Ashes... it’s easy to be assimilated by ashes...
The words of the young nun slightly startled Fenna; in that brief mont, she felt as if sothing in her mind loosened slightly. But just as she was about to ask more, the nun in the black dress suddenly gave her a faint smile and then dispersed into ashes before her very eyes.
"Ding... Ding Ding..."
The familiar knocking noise ca from sowhere again, and then Fenna felt another presence in the church. She quickly looked in that direction, only to see a dim silhouette standing at the entrance of the church.
Then, the silhouette slowly walked towards her—with each step, the outline of the shadow beca a bit clearer. Eventually, she could see that it was an old priest with a slightly hunched back, dressed in an old church uniform.
The old priest held a not-so-bright lamp in his hand, the palm showing a tallic sheen under the lamp light. It seed that he had lost his arm in a battle long ago and replaced it with a steam-powered prosthetic limb. He slowly approached Fenna, yet his gaze never fell on her—the slightly sunken eyes seed always fixed on sothing farther away.
A sudden, inexplicable sense of familiarity surged up, causing Fenna to rise from the bench and move towards the silhouette with a strange familiarity: "Hello, may I ask what this place is..."
The old priest finally stopped. His gaze still fixed beyond Fenna, he spoke calmly, "You have entered the wrong branch of history, Judge—hurry and find a way to leave here before you also beco one of these ashes... He no longer discerns."
"He no longer discerns? Who is He?" Fenna asked instinctively.
"That deity who records history..." the old priest said softly, and as he spoke, his figure too began to rapidly disintegrate into ash carried away by the wind, leaving only a blurry sentence drifting into Fenna’s ear, "...everything... flows towards ultimate chaos..."
A wisp of slightly warm ash, driven by an invisible wind, brushed past Fenna’s fingertips. At the touch of that ash, Fenna suddenly felt a fierce jolt within her heart!
She still could not recall her past, nor could she rember what this place was, but she sensed a warning deep within... She mustn’t continue to sink here; she had to find a way out!
The next second, she violently strode towards the church’s main door.
The church door was ajar, pushed open by Fenna as the boundless night sky suddenly filled her vision—the day had ended unknowingly, and the vast desert had welcod the night. The heat had faded from the sands, and the cold night wind began to dominate this forgotten sand, the wind blowing chaotically from afar, stirring up the sand like fine blades howling past, grains striking the surrounding ruins and slapping against Fenna’s arms and cheeks, bringing a sharp pain.
Skin tough enough to resist small calibers was scratched by the wind-blown sand into tiny wounds. Surprisingly, Fenna saw that no blood flowed out from her wounds, but instead, a delicate ash like black smoke drifted out, steadily dissipating into the air as if being absorbed by the entire world.
She was being "absorbed" by this world.
In that instant, she instinctively thought of retreating to the safety of the church, but the next second, she recalled the words of the unnad nun and the old priest, and a sudden warning surged through her.
Sinking into the Shelter was far more dangerous than facing the sandstorm—the comfort of safety would erode her will and dissolve her existence with greater efficiency.
First, leave the city... The "relics" standing in the desert could not offer any protection from the sandstorm; on the contrary, their very presence was a danger... This place is counterintuitive; perhaps the barren sands might even be a bit safer...
Nurous thoughts flashed through Fenna’s mind in an instant, but her actions did not hesitate. After briefly shielding herself from the sandstorm with a torn cloak, she took large strides toward the exit she rembered from the city.
The surrounding sand stirred and wriggled as if sothing had been disturbed, or perhaps this city did not permit "departure" from the start. From the corner of her eye, Fenna suddenly saw sothing erging from the sand; the next second, a hand tightly grasped her ankle.
A human figure ford from the sand erged, gripping Fenna like a soulless undead as it crawled on the ground, its constantly shifting face suddenly lifted, emitting a series of muffled roars and murmurs!
However, the arms ford from the sands couldn’t hold back Fenna’s strides. With a forceful step, she broke free from the "sand person’s" restraint, then stamped the ground powerfully, with a thunderous bang, the strong shockwave shredded the body crawling on the ground and dispersed a large swathe of surrounding sands.
Amid the settling dust, Fenna saw sothing exposed from under the sands; it was a section of stone pillar buried for who knows how many years, on which one could faintly make out the inscription: "...Wilhelm... Black Sun descends from... we have failed..."
