The wind had long since vanished.
Only the sound of their boots crunching over debris and forgotten gravel echoed through the ruined corridor of the lower sectors. Walls once polished by artificial light were now veined in decay—moss clinging to steel, the floor fractured like ancient bones. Every few feet, a broken screen flickered with ghostlight before dying again, casting fleeting shadows over Matte and Violet as they moved.
They walked in silence for a long stretch, the kind that felt natural—not awkward, but earned.
Matte glanced at her from the corner of his eye. She hadn't said much since they left the last ruin behind. A few words about direction, something about drainage tunnels beneath them—but her mind was clearly elsewhere. It matched the silence in his own head, for once.
He exhaled softly, voice low. "You always this quiet, or is it just me?"
Violet blinked, caught off guard. She looked over, lips parting as if to answer—but then she smirked. "You're not exactly a chatterbox, y'know."
Matte chuckled. It was dry and unexpected, even to him. "Guess I'm outta practice."
They kept walking. He rolled his shoulders, letting the tension slip off a little. His posture wasn't as rigid as before, his steps less like a soldier's and more like someone just trying to reach something better.
"Back before everything went to hell," he said, glancing up at the remains of a cracked dome ceiling, "I used to talk a lot. Too much, maybe. Thought having answers meant something."
Violet tilted her head. "What changed?"
Matte's smile thinned. "I died."
Silence again—but this time it wasn't empty. It held something between them.
She didn't pry. Just nodded once, subtle, like she understood more than she let on. The faint purple sheen of her hair caught the last flicker of a dying panel as they turned a corner.
Up ahead, the path narrowed—one side collapsed entirely, leaving only a thin ledge that hugged the wall, with a drop into blackness on the other side.
Matte stepped up first, testing the edge with one foot. "We're really earning this shortcut," he muttered.
"You think this is bad?" Violet quipped behind him. "You should've seen where I came from."
He grinned back at her. "Tell me about it."
And she did.
Not everything. Just enough. Snippets of escape. Running through poisoned fog. Waking up to gunfire in the distance. Losing people she never had time to learn names for. But there was no edge in her voice when she said it—just the kind of tired that clung to the soul like dust.
Matte listened. Really listened.
By the time they made it across the ledge, the mood had shifted again. Not heavy—just more real.
"You miss it?" Violet asked suddenly. "Who you were before?"
Matte didn't answer right away. He looked down at his hand, flexing his fingers slowly like the weight of his essence still sat beneath the skin.
"Sometimes," he finally said. "But… I think I miss who I was supposed to be more."
They didn't speak again for a while.
But something had shifted. Not in the world around them—that was still cracked, cold, and waiting to devour them.
No… it was Matte.
Something inside him was beginning to change.
They found shelter in what used to be a service terminal. A half-collapsed checkpoint station with broken glass and rusted rails—forgotten, like everything else down here. But the roof held, and the remnants of an old bench gave them something other than concrete to sit on.
Violet peeled off her outer cloak, revealing the thin mesh armor underneath, worn and patched with makeshift stitching. Matte set his bag down, pulled out what little they had left—dried rations, a flask of clean water, and a wrapped piece of cloth holding preserved nutrient strips.
"Dinner of champions," he muttered, holding it up.
Violet smirked, her voice soft. "You know how to cook?"
Matte raised an eyebrow. "You planning on critiquing my seasoning mid-apocalypse?"
She chuckled, and for the first time, it didn't feel forced. "Just wondering if you were one of those types. Pre-fall romantic. Nice house, soft life, weekend grilling."
Matte leaned back against the cold metal wall and stared up at the rust-stained ceiling. "Nah. No house. No grill. Just… noise."
She looked over, waiting.
"I used to be military. Before the Dracus took over. Before the world fell apart. I was part of a recon unit stationed near the border of what they called 'quiet zones.' Turns out," he smiled bitterly, "they weren't so quiet."
"You fought them?" Violet asked, voice lower now.
He nodded. "The early ones. Forest Hunters. Before they had real tech. They moved like ghosts, but they bled like anything else. We thought we could win. Thought we understood what we were up against." He let out a breath. "We didn't."
Violet's eyes lingered on him. "You saw it happen… the first time they erased someone, didn't you?"
Matte's jaw clenched slightly, but he nodded. "Not just erased. Like they'd never existed. No screams. No remains. Just—gone."
They sat in silence again, but it wasn't heavy. It was reverent. Shared understanding between two people who had lost more than they could name.
After a moment, Violet pulled something from her cloak pocket—a small pendant, worn and dulled with time. A metal ring looped through a faded ribbon.
"This belonged to my sister," she said, turning it over in her palm. "She died protecting me during the raids. I used to blame myself for not being strong enough."
Matte glanced over at her, his voice quiet. "Do you still?"
She hesitated. "Some days less than others."
