The tenth floor.
Somewhere above. Much higher. A million floors behind.
A step.
Another.
More.
Boots scraped on stone—quietly, methodically, endlessly. The sound echoed off the walls of empty houses, lost in the darkness.
The hero walked down the street of a dead city.
Houses stood on both sides—stone, solid, with smooth, rounded roofs. Two stories high, some higher. Each had a door—wooden, closed, darkened by time. The windows were dark, empty.
The light was dim—from somewhere above, or from nowhere. Enough to see contours, but not details.
Darkness lay between the houses, filled the corners, seeped from the alleys.
The silence was absolute.
The hero stopped at one of the houses. He looked at the door—simple, with an iron handle.
He pushed it.
The door creaked open softly.
Inside was an ordinary house.
The entryway was narrow, with coat hooks on the wall. Empty.
The corridor led deeper. To the right was the door to the living room.
He entered.
The living room was spacious. A stone floor, smooth walls. A table by the window—wooden, old, covered in dust. Chairs surrounded the table. Skeletons sat on four of the chairs.
One leaned back, his skull thrown back, as if looking at the ceiling.
The second leaned over the table, his hands folded in front of him.
The third sat upright, his arm bones resting on the armrests.
The fourth slumped forward, face down on the table, his arm outstretched, as if reaching for something.
The hero walked past them without looking.
A stone bench stood against the far wall. Simple, backless. He sank onto her, heavily.
The armor creaked—scuffed, worn, covered in scratches and dents. Once something. Now just pieces of metal, held together by habit.
The sword lay across his knees. The blade was dull, jagged, but still holding. The hilt was worn down to bare metal.
The hero raised his hands and slowly removed his helmet.
The clang of metal on stone as the helmet landed on the bench next to him.
He sat, staring into space.
His face was gaunt. Scars were everywhere. Intersecting lines, white, pink, dark. Some old, some fresh. Too many to distinguish.
His eyes were empty. Not dead—just distant. They stared through the walls, through the floor, through everything, at some point far, far away.
A thousand-year-old gaze. He blinked. Slowly. Mechanically.
Exhaled.
Silence.
Somewhere above, on the second floor, water dripped. Tick. Tick. Tick. A rhythmic, hypnotic sound.
He listened.
Not thinking. Just listening.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
His hand rose—slowly, as if moving through molasses. It touched his chest, where beneath the armor lay skin, scars, old wounds.
His heart beat. One. Two. Three.
Still beating.
Strange.
After all this—still beating.
He lowered his hand.
He looked at the skeletons at the table.
Family? Friends? Strangers, sheltered together?
It didn't matter. They had been dead for a long time. A very long time.
The hero looked at his hands. He turned them over, palms up. Scars crossed the lifelines, erasing them, turning them into chaos. How many times had these hands died?
He couldn't remember.
He stopped counting after... when? Thousands? Ten thousand?
The numbers lost their meaning. Death became a background, like breathing.
Inhale - exhale - death - resurrection - inhale - exhale.
Cycle.
He closed his eyes.
The darkness behind his eyelids was familiar. Soothing.
Faces in the darkness.
Blurred, indistinct. He tried to recall details, but they slipped through his fingers like water.
Someone laughed. A woman's voice. Warm.
Someone was silent. A presence, heavy, calming.
Someone chattered. The words merged into noise, but the intonation was... light.
Were there more? Yes. Maybe.
He wasn't sure.
His memory was fragmented. Pieces of a puzzle, scattered across thousands of floors, buried under avalanches of death.
He opened his eyes.
He looked at the sword.
The weapon was simple now. Not magical. Just a blade. A good blade, but without power.
He stood up. His armor creaked. His knees cracked—an old habit of a body that had died too often.
He took the helmet. He put it back on. The world narrowed to the cracks in the visor.
Safer this way.
He took the sword.
He walked around the table with the skeletons. He went out into the hallway.
He climbed the stairs to the second floor—the steps creaked under the weight.
There were rooms there. Bedrooms. In one, a bed, with a skeleton on it, covered with a decayed blanket. In another, a crib, small bones inside.
He didn't linger. He went back down.
He walked through the kitchen—the hearth was cold, the table was empty, three more skeletons on chairs. One held a mug in his bony fingers.
He walked out the back door.
The street greeted him with silence. The houses stood silent, their smooth roofs lost in the gloom. All the doors were closed. Behind each one, the same stories. The same skeletons.
A whole city of the dead.
He continued down the street.
Step.
Another.
Another.
Past house after house. All identical. All dead.
Ahead, an arch. The exit to the next floor.
The tenth floor of this series.
How many cities like this were behind him? Hundreds? Thousands?
How many were ahead?
He didn't know.
It didn't matter.
He would get there. Because there was no other choice.
Because this was all that remained. To move forward. To die. To be resurrected. To move forward.
Cycle.
His hand touched the arch.
Cold. Stone.
He stepped inside.
Darkness swallowed him.
The city was left behind.
Empty.
In the houses, skeletons continued to sit at tables, lie in beds, stand by the hearths.
The doors remained closed.
Darkness lay between the roofs, quiet and patient.
Somewhere, water dripped.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
And nothing more.