Ren woke to the sound of silence.

  True silence.

  No shifting rubble.

  No distant predator howls.

  No whispered ruin-thread vibrations humming through the cracked stone.

  The dead city held its breath.

  Waiting.

  Watching.

  He sat up slowly, blanket slipping from his shoulders, muscles stiff and sore from uneasy sleep.

  The traps he'd set remained undisturbed.

  The ruin-thread trembled faintly around him, not with threat, but with anticipation.

  Something was coming.

  Or something was calling.

  The shackle over his heart pulsed once, a deep throb that echoed through his bones.

  Ren tightened the straps of his scavenged pack, checked the weight of his crowbar and rebar, and moved.

  Not away from the pull.

  Toward it.

  He slipped into the ruins at a cautious, steady pace.

  Every sense on edge.

  The dead city was quieter than before.

  Fewer movements among the broken skyscrapers.

  Fewer faction patrols shouting in the guttural tongues of the lost.

  Even the beasts moved more carefully, slinking through alleys and craters with twitching ears and wary eyes.

  As if they felt it too.

  The change in the air.

  The shifting tide.

  Ren followed the pull — a sensation he felt through the ruin-thread more than through any real path.

  Not a command.

  Not a demand.

  A summons.

  Something old.

  Something vast.

  And something patient.

  Waiting for him to find it.

  He moved south, deeper into the broken heart of the buried city.

  Past crumbled marketplaces rotting under centuries of ash.

  Past battlefields where ruinbound factions had torn each other apart and left only twisted bones behind.

  Past ancient structures half-devoured by ruin-thread, their faces blank and empty.

  He moved carefully, cautiously.

  But not fearfully.

  Not today.

  The hunger inside him purred softly, quieter than before.

  Not demanding ruin.

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  Not pushing violence.

  Observing.

  Approving.

  Ren didn't know what that meant.

  He pressed on.

  Hours passed.

  The pull grew stronger.

  The city changed around him.

  The ruins thinned, the wreckage of human life stripped away, leaving only bare stone and twisted structures — black towers that leaned toward each other like conspirators.

  The ruin-thread here was thicker, heavier.

  It didn't weave in idle patterns anymore.

  It formed deliberate structures — pillars, gates, broken bridges suspended by threads alone.

  The world was different here.

  Less dead.

  More dreaming.

  He climbed a broken staircase spiraling around a shattered tower and emerged onto a plateau of cracked, black stone.

  And there he saw them.

  The thrones.

  Six of them, arranged in a wide, broken circle, half-sunken into the cracked ground.

  Each throne different — wrought from different materials, bearing different marks.

  One carved from bleeding stone, its surface perpetually oozing molten ruin.

  One woven from chains so tightly packed they seemed to pulse with every heartbeat.

  One grown from twisted roots, black and brittle, coiling around themselves in endless knots.

  One carved into a rough, unfinished mass of bone and ash, radiating a slow, steady heat.

  One broken into splintered fragments, floating inches above the ground, held together by unseen forces.

  And one — the largest — utterly shattered, nothing left but a jagged base scorched black.

  The hunger inside Ren surged to life.

  The shackle at his chest burned so brightly he staggered, dropping to one knee.

  The ruin-thread around the plateau hummed with wordless anticipation.

  Ren struggled to his feet, breathing hard.

  The thrones weren’t empty.

  Not entirely.

  Ghosts of something vast and ancient lingered there — not beings, not thoughts, but impressions.

  Memory.

  Power.

  Loss.

  He stepped forward, drawn against all better judgment.

  Visions struck him like hammer blows.

  Cities bowing beneath black banners.

  Stars falling from ruined skies.

  Chains wrapping around planets, pulling them down into endless, gnawing darkness.

  Beasts that were kings.

  Kings that became beasts.

  And the thrones.

  Presiding over it all.

  Judges.

  Executioners.

  Architects of ruin.

  The Withering Gods.

  He didn’t know how he knew their name.

  It burned itself into his mind the same way the ruin had carved itself into his skin.

  The Withering Gods.

  Once worshiped.

  Once feared.

  Now fallen.

  Now broken.

  Now searching for vessels.

  For champions.

  For something new.

  The hunger pressed against him harder.

  Not pushing.

  Inviting.

  A hand extended across the abyss of time and death.

  A promise of survival.

  Of strength.

  Of dominion.

  All he had to do was kneel.

  All he had to do was accept.

  The nearest throne — the one woven from endless chains — pulsed with faint silver light, threads of ruin reaching toward him like pleading hands.

  Ren took one shaking step forward.

  The chains coiled tighter, brighter.

  The mark on his chest blazed.

  The whispers rose in a cacophony.

  Take.

  Bind.

  Become.

  He stopped.

  Breathing hard.

  Sweat freezing against his skin.

  He looked down at his hands.

  At the spirals and thorns winding beneath his flesh.

  At the new strength humming in his muscles.

  The new senses sharpening the world into unbearable clarity.

  The ruin had already changed him.

  The hunger had already claimed parts of him.

  If he reached out now, if he accepted whatever waited in the broken thrones — there would be no going back.

  No resisting.

  No pretending he was still just a survivor.

  He would be a part of this place.

  A piece of its endless hunger.

  He clenched his fists until his nails dug bloody crescents into his palms.

  "No," he whispered.

  His voice broke against the vast silence.

  "No."

  The ruin-thread writhed violently around him, the hunger shrieking in protest.

  The thrones pulsed, brighter, faster.

  But Ren turned away.

  Step by step.

  Each one harder than the last.

  Each one heavier.

  Until he stumbled back across the plateau, away from the broken circle, away from the waiting hands of fallen gods.

  Away from the easy death of surrender.

  He didn’t stop moving until the thrones vanished behind broken walls and shattered towers, their pulsing light fading from his senses.

  The hunger quieted, sulking in the hollow of his chest.

  Waiting.

  He knew it wasn’t defeated.

  It would never be defeated.

  Only delayed.

  Only endured.

  He found shelter in the ruins of an old tower, its upper floors collapsed into a jagged fortress of stone and twisted metal.

  He wedged himself into a narrow crawlspace between broken beams, hidden from the eyes of ruin and monsters alike.

  And there, finally, he let the exhaustion catch up.

  His body shook.

  His hands trembled.

  His heart hammered a broken rhythm against his ribs.

  But he was still himself.

  For now.

  The last thing he saw before sleep took him was the faint shimmer of ruin-thread tracing patterns in the broken ceiling overhead — spirals and thorns and chains etched by unseen hands.

  Not as invitation.

  Not as threat.

  As warning.

  The gods were broken.

  The world was broken.

  And he was breaking, too.

  It was only a matter of time.