He gave a slow nod. "That's progress."
She looked up at him then. "What about you? What do you carry?"
His fingers instinctively touched the old, frayed band wrapped around his left wrist. It looked like nothing—barely held together. But he didn't explain it.
Not yet.
Instead, he changed the subject with a faint smirk. "You always ask this many questions when you're off the clock?"
Violet raised a brow. "Only when I'm stuck in an abandoned tunnel with a guy who talks to shadows and doesn't sleep."
That earned a genuine laugh from Matte. Low, gravelly—but real.
"I sleep," he said, stretching his legs. "I just don't dream."
Her voice was softer this time. "Is that better?"
Matte looked at her, and for a moment, something flickered behind his eyes. Pain, maybe. Or longing. It passed quickly.
"No," he said. "But it hurts less."
Later that night, while Violet drifted off against the bench, Matte stood outside the ruined station entrance, watching the darkness like it owed him answers.
Far off, something moved. Not close enough to hear—just felt. A shiver through the essence, like a vibration in his bones.
NULL?
No… something different.
Something older.
His hand instinctively rested near the hilt of the rusted blade at his side.
He didn't wake Violet. Not yet.
But as he stared into the blackness, he whispered under his breath—not in fear, but resolve.
"Keep coming."
A low, dull hum stirred Matte from his half-sleep.
He hadn't meant to drift off, not really. Leaning against the frame of the station entrance, his blade across his lap, eyes half-lidded. But the quiet was deceptive, and even soldiers let their guard down eventually.
The hum faded as quickly as it had come.
He sat up straighter, scanning the dim corridor ahead. Nothing moved. No shadows shifted. But the feeling from the night before hadn't faded. It clung to the air like smoke—subtle, invasive, wrong.
Behind him, Violet stirred.
"You were standing watch," she mumbled, rubbing her eyes as she sat up. "How'd that work out?"
"Relax," Matte said. "Only drifted off for a minute."
She gave him a look.
"Alright… twenty."
Violet smirked. "You're improving."
Matte stood and stretched his arms above his head, joints cracking. "You sleep okay?"
"Dreamt of the surface," she replied, tying her hair back into a loose knot. "Didn't last long."
They packed quickly—years of practice making them efficient without needing to speak. But as Violet knelt to pick up her cloak, her eyes caught something etched into the wall near the bench. Faint lines scratched into the metal. Old, nearly worn away.
"What's that?" she asked.
Matte stepped over, brushing the dust away with the edge of his glove.
It was writing.
Sloppy. Carved in desperation.
"IT SEES THROUGH YOU."
And below that, a symbol neither of them recognized—three slashed rings interwoven, like a crude version of an eye folded into itself.
Violet's breath caught in her throat. "That's not Dracus. It's… something else."
Matte stared at it. The longer he looked, the more something behind his mind stirred—like a memory just out of reach.
"Where did you say we were?" he asked.
She pulled out a broken sector map from her satchel. "We've been heading through the lower infrastructure grid beneath Zone Twelve. This station connects to the deep-tier supply line that runs near the edge of the Old Void Border."
Matte turned slowly, eyes narrowing. "The Old Void Border was closed off after the last energy rupture."
"Yeah. So was half the world," she muttered. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
He nodded. "Someone left this here… recently. It's not faded enough to be pre-collapse."
That meant someone else had come this way.
And left a warning.
Matte traced the edge of the symbol again, his fingers pausing at the center. A faint pulse of Essence radiated outward—not hostile, but… familiar.
Violet tilted her head. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Matte said. "It's just…"
He turned to her, voice low.
"I've seen that symbol before. But not in this life."
They traveled in silence again, but it wasn't the same silence as yesterday. This one pulsed with questions neither of them could answer.
Around midday, they reached a collapsed skybridge—once a connection between two subterranean rail networks, now just a gap filled with broken beams and open air. On the far side, an old service ladder led down into what looked like a tunnel network untouched by modern systems—older tech, pre-collapse steelwork.
"This wasn't on the map," Violet said.
"Not everything is," Matte replied. "Some things were hidden on purpose."
She raised an eyebrow. "Think we'll find answers down there?"
"No," he said. "But we might find better questions."
As they descended, the light behind them shrank until only the cold glow of Matte's Essence lit the way. The walls here were strange—smooth but etched with patterns that looked less industrial and more… ritualistic.
Carvings. Symbols.
Stories.
Not in any language they understood—but Violet noticed one recurring phrase etched deeper than the others:
"The One Who Bled into the Void."
Matte's breath hitched when he read it.
He didn't know why.
Violet looked back at him. "Matte?"
He blinked. His heart had started racing without warning.
"I'm fine," he said, but his voice lacked weight. "Keep moving."
As they pressed forward into the hollow dark, neither of them noticed the faint shimmer that passed across the tunnel wall behind them.
Like something… watching.