"Echoes of the Forgotten Land"

As they started to travel to east. They came across a land filled with ruins, barren land, and battlefields. The "Forgotten land"

The wind whispered through the broken stones, carrying with it the faint scent of ash and rusted steel. 

Cracked banners flapped lazily from crumbling towers, their symbols faded by time and rain.

Nao pulled her cloak tighter, boots crunching over gravel as she glanced around the desolate landscape. 

“This place… it doesn’t feel like a ruin. It feels like the battlefield is still breathing.”

Keal walked beside her, hands in his coat pockets, eyes distant. “That's because it never really died. Not here.”

She looked at him. “You’ve been here before?”

He shook his head. “No. But I’ve read. Listened. And the land remembers. Especially the Forgotten Land.”

Nao raised a brow. “What happened here?”

Keal stopped walking. His voice dropped, softer like he was afraid the past might overhear.

“They called it the Battle of the Nine Kingdoms. The day when pride outweighed peace.”

Nao tilted her head slightly. “Tell me.”

He glanced at her, then smiled faintly. “Alright. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

They sat on a fallen stone, wind still howling through the ruins like the cries of fallen soldiers.

Keal looked toward the horizon, as if he could see it all again.

“There were once nine kingdoms. Each ruled by a monarch who believed their land was the center of the world. 

They signed peace pacts, traded gold and silk but none trusted the others. And when one king died without an heir, they all marched to claim his empty throne.”

Nao leaned forward, eyes fixed on him. “All of them?”

“All nine,” he nodded. “Each believing they had the stronger claim. And so, here, in this very land, they gathered their armies.

 No alliances. No mercy. Just ambition against ambition.”

He paused.

“They fought for nine days. On the first day, horns echoed like thunder. On the third, blood turned the rivers red. 

On the seventh, the sky itself wept fire as mages unleashed spells meant only for gods. And on the ninth… silence. No victor. Only ash.”

Nao looked around slowly, her gaze softer now. “No one won?”

Keal shook his head. “Only the dead remain. They say if you stand here long enough, you can still hear them shouting, pleading, dying.”

Nao wrapped her arms around herself. “Why do you know this?”

Keal smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Because stories like these aren't meant to be forgotten. They’re warnings.”

Nao stood slowly, eyes scanning the horizon. “Then let’s remember. So we don’t repeat it.”

And so, the wind carried Keal’s words deeper into the land that refused to forget.

They walked in silence, boots brushing through brittle grass and fractured stone, until the terrain shifted beneath them. 

The cracked earth gave way to a steep cliffside, jagged and vast, stretching endlessly in both directions.

Below, there was nothing.

No trees. No ruins. No light.

Just a swirling blackness that seemed to consume the land itself.

Nao stepped closer, eyes narrowing at the abyss below. “Hey, Keal... what is that place?”

Keal stopped a few paces behind her, his voice lower than before measured, cautious.

“That... is the Void.”

Nao glanced back. “The Void? That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

He didn’t smile.

“No. That’s what it’s truly called.”

He stepped beside her, staring down into the dark with a quiet weight in his gaze.

“It wasn’t always there,” he said. “Once, a kingdom stood where that chasm now yawns. 

A place of scholars and seers people who studied the flow of magic and time itself.”

Nao tilted her head. “What happened to them?”

Keal’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“They tried to look too far forward. They believed they could glimpse the future shape it. 

They opened something. A gate, a rift... no one really knows. But the moment they did, the land began to vanish. Not crumble, not burn vanish. As if erased.”

A cold wind brushed past them from the cliffside, carrying no sound. No echoes. Nothing.

Keal continued. “The kingdom was swallowed whole. Buildings, rivers, people gone in seconds.

 What’s left is the Void. A wound in the world that never healed.”

Nao took a step back from the edge, suddenly uneasy. “And it’s still growing?”

He didn’t answer at first.

Then, softly, “Some say it grows an inch every year. Others say it feeds on memory on stories.

 That’s why no one dares speak of the vanished kingdom by name.”

She looked at him sharply. “You just told me about it.”

He met her eyes.

“I didn’t say the name.”

The wind died.

For a moment, even the ruins behind them seemed to fall still.

Nao swallowed. “Let’s keep moving.”

Keal nodded.

And the Void behind them kept watching.

As the sun dipped lower, casting long shadows over the ravaged terrain, Nao and Keal found themselves nearing the edge of the Forgotten Land. 

The ruins began to thin, giving way to stretches of scorched earth and wind-blasted stone. 

Hope stirred in Nao’s chestfinally, they were almost through.

“Looks like we made it,” she said, her voice tinged with relief.

Keal glanced ahead, his expression unreadable. “Almost.”

Then the wind shifted.

It carried with it a metallic scent—faint, but unmistakable.

Blood.

Nao slowed her pace, instincts prickling.

That’s when she saw it.

At first, it was just a silhouette. A tall figure standing alone in the distance, barely visible through the haze of heat and ash.

 But as they stepped closer, the shape became clearer.

He was motionless unnaturally still.

A long sword hung from his right hand, its blade soaked in fresh crimson that dripped steadily to the ground. 

His body was wrapped in ragged armor, dented and darkened by old fire, as if he'd walked through hell itself.

But it was his eyes that froze her in place.

They weren’t searching. They weren’t curious.

They were hungry.

Burning with a violent, relentless energy.

Keal instinctively stepped in front of Nao, his hand reaching for the hilt at his side.

“No sudden moves,” he murmured.

Nao’s voice was barely a whisper. “Who is that?”

Keal narrowed his eyes, studying the figure. “I don’t know. But I’ve heard stories...”

The man took a step forward.

Then another.

Each step echoed louder than the last, as if the Forgotten Land itself recognized him and feared him.

The ground beneath their feet trembled slightly.

Keal drew his blade.

The figure raised his.

And then he smiled.

But there was no warmth in it. Only violence.

A cold, merciless grin.

Nao took a shaky breath. “Keal…”

“I see him,” he said, eyes locked forward.

The man began to move faster now, slow steps turning into a silent march sword still dragging, blood still falling.

And just before he reached the edge of the mist, the sky darkened clouds swirling above like a storm summoned by his presence.

Then black.....