Evening light streamed through the gaps in the ivory walls, drawing golden lines that quivered in the heat. The Bone Bastion breathed slowly — a massive labyrinth carved within the bleached remains of a Leviathan whose bones now cradled human life.
Inside the tannery, the heat felt almost alive. It crawled over skin, clung to the breath, slipped into the mouth. The air reeked of wet hide, dried blood, and boiled fat. The walls themselves still whispered of the beast they had once belonged to.
Orien, sleeves rolled up, scrubbed the black hide of some desert creature. His fingers were stained, his nails worn down, yet he whistled — a light, teasing tune that defied the suffocating air.
The old tanner, hunched and leathery as an ancient wineskin, raised his head from behind the workbench.
"Think this is a festival, boy? Move faster, or I'll make you swallow that hide yourself!"
Orien grinned.
"I doubt you could chew it, master. It's far too expensive for your teeth."
The old man grunted, eyeing the finished pelt.
"Hmph. Not bad. Here—take this, and get out before I regret it."
He tossed a small leather pouch onto the table. It landed with a dull thud. Orien caught it between two fingers, bounced it twice, weighed it.
"Feels lighter than my expectations."
"What was that?"
"Nothing, master. Nothing at all."
He slipped off his apron, wiped his hands on a rag already blackened with grease, and looked up. Between the colossal ribs of the Leviathan, thin shafts of sunlight pierced through, sketching a dusty golden sky.
He breathed in deeply. The air tasted of salt, iron, and ash.
Then he stepped outside.
The city stretched before him like a living organism. Shops clung to the sides of giant bones; children darted between the ribs; smiths hammered on anvils made from polished vertebrae. Spheres of glass hung from ropes overhead, glowing faintly — the last lanterns of the day.
Orien passed a group of Awakened. Their mere presence silenced the street.
They wore battered armor, dulled by years of combat, and moved with a quiet, predatory grace. One carried the horn of some slain beast; another held a claw longer than a man's arm. The crowd stepped aside with a blend of awe and fear.
Orien watched them go, a spark of envy glinting in his amber eyes before he masked it with a grin.
"The Awakened," he muttered. "Always so proud. One day, I'll have armor like that too."
A toothless old vendor burst out laughing.
"You? You'll end up inside their boots before you wear one, boy!"
"As long as it's well-tanned leather, I guess I'll have served a purpose," he replied, still laughing.
His laughter faded with the light, swallowed by the deepening shadows of the skeletal city.
He stopped for a moment, gazing up at the vault of bone above him. The Leviathan had been dead for millennia — so vast that entire generations had labored to hollow its carcass. They said not even a hundred heroes could have slain it. Yet there it lay, empty, housing a thousand fragile lives within its ribs.
"The world's full of dead stories," he whispered. "And I'm working inside one. How poetic."
He smiled again — faintly this time, as though at his own foolishness — and kept walking.
His footsteps echoed over the bridges of polished bone, carrying him higher, toward the upper ridges of the Bastion, where the wind still smelled faintly of freedom.
***
The wind grew stronger as Orien climbed. It coiled around the great ivory ridge beneath his feet, wide enough for a caravan to cross. Below him, the city pulsed with feverish life: forges spat red sparks, voices tangled with the rhythm of hammers, and somewhere far below, a choir of priests chanted hymns to gods long since forgotten.
The Bone Bastion was a world unto itself. Rope bridges stretched from vertebra to vertebra, homes clung to the sides of ribs, and on the flanks of the skull, suspended gardens shimmered with an artificial green glow. They said the wealthy lived within the chest cavity — where the monster's heart had once beat.
The poor, meanwhile, lived in the legs, among the shadows and the swamps of rotting bone.
Orien had neither class nor place. Only his bare feet and his curiosity.
He paused for a moment, watching a group of children climbing a cracked vertebra. One of them slipped, fell, and burst into laughter.
"At least they don't know yet what it means to fall for real," he murmured.
A little higher, he passed beneath an arch carved from bone. Along its curve ran an old inscription, worn thin by time — an ancient prayer in the divine tongue:
"Here lies the Hunt. Here sleeps the Silence."
Orien traced the letters with his finger, their surface smooth as glass.
"Even the gods needed rest, it seems."
The air grew cooler as he climbed.
From this height, the city looked unreal: thousands of lanterns glimmered inside the skeleton, like a second sky turned upside down. The ivory glowed with a faint blush beneath the dying sun — as if the creature dreamed still, filled again by the light that once scorched it.
Orien sat on a polished bone ledge. He pulled out the small pouch the old tanner had thrown at him and shook it. Two coins. Nothing more.
"Wonderful," he sighed. "I'll go far with that."
He grinned. "Maybe as far as my next hunger."
He rose and continued climbing. The ridge curved upward, leading toward open air. With every step, the wind changed — carrying the scent of hot sand, salt, and scorched dust.
Then, suddenly, the Bastion ended.
Before him stretched the golden desert of Soléara.
An ocean of living dunes shimmered under a crimson sun, each wave of sand glittering like molten metal. The wind danced in spirals, raising pillars of dust that flickered with light. There were no birds, no cries — only the endless breath of the world.