The shock lasted only for an instant, but Fenna’s actions did not hesitate at all; she forcefully suppressed the various thoughts that suddenly surged in her mind and continued to run forward without any hesitation.
The wind suddenly howled, and various sounds filled the air, those vague and layered noises sounding as if they were countless vendors hawking their wares, mixed with the sounds of pedestrians and carriages.
In the sandy ruins under the night sky, nurous lively sounds surrounded Fenna, an invisible bustling city awakening beside her seed almost imaginable, painting a lively, thriving, vibrant scene next to her, a city still vibrant under the night sky, while at the sa ti, she caught glimpses of lights in the distance with the corner of her eye.
Lights flickered in the city ruins, arrays of floating light sources appearing among the broken, dilapidated walls; they looked like street lamps and lights inside shop windows beside the street, with more lights floating higher up, like countless ho lights scattered from residential buildings.
This scene, as if after the city was abandoned and even completely forgotten, the lights once brightened this city still stubbornly remained in their places, lingering in the mory of history, lighting up at their sa spots each nightfall...
The city outlined by the lights awakened in the night, beams of light illuminating covered yellow sand bricks and collapsed pillars, and many vague figures erged within the light, coming and going, making indistinct sounds.
Fenna moved through these apparitions with a sword, no matter the illusion around her, she ran forward with clear goals, without any pause or hesitation.
But her body was still uncontrollably assimilating, being devoured by the surrounding invisible ashes, her wounds multiplying, and even without the abrasion of sand grains, her body seed to crack open on its own, black smoke and ashes constantly escaping from her body, and with each escape she heard surrounding sounds and saw surrounding sceneries more clearly.
After a certain mont, she suddenly heard clear voices of conversation, those voices as if right beside her ear, nearly speaking directly to her—
"Have you heard? The thirteen islands of Viserland disappeared... the news ca from the north a few days ago... that terrifying ship opened a rift to Subspace..."
Fenna ignored the voices near her ear; she waved her arms, the swirling wind scattering the surrounding dust, and a torn flyer suddenly appeared out of thin air, flying past her face with the wind, printed with a familiar face on it.
It was a wanted poster. The face of Tirian Abnormal appeared on the flyer, and underneath his portrait was a string of alarmingly large numbers—countless zeros, less a bounty amount and more like a thriller joke implying "this person is infinitely dangerous".
Then, a clear rhythmic music suddenly ca from the night, a large crowd seed to erge at the distant alley’s end, Fenna heard soone shouting sothing over there, she vaguely heard the voices—
"... Frost welcos its new queen... Her Majesty Lei Nora will be crowned today, may we bathe in the queen’s glory, receive her blessing, and pledge loyalty to her..."
Then ca various noises, various relics appeared, various information as if consciously surrounded Fenna—
On the road across was the day Lei Nora, the Frost Queen, was crowned; at another intersection was the day of the Frost Rebellion, beside the streets below, people were discussing the wanted poster for the forr Frost general Tirian, while not far away on a raised platform, relics from the era of the City-State were displayed, with a major historian lecturing among the crowd, one of the foremost discoverers of the City-State era, but Fenna did not recognize him...
In front of her, a figure suddenly erged from the sandstorm, a man in tattered clothes, acting erratically, his eyes bearing a puzzled look—as if he held a crumpled scroll and a pencil, standing there disoriented, seeming frightened by the surrounding environnt.
He kept bowing to the surrounding people, seemingly stopping passersby to ask about sothing, muttering to himself, sotis suddenly shouting out loud, appearing almost crazed.
Fenna quickly walked past this figure, but suddenly stopped, she heard the tattered-clothed, paper-and-pencil-holding man incessantly asking passersby one thing: "Please, what year is it now? Does anyone know what year I’ve reached?"
Fenna turned towards the sowhat delirious man, only to see that he too almost simultaneously lifted his head to look this way.
"Hello, my na is Puman," the mad man waved his arms, despite his unsteady behavior and puzzled look, he still maintained proper manners, "I’m dreaming again, but this ti can’t find the exit... Would you please tell what year it is now?"
Puman... That famous "mad poet" Puman?
Fenna was montarily dazed, and in the next second, she saw the man who claid to be "Puman" suddenly vanish into the sandstorm.
Only the crumpled scroll and the pencil he had been holding in his hand fell to the ground.
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