Ashfall stood at the base of the statue, his boots half-buried in the frozen snow that had drifted between the piled corpses. The air was still, too still, as if the Metropole itself was holding its breath. He had been staring at the red marble figure for what felt like far too long, trying to make sense of why this thing even existed here in the middle of a dead city.
"What the hell are we even looking at?" he muttered, more to himself than to Calethia. His voice carried a low rasp, a mixture of exhaustion and annoyance. "A statue in a world that's already rotting to pieces. Doesn't add up. Nothing here does."
Calethia didn't answer immediately. She circled the statue, careful with her steps on the frozen corpses that leaned against the pedestal. She moved like a shadow, her black hair brushing against her cheek as she bent lower, brushing snow off the base with her gloved hand. Then she stopped.
"Here," she called softly. Her finger pointed to a narrow spot hidden beneath the stiff arms of several frozen bodies. Ashfall trudged over, reluctant but curious despite himself.
She had uncovered three symbols carved into the stone: a rose in full bloom, a sand-filled hourglass, and the outline of a pendulum clock. There was a fourth mark too, but it lay completely hidden beneath the weight of a collapsed skeleton, half-frozen into the marble itself.
Ashfall stared at them for a long moment. A rose, a sand clock, a pendulum. He narrowed his eyes. "This looks like some kind of riddle. Time, decay, life… whatever." He spat into the snow. "But tell me, why should I give a damn about solving it? There's no reason. No prize at the end."
Calethia tilted her head, still tracing the carved lines with her finger. "Maybe it means something. Maybe it's connected to the city, or the way the world collapsed."
"Or maybe it's just nonsense carved by some lunatic before he froze to death." Ashfall's tone was sharp, cynical. His mind flickered with doubt, though. He couldn't ignore how deliberate those symbols seemed, nor how they tied in with everything else in this world. The frozen river that doesn't fit. The way the snow fell like grains of sand from an hourglass. All of it felt wrong. Too carefully placed and staged.
Still, he refused to show it. "We waste time standing here," he said, pulling the scarf he had found on one of the corpses tighter around his mouth. "Time we don't have. The smart move is to find supplies and a place to rest. Unless you want to end up another frozen corpse hugging this statue."
Calethia hesitated, then gave a small nod. "You're right. We should move. But this…" She glanced once more at the carved symbols. "We shouldn't forget it. I feel like it matters."
"Fine. Keep it in your memory palace," Ashfall muttered. "Just don't expect me to play puzzle games in a graveyard."
They moved away from the statue, their boots crunching against the snow as they passed toppled skyscrapers and ruined vehicles half-buried in ice. The silence broken only by the howl of wind as it cut through shattered windows high above. Ashfall kept glancing up at the skeletal remains of the towers, watching the dark shapes that still lingered along the broken steel beams. He remembered the thing that had tried to crush them earlier. Whatever it was, it hadn't left.
Calethia walked beside him, but her gaze was elsewhere. "If the rose stands for something dying, and the hourglass for time running out, then the pendulum…" she began.
Ashfall cut her off with a dry laugh. "Pendulum swings. Tick-tock, tick-tock. You can't stop it. Maybe that's the point. You can delay, you can run, but time keeps swinging. And then it cuts you down." He gave her a hard look. "And if that's what the riddle means, then it doesn't change a damn thing. We're still trapped in this frozen tomb."
Her lips pressed together, but she said nothing.
The buildings grew stranger the deeper they went. Their bases seemed to twist under the weight of hundreds—no, thousands—of Mythbornes clinging to the lower levels. Their grotesque shapes wrapped like vines around the concrete, arms and faces pressed together in a grotesque wall. Some twitched. Some laughed in distorted voices that echoed faintly across the ruined streets.
Ashfall's hand hovered near his weapon. "They're holding the towers up," he whispered, almost in disbelief. "Those things… they're the only reason the city hasn't collapsed already."
Calethia shivered but kept walking. "Then we shouldn't get too close. One wrong noise and they might all turn on us at once."
Ashfall said nothing, though inside his head the thought clawed at him. If the city was relying on monsters to keep standing, then it was only a matter of time before the whole thing came crashing down. And when it did, they'd be buried alive.
They pressed on, weaving between snow-filled streets, checking every corner for movement. Their conversation about the symbols drifted in and out, half-speculation, half-distraction. Yet beneath it all, Ashfall couldn't shake the growing weight in his chest. The more he thought about the rose, the sand, the pendulum, the more it felt like the city itself was a ticking time bomb.
The ground trembled beneath them. At first it was faint, a subtle vibration. Then it grew stronger, a deep rumble that sent cracks racing through the snow.
"Shit!" Ashfall shouted. He grabbed Calethia's arm and pulled her toward the cover of a collapsed bus.
In the distance, a skyscraper groaned like a dying beast. Its steel bones bent, its concrete skin tearing apart. Then, with a deafening roar, the entire tower folded in on itself, collapsing floor by floor until it struck the ground with an earth-shaking impact.
The shockwave hit them a heartbeat later. Ashfall tried to shield himself, pushing Calethia behind the wreckage, but the force ripped through the street, sending a storm of snow and debris into the air. He felt his grip tear away, felt the violent push that ripped them apart.
"Calethia!" he shouted, but his voice was swallowed by the storm.
Snow engulfed him. He stumbled blindly, coughing, his vision nothing but white chaos. Then the ground gave way. A sudden hollow crack beneath his boots, and before he could react, the street crumbled and he fell.
The world spun, then slammed into him with bone-crushing force. Darkness took him.
When consciousness returned, it came slowly, like dragging himself up from the depths of a frozen lake. Ashfall groaned, every muscle aching as he forced his eyes open. Cold air burned his lungs.
He lay on a mound of snow, the debris of the street above scattered around him. A broken tunnel stretched out in both directions, and through a jagged hole high above, pale daylight filtered down. The sunlight pierced the dark space in a single beam, striking the snow-covered rubble where he lay. Dust and ice sparkled in the beam like falling stars.
He turned his head weakly, catching a glimpse of the sky above. Beyond the hole, the Stars of Madness shimmered faintly in the daylight, their unnatural glow burning even against the sun.
For a long time, he couldn't move. He simply lay there, breath shallow, eyes locked on the beam of light and those cursed stars.
What's the point? he thought bitterly. Fight, crawl, suffer. For what? To end up broken in the dark, staring at a sky that's already lost its mind?
His hands curled weakly into fists. Part of him wanted to stand, to keep going, to claw his way back to survive. But another part, darker and heavier, whispered that maybe it wasn't worth it. Maybe all of this was just time mocking him, swinging back and forth like the pendulum on that damn statue, waiting for the moment it cut him down.
Ashfall let out a broken laugh, his voice hoarse in the silence. "Tick-tock," he whispered, staring at the light above. "Tick-tock. How long before it all collapses?"
The Stars of Madness twinkled in answer, and he felt the weight of their gaze pressing deeper into his mind.
And for the first time, Ashfall wasn't sure if he had the strength to resist.