Orien stood still, mesmerized.
The horizon trembled, uncertain, and farther still — far beyond the reach of the sun — rose the black mountains.
They spanned the width of the world.
The people called them the Demon's Spine.
No one dared stare at them for long. Some said that to gaze upon those peaks was to draw the attention of what slept beneath them. Others whispered that the mountains were a scar — the wound where the Umbra had first bled into the world.
Orien didn't look away.
"If that's where it began," he murmured, "then maybe that's where it'll end."
A smile crossed his lips — not of fear, nor of wisdom, but of a boy amused by the idea of defying something vast and unseen.
He sat down at the edge of the ridge, pulled out a small piece of dried meat he'd bought for cheap, and raised it in a silent toast to the horizon.
"To you, old world," he said. "May your monsters taste better than your food."
The wind carried his laughter away — a thin, fragile sound, drifting through the Leviathan's hollow ribs.
The sun slid beneath the dunes, and the shadows began to stretch toward him, slow and deliberate, like a tide coming from another world.
***
The sun had vanished beyond the dunes, swallowed whole by the horizon, yet the heat lingered — a breath that refused to die. The sky bled crimson into violet strands above the golden desert. The shadow of the Bone Bastion stretched vast and thin, drawing the shape of the dead Leviathan across the sand.
Orien chewed a strip of dried meat. It tasted like leather and salt, but he didn't complain.
Sitting on the white curve of a colossal rib, he swung his legs lazily over the edge, the wind curling around him like a ghostly companion.
"Bon appétit, Orien," he said aloud. "A royal feast — three bites of leather, a hint of dust, and a view worth dying for."
He laughed quietly, the sound drifting into the emptiness around him. Then, softer:
"If I were a hero, I'd have roasted game and wine right now… But someone's got to watch the world die while they're busy saving it."
The wind answered with a low whistle.
Orien raised his head.
The desert seemed to shimmer, as though it were melting into mist. The light itself was… flickering — trembling, as if the sun's heart had skipped a beat.
He blinked.
Nothing. The world remained. The sand. The bones. The silence.
And yet — something had changed.
The air felt different. Heavier. Colder. The colors bled away, turning pale and fragile. Even the sounds of the world — the hiss of the wind, the distant creak of bone — faded to a dull murmur.
"What the…" he breathed.
The piece of meat slipped from his fingers.
It vanished into shadow before it hit the ground.
Around him, a circle of darkness was forming.
Not shadow — but the absence of it. A void, dense and alive, as if the night itself had folded inward and settled around him. It didn't reach far — only a few steps in every direction — yet beyond it, the world seemed erased.
Orien froze. His breath fogged in the air, though the night should have still been warm.
He tried to speak, maybe to make a joke, but his voice caught in his throat.
Then — a sound.
A footstep. Soft. Behind him.
He turned sharply.
Someone had sat beside him.
It was a woman.
Her hair was chestnut brown, falling in loose waves over her shoulders. Her eyes — bright amber, almost gold — glowed faintly in the dimness. She wore a pale white tunic, draped and ancient in design, and an elegant bow rested against her thigh.
The world around them was gone. Only the circle of Umbra remained — a quiet cradle of shadow and cold light.
The woman turned to him with a calm, disarming smile.
"Planning to eat all alone?" she asked, her voice smooth, playful.
Orien blinked, his mouth slightly open.
"…Want some?"
She nodded once.
"I'd like that."
He tore off a small piece of the dried meat and handed it to her. She accepted it delicately, chewing it slowly.
"Hard to swallow," she said. "But better than what I've had for centuries."
He stared at her, baffled.
"You… you from around here?"
She tilted her head, the faintest trace of amusement in her eyes.
"From here? From elsewhere? Depends what you mean by 'here.'"
Orien frowned, then let out a nervous chuckle.
"You know, I talk to myself a lot. But this is the first time my imagination talks back."
She laughed — a light, ringing sound, so pure it felt almost unreal.
"Then imagine better, Orien."
He froze.
"How… how do you know my name?"
She didn't answer. Her gaze drifted toward the horizon — toward the black mountains trembling beneath the distant haze.
The wind returned, carrying a deep, resonant note — not quite sound, not quite voice, like the earth remembering something terrible.
A shiver climbed his spine.
The woman rose gracefully. Her shadow stretched across the bone, long and twisted, swallowing what little light was left around them.
Her fingers closed around her bow.
"Time's running short," she said, her tone stripped of playfulness.
When she looked at him again, her eyes burned with ancient fire.
"Your turn will come soon."
Orien stood, throat tight.
"My… turn? What do you mean?"
She clenched her jaw, drawing in a slow breath.
"You'll understand soon enough. But promise me something, Orien."
He started to speak, but she interrupted softly:
"Be strong. No matter what you see."
Before he could answer, she drew her bow.
A pale light flared across her eyes.
And then — the Umbra collapsed.
The world snapped back — hot, bright, and heavy.
Orien blinked rapidly.
He was alone.
The wind blew again, warm and dry. The dunes shimmered under starlight. His strip of meat lay forgotten on the bone beside him.
But where she had sat, the ivory was blackened, as if burned from within.