Prophet of the Wasteland

The monk’s sandaled feet made scarcely a sound as he entered what had once been a quiet foothill town.
Dusk had washed the sky in bruised violet and embered orange, the last light staining the broken windows of shops long abandoned.
A brass lantern swung from his hand, its flame steady despite the restless wind that prowled through the ruins.

He paused where a cracked fountain lay dry, the stone cherubs eroded into ghostly shapes.
Here the air felt different—charged, alive.
The mystic forces that had guided his journey from the mountains whispered at the edges of hearing:
This is the place. The path is near.

His name was Silen Varis, though few now used names.
Years of solitary pilgrimage had pared him down to a single purpose:
to follow the threads of prophecy that spoke of a figure who would seed renewal in the ashes of the old world.
He had read the signs in the flight of crows, in the shimmer of auroras that sometimes bled across the poisoned sky.
All pointed west, toward the great city still smoldering in endless night.

Silen raised his lantern and the light caught on scraps of painted wood—a child’s toy, a shattered icon.
The flame stretched in an unseen current, drawing him down a narrow street where the air smelled of wet stone and faint smoke.
He felt the gravity of presence, a pulse beneath the earth as if the soil itself remembered.

Aurelian…
The name surfaced in his mind like a bell tone, resonant and sure.
The prophet of the wasteland.
The one who carried the ember of rebirth.

Somewhere beyond these ruins, the monk sensed a solitary figure moving toward the burning horizon, staff in hand.
Two paths, woven long before either man was born, were now bending toward a single meeting.

Silen lowered his hood, eyes reflecting the lantern’s glow.
He whispered a vow to the dusk:
“Guide me through shadow. Let our steps converge when the hour is ripe.”

The wind shifted, carrying the far-off thunder of collapsing steel and the low roar of the city’s eternal fires.
The monk tightened his grip on the lantern and walked on, trusting the unseen hand that had led him this far.

Somewhere ahead, the way forward—
and Aurelian—
would reveal themselves.