The small town named Faydale now slept in nature's embrace, like a fossil of what it had once been. The surrounding vast plain had formerly been obedient farmland, now covered in tall wild grasses. No grooves remained, no boundary stones. A single, vast sea of grasses and pioneering trees had surged over the fields. The ancient mountains in the distance watched with indifference the destruction of a once-vibrant town.
Time had not shattered the town so much as dissolved it. The violence of its ending was now a geological fact, not a fresh wound. Walls had succumbed to gravity and root. What had once been houses were now mere linear arrangements of moss-clad stone, barely knee-high, with only their outlines remaining. The cobbles of the square had vanished entirely, buried beneath wild trees, their leaves whispering secrets the original settlers could never have known.
