Chapter 2 — The Weight of What Remains
Morning arrived so much worse than any part of the day because the sun is still that disgusting glazing blood red darkness.
The red sky never truly amazed Jainen. It only shifted his opinions,Jainen moved before most people woke, because the hours when others were quiet were the safest. Silence, in this world, was the best way of survival and peace.
He followed a broken avenue that had only custom drawings on it he guess that it must had once been a ceremonial street. The stones were cracked and re‑laid with whatever hands had found—slabs of blood from people centuries ago still there, rusted metal plates welded flat, rotted bones that looked like his grandma, was driven into the ground . Each piece of the cracked stone bore different symbols, scratched so deep that he got chills thinking about even trying to get it.
Do not steal.
Do not destroy.
Do not ask why.
Jainen understood them without reading.
The air smelled horrible like death horrible someone would have died from it. As he adjusted his pace, his steps got even lighter, breath getting so shallow that it looked like he did not breathe for minutes. He didn't know why he did this in certain places. He just didn't know if there is a force trying to command his body and is this something he has to worry about.
The remains of a shelter sagged to his left, its roof collapsed inward like a ribcage broken from the inside. Cloth still hung from a beam, bleached pale by centuries of exposure. Jainen slowed, Places like this had a way of insisting that a Klin could be near.
For a moment—only a moment—he thought he heard murmuring.
He stopped. Closed his eyes. Letting the nauseating air flow through as the air started getting less and less denser, the weight eased, but of course it left a rottenful stench behind. He knew he had to at least breathe once in a while, so he exhaled through his nose and moved on, telling himself what he always did.
That nothing else matters in this accursed world but survival and strength. The survival cluster rose ahead like a city, or maybe even a town. The walls looked like it was built from the upper halves of fallen towers. He looked up at the destroyed pylons still stitched together after all these years. These pylons almost made Jainen remember the old world but that thought disappeared when he saw smoke curling up into the sky from contained fires, only one thought went to his head and that thought was that somebody was near.
Jainen approached from the side. He wasn't hiding exactly. He simply preferred not to be noticed because anybody in this world can be spies or even a freaking killer themselves.
A group stood near the outer gate—six people, armed, alert. Their gear marked them clearly enough. They must be a crew Jainen thought to himself, Those Identical knots in their straps. Matching bone talismans carved with branching lines.
Kishu-aligned, if he had to guess. Or people who wanted others to think so.
A Klin carcass lay between them, split and steaming despite it literally being negative two degrees out here. It was smaller than most—One of the group prodded it with a spear while another tallied something onto a slate.
"Seventeen," the tallying one said. "That pushes you past the threshold."
A third laughed, sharp and pleased. "Told you I could kill that much" You just have to lean into it."
Jainen watched from a distance where he could leave if he needed to. He wondered, why people have to make such a fuss on meaningless stuff and they always be making meaning out of it, as if they needed to.
The group argued briefly about credit, about whose endurance mattered more. When they were done, they dragged the remains toward a marked pit and began the rituals they had learned from someone else who had learned them from someone long dead.
Jainen turned away.
Inside the cluster, life compressed. Walkways narrow enough to prevent stampedes. Market lines that never ended due to everlasting chats. He passed traders selling dried meat that wasn't meat, books with their pages glued shut because no one trusted what might still be written inside.
A woman called out to him— "Traveling?" "Yes," he said. She studied him with her gorgeous eyes that had seen so much stuff it encouraged her own self to keep asking questions. "Power?"
"No."
She nodded, accepting that answer even though her thoughts wanted her to keep asking. "Some don't need it," she said. "Some people just live without it."
The words settled somewhere deep, heavier than they should have been.
Jainen bought water. He did not stay for too long as he still got daily thoughts of his mother telling him to be home by seven.
On the far side of the cluster, the buildings got smaller again, replaced by old plazas reclaimed by stone and root. He crossed one slowly, feeling the air shift as if remembering that old markings were here too, it must have been way before the Ashen Era
Cards were etched into the ground.
Symbols of Trees.—figures walking forward, towers falling, a crescent half-hidden by shadow. Many were broken, deliberately defaced. Others were burned so deeply into the stone that it almost was impossible to notice.
Jainen crouched, fingers hovering above one particular carved tree. He didn't know what it meant. He only knew that looking at it made his adrenaline boil in his heart like crazy, as if something inside him recognized an ending it had not yet reached.
He stood and left the town behind, choosing not to go any deeper as trouble could come.
By afternoon, the sky darkened—into night,even into a deeper red, clouds layering until the light felt like it was in space. Jainen found shelter beneath the overhang of an old administrative building whose upper floors had collapsed into themselves, sealing most entrances. He sat with his back to stone, knees drawn up, satchel held close.
Sleep did not come easily. When it did, it was shallow and the only thing that had never belonged to him.
He woke to quiet.
Not the absence of sound. The removal of it.
Jainen opened his eyes slowly. The air felt heavy as it did every day, He shot up quick to make sure there were Klins nearby. And he couldn't be certain of that. The silence just keeps coming in different ways. Jainen thought his ears and brain might explode.
For the first time that day, he really just wanted to die with every other person.
The feeling faded as gently as it had arrived.
Jainen rose, shouldered his satchel, and stepped back into the red light.
And that, more than anything, it didn't feel right.