56. Wanderer

The ruined town stretched before him like a forgotten memory. Charred timber, crumbling stone, rusted lanterns swinging in dead air. Windows were either shattered or boarded. The sky hung low, like it knew something he didn't.

Click. Click. Click.

Each step echoed under his polished boots. A long black coat swayed around his legs, barely brushing the mud-stained cobblestone. Dust clung to the edges. The breeze caught the brim of his hat, tugging it gently, but he adjusted it with a casual flick of his gloved fingers.

His face was far too composed for the chaos around him—sharp, lined with years that hadn't aged him poorly. A few silver strands threaded through his hair, but the clean-shaved jawline gave him a strange agelessness.

He walked slowly. Like a man counting thoughts instead of steps.

"Seconds ago, I was on the moon," he murmured, voice low and calm. "And now..."

His eyes scanned the alley ahead which had broken barrels, collapsed walls, a crumpled sign hanging from one nail. "This place looks like it's been dead for decades."

He passed a twisted metal lampstand and touched it once. Warm.

His brow furrowed. "Not decades then. Maybe hours. Days?"

His gloved fingers brushed his coat pocket. A familiar weight. The pocketwatch was still there. Still ticking.

"Nothing about this makes sense," he whispered, pausing in front of a building with the word "Apothecaria" barely legible in the soot.

His eyes narrowed. "Last thing I remember... the seal ruptured. Then that... thing in the sky. No noise. Just pressure. Then, it collapsed the dimensions, someone have opened it."

He exhaled, fogging the cold air. "Teleportation? No. Something deeper."

He turned down another alley. Empty. No people. No birds. Just the wind.

"If this is the afterlife, someone has a terrible sense of humor."

His boots stopped near a toppled statue. He stared at it.

A girl's figure. Wings broken. One arm reaching up.

"Was she praying or falling?" he muttered.

He crouched and brushed away the soot on the base.

No name. No plaque. Just a single word carved into stone: Return.

He stood again. "Cryptic."

The man looked ahead. A streetlamp flickered faintly in the distance. A sign of power.

Finally, something.

He pulled his collar tighter, his tone shifting to something drier. "Well, let's see what answers this ghost town is hiding. Before I start talking to statues."

Then he walked on—still calm, still thinking, still very much alive. Even at 213 years old.

Smoke curled across the shattered town square, rising from buildings that leaned like drunkards. Debris littered the cracked ground. Somewhere in the distance, something howled—maybe a dog, maybe not.

But amidst the chaos, one figure moved with unnatural grace.

A girl in a pink dress twirled through the ash like she was at a royal gala. Barefoot, hair tangled like weeds, soot smudged across her cheeks, she danced as if the world hadn't ended. Her eyes were half-lidded, humming some tune lost to time. She stepped between broken glass like it was flower petals.

The mysterious man stopped mid-stride.

He rubbed his eyes, blinked once, then twice. The collar of his long coat fluttered in the wind. A broken streetlight sparked behind him.

"Alright," He muttered. "I was just on the moon five minutes ago. Now I'm watching a ballerina ghost dance in a disaster movie."

The girl froze mid-spin, arms raised in a dramatic pose. Her head tilted, eyes sharp and strangely focused.

"You're new," she said.

He adjusted his gloves, brushing off a bit of ash. "And you're dancing in an apocalypse. I guess we're both unusual."

"You smell like moonlight and burnt metal."

He sniffed his coat. "Yeah, that tracks."

She stepped closer, bare feet silent. Ken tensed.

"You're not real," the girl said, narrowing her eyes.

"I was about to say the same to you," Ken replied.

Then, without warning, she lunged.

The Man sidestepped just in time, her leg sweeping through where his chest had been. She flipped, landed on one hand, and sprung forward like a spinning blade.

"Okay, definitely not a regular child," He grunted, narrowly dodging a palm strike. "Did ballet go out of style and turn into street fighting while I was gone?"

She didn't answer. She moved fast, too fast. He ducked another punch, then rolled and came up behind her, grabbing her wrist and twisting gently.

She flipped out of his grasp like a cat and landed a light kick to his shoulder.

"Ow," He said, more annoyed than hurt. "Alright. Time out."

They both backed away, breathing heavily. The man raised a hand in peace. "Look, kid, I'm not here to fight you. I just appeared here confused and incredibly undercaffeinated."

She stared for a moment, then lowered her guard.

"You fight funny," she said.

"Thanks. I was trained by two drunks and a goat. Name's Ken Chagol. Private detective. I solve mysteries and occasionally punch things."

She tilted her head. "I'm Emilia."

"Nice to meet you, Emilia. Got a last name?"

She hesitated. "I… don't think I have one."

Ken frowned. "No family name? That's odd."

