Chapter 1

You awake to the silent screams of riven flesh. Pain swells from a wound at your side, and every muscle is alight with pain's relentless flame. All is calm around you; the sky black as soot, the landscape an endless field of rolling hills like the sea frozen in time.

Yet inside you, a tempest seethes; your body cries out in anguish, your vision is weak and brittle. The ground beneath you is soft, like sand beaten by the tides; it clings to your flesh, and flows along the trenches in your weathered armor.

What happened? The question burns at your weary mind, yet its answer eludes you like sand flowing between clenched fingers. You rise and look around through bleary eyes; the path stretches left and right as far as you can see, and is the only plausible passage through these dunes of ash.

[go left chapter 2]

[go right chapter 3]