and old journals. The Faraway People were nothing if not persistent in their cycle of destruction.

They arrived when things were getting too advanced, too settled. They came, and in their wake, the world fell apart, forcing the survivors to start again. It wasn't a natural disaster, nor was it a war. No one ever really knew what happened. But they all knew the outcome.

Zane ran his hand through his hair, eyes scanning the journal. The handwriting was frantic, as if the person who had written it had known what was coming but couldn't escape it. He read a passage that sent a chill down his spine:

"They are coming. We've seen them in the fields. They do not look like us, but they do not seem to be anything else either. They take what we have built and crush it underfoot. It is as if they are here to stop us, to break everything. But we are too far gone, and they will make us pay for our arrogance."

The door creaked open behind him, but Zane didn't turn. He didn't have to. He had known the moment it opened who it was. The last of the survivors, a woman named Eliza, stepped into the room. She was covered in dirt, her face pale, eyes hollow. It had been a week since the storm, and in that time, Eliza had barely spoken. No one had.

"I saw them," Eliza whispered, her voice distant, empty. "I saw them in the field. The ones from the stories."

Zane closed the journal and set it aside. He looked at her, his expression unreadable. "What do they look like?" he asked.

Eliza shook her head slowly, as if the image was too much for her to process. "They were… tall. And silent. And there were… others, too. Things that followed them." Her hand trembled as she gripped the doorframe. "They didn't look like people. But they weren't anything else either."

Zane stood up, his body tense. The storm outside grew fiercer, a heavy pounding against the walls of the crumbling building. The wind howled. But there was something else in the air, a thick, suffocating feeling that made his skin crawl.

"They're here, aren't they?" Zane muttered, more to himself than to Eliza.

Eliza's eyes widened as she stared at him. "You know?"

Zane didn't answer. He had known for days. Ever since the storm had started, he'd felt it. The air had changed. The ground felt different beneath his feet. It was the same as it always had been when the Faraway People arrived.

The signs were unmistakable. The feeling of being watched, the oppressive silence that followed the wind, the sudden loss of the familiar. Zane had seen the cracks form in the sky. He had seen the world begin to bend.

Eliza stumbled back, her eyes wild. "We need to leave. We need to get out of here before it's too late."

Zane stepped toward the door. "Where will we go? There's nowhere left."

"Anywhere but here."

But Zane didn't follow her. He turned back to the journal, the pages now sopping wet, the ink dissolving like the rest of the world's memories.

"They won't let us leave," he muttered under his breath.

The wind howled again, louder now. Zane's mind was already swimming with the images from the journal, with Eliza's words repeating in his head. We are too far gone. The Faraway People wouldn't let them leave. They never did.

Eliza collapsed to her knees behind him, sobbing. "What if we can't stop them? What if there's nothing we can do?"

Zane didn't answer. The answer was obvious. There was nothing they could do. They had been waiting for this, ever since the world had begun to rebuild itself, ever since they had started to believe they were untouchable. Humanity never learned. The Faraway People had proven that time and time again.

Outside, the storm intensified. The trees were bending now, their roots screaming in protest. A deep rumbling sound—far too deep, far too resonant—shook the ground. The sky split with a strange light, not from lightning, but from something else. Something far worse.

Zane grabbed Eliza's arm, pulling her to her feet. "We need to leave. Now."

But they didn't get far.

The ground beneath them began to tremble, not like an earthquake, but with a rhythm all its own, something deliberate, something ancient. Zane's heart pounded in his chest, his legs refusing to move. Eliza's breath was ragged beside him, but there was no place to run.

A figure stepped into the doorway, blocking their only escape. It was tall, impossibly tall, its form casting an unnatural shadow against the dim light of the storm. It moved with an eerie grace, but its presence felt like a physical weight, pressing down on everything around it. The skin of its face seemed to flicker, as though it were made of smoke. Its eyes were empty.

Behind it, more figures appeared, each one standing silently. The world outside had gone deathly quiet. The storm had stopped. Even the wind had gone still. Everything was still.

Zane felt Eliza's hand grip his arm, but he couldn't move. The figure in the doorway tilted its head, as if considering them. And then, without a sound, it stepped forward.

Eliza screamed, but the sound was cut short.

Zane's last breath caught in his throat as the figures advanced. They were not human, not anything he had ever seen before. He could feel the edges of his mind fraying as the world around him began to warp, to crumble, to vanish.

And just before everything completely disintegrated, just before the darkness took him, he saw something in the Faraway People's eyes. A glimmer of recognition. They knew. They knew what they were doing.

They knew that there was no escaping their cycle.