I woke up once again, hoping—almost praying—that everything I had experienced was nothing more than a dream.
That I would open my eyes and find myself in my bed at home, safe and warm.
Instead, I was greeted by hard, solid ground beneath me and the dull ache of a headache through my skull.
The wasteland stretched around me in every direction.
There was one small improvement.
I hadn't vomited after overeating the bark. If I had to guess, it was probably because I hadn't drunk the white liquid afterward.
Some of my cuts and bruises had healed noticeably. My body looked better than it should have.
But my left hand still throbbed with pain—sharp, constant, yet strangely bearable.
It seemed the toxins I had eaten were still affecting me. Even so, I forced myself to stand and decided to move forward, to explore this new stretch of the Abyss.
The temperature here was… comfortable. Not cold, not hot—almost perfect.
And for once, there was no darkness in sight.
That alone told me I was far from where I had started.
The terrain was flat and even, more like a barren wasteland than a desert.
Dead trees were rare, and when I tried digging, I found no water beneath the surface.
Still, the rules of the Abyss applied here as well. I didn't feel truly thirsty—only the persistent pain from my broken hand reminded me of my condition.
My body felt as if it were in peak condition, slowly repairing itself. But my left hand showed no real improvement.
If anything, it felt wrong—like it was healing incorrectly. I could barely move it.
So I moved on and created a new walking stick and continued forward.
This time, it was far more useful. Walking on solid ground was much easier than trudging through sand, even if the direction never changed.
Days passed as I moved on, enduring as best I could.
Somewhere along the way, I learned how to suppress hunger and thirst on an entirely different level—not ignore them, but endure them.
Eventually, I spotted what looked like a dead tree in the distance.
But as I drew closer, I realized it was moving.
Slowly. Awkwardly.
Despite that, relief washed over me. I wasn't alone.
I sprinted toward it, shouting, trying to get its attention.
The figure was roughly my size, humanoid in shape. When it turned to face me, my relief vanished.
It was human—or at least, it had been.
Its body was dried and rotten, flesh clinging loosely to bone. It looked like something straight out of a nightmare.
-A zombie.
As I approached, it let out a low, broken sound—something between a groan and a rasp. That was enough for me. I turned away, deciding to leave it behind.
But it began to follow me.
Slow and Persistent.
I hesitated, then decided to test it. Carefully, I poked it with my walking stick. It reacted mindlessly, confirming what I feared—it wasn't thinking. Just moving.
Like a zombie.
Acting on instinct as a zombie. With my experience steaming from far too many movies and games—I struck it in the head.
It fell.
For a moment, I thought it was over.
Then it stood back up.
This time, it lunged toward me.
So I struck its head again. And again.
It refused to stay down and tried to lunge at me.
With no other options left, I turned and ran away changing my direction completely, putting as much distance between myself and that thing as I could.
The Abyss had once again reminded me of a simple truth.
Nothing here stays dead.
And nothing here is ever simple.
I kept wandering, still disappointed by my previous encounter.
What I wanted wasn't what I got, and that hurt more than I expected. I felt my chest tighten, my throat burn, and for a moment I let myself sniffle and cry quietly.
Not loudly—just enough to let it out. But I didn't allow myself to drown in it.
The fact that something like a zombie existed in this world meant something else might exist too.
That thought alone lifted my spirits more than anything had in a long time. It gave me hope. Real hope.
Maybe I could finally begin a new goal—to find something truly living in the Abyss.
I hurried forward, partly because I wanted distance from that creature, and partly because there was always the chance it might follow me. The earlier sprint had likely put enough space between us, but I didn't want to take any chances.
After a while, I calmed down.
With nothing else to do, I began playing with my walking stick—tapping it against the hard ground, creating different sounds. It was crude, pointless entertainment, but in this world, even that felt valuable. The solid terrain made it possible.
After all, wandering naked and alone through the Abyss… wasn't that a strange kind of 'Mark of pride'?
As I continued, the wasteland began to change. From a distance, I noticed the once-flat ground slowly becoming uneven.
The land rose and fell until the terrain gradually lifted upward, forming an escarpment.
As I approached, I avoided climbing higher and instead stayed along the lower ground.
Eventually, I entered the escarpment itself. It felt like walking into a ravine—wide enough that I didn't need to squeeze through, but enclosed enough to feel confined.
I kept my left side close to the wall, my right hand gripping the walking stick.
That was when I noticed something unsettling—my left hand had begun moving even more awkwardly. The bone had clearly healed wrong. I wasn't a doctor, and certainly not an architect of flesh.
For a brief, bitter moment, I thought maybe I should've chosen medicine instead of engineering. Not that it mattered now—engineering was useless here.
As I moved deeper, I found myself squeezing into a cavern. My body was thin enough to manage it, but the darkness inside made my chest tighten.
The memory of the endless void resurfaced.
I hesitated—but forced myself forward. Standing still was worse. Who knew what might find me if I lingered?
Thankfully, the cavern didn't last long. It was narrow and short, and when I finally emerged from the darkness, I froze.
Before me stood something I never expected.
A city.
An entire city—built from stone.