"I don't remember ever having one. Maybe I was born without it."

"Well," Ken said, dusting off his coat, "that's just inconvenient for paperwork."

Emilia grinned. "You're strange."

"Takes one to know one, pink tornado."

They stood in awkward silence as distant thunder rolled across the sky. Something large moved far off, a shadow skimming along the ruined rooftops.

Emilia looked toward it with a calm expression. "That thing comes back sometimes. It doesn't like music."

Ken scratched his chin. "Neither did my ex-wife."

She giggled, then looked up at him. "Are you staying?"

Ken thought for a moment, then nodded.

"Yeah. I'm not done figuring out what's going on here. Besides, you seem like someone who attracts weirdness."

"That's not a compliment, is it?"

"Maybe."

Another silence.

Then Emilia asked, "Do you want to dance?"

Ken blinked. "You just tried to beat me up."

"That was before I liked you."

He chuckled. "Tell you what. If we survive whatever's coming next, I'll take you up on that."

She nodded and walked ahead, humming her eerie tune.

Ken followed, muttering to himself, "Moon to Earth, dancing apocalypse children, shadow monsters. Looks like I am wandering too much nowadays."

Still, his lips curled into a small smile. He had a mystery. He had company. And had billions of cracks on his back....

....

Scene: Father Vain in the Lower Church of Tanhzil

The Lower Church of Tanhzil breathed dust.

Age clung to the air like ash, a sacred rot soaked into its bones. Cracked pillars leaned like dying sentinels. Light pushed feebly through broken slits in the stonework, but it could not reach the center aisle—where Father Vain sat alone, hands clasped as if in prayer, though his lips spoke no blessing.

He sat hunched on the edge of a crumbling pew, cloaked in silence and smoke. Outside, the storm rolled over the dead city. Thunder murmured like voices buried beneath centuries.

This was where it had ended.

This was where it always ended.

The floor still bore faint scorch marks. Symbols etched by divine fire. No worshippers came here anymore. They couldn't. The ones who remembered refused, and the ones who didn't… had never truly lived through it.

Vain lifted his head slowly. His eyes, dull as rainwater, drifted to the broken altar ahead.

"I saw the cosmos die," he whispered.

The wind whistled through a shattered window as if in reply.

When the Diary opened atop Hazaya's peak, it did not unfold like paper. It unfurled like a scream across existence. Reality rippled. Time stuttered. Infinite dimensions—each one a variant of the next, different in inches or infinities—began to collapse in sequence. Layer by layer, they were stripped away like dead skin, until only one remained. The world he sat in now.

And it was chosen.

No, worse—it matched.

That diary wasn't a record. It was a condition. And when it opened, the cosmos had to obey. Realities that did not fit were obliterated. Entire peoples, cities, histories—forgotten because they failed to align with the shape the diary demanded.

And on the final hill, beneath a sky torn open with burning stars, Vain and Martin had fought.

He could still feel the chill on that peak. The echoing thunder as the sky trembled. The weight of the diary in his hand—pulsing with something older than gods.

Martin had stood opposite him, battered and defiant, his robes streaked with ash and blood. The wind tore at his coat like it was trying to pull him into heaven or hell.

"You know what it's doing, Vain!" Martin had shouted over the wind, eyes wild with grief. "You know this isn't fate—it's design! Something else is writing us!"

Vain had said nothing.

He had already seen it. The strings. The echoes of other selves. In one world, Martin had stabbed him. In another, they had leapt together from the peak to deny the diary's demand. In a third, they'd burned it—and the universe with it.

Only in this one did the sequence complete.

The diary was open.

The match was made.

They fought.

Steel against relics. Prayers against blood. They moved like dancers trapped in a doomed waltz—twin Invokers who once saved worlds now trying to kill each other atop the last remaining one.

And then—

They both fell.

Tumbling from the hill, their bodies slammed into the grass-strewn slope below, the impact ripping the air from their lungs. But they didn't die. Not yet. Martin was damaged the most, after all he opened the diary. His soul was absolutely drained.

Vain marched at Martin dragging a broken leg.

Martin looked up at the sky and saw the diary glowing. The Shadow of the Peer fell on him.

His smile faded. "No," he said. "You can't."

"I have to."

"You don't. Not in this world."

Vain's eyes burned. "Especially in this world."

Then the blade plunged.

Vain held him as the life left.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "This world doesn't need us."

Back in the Lower Church, Vain pressed a hand against his chest. He could still feel Martin's heartbeat. Or maybe it was just the voice of his own, now so much quieter.

He looked up at the altar, cracked and crumbling.

"Goodbye, Martin," he said softly.

And somewhere, in the silence of the dead church, the wind whispered like turning pages.