In the Silence

The dirt road was little more than a scar across the wasteland, a ribbon of cracked earth winding toward the ruins of Los Angeles. The woman walked it alone, a shawl drawn tight against the evening chill, each step deliberate, measured. Dust clung to her boots, and her lantern—smaller than Silen’s but steady—cast a fragile circle of gold that seemed swallowed by the immensity of the dusk.

Her name was whispered only in fragments in the camps—the sister of the Lantern Pilgrim. No one was certain if she was real or only a story that traveled alongside his, but she knew the truth. Somewhere in the ruins her brother still walked, his vow still unbroken. And she would find him, though the road grew heavier with each mile.

The ruins rose ahead like jagged teeth against the dying light. Smoke clung low to the horizon, and with it came silence—an unnatural stillness that felt less like peace and more like a city holding its breath. She slowed her pace, eyes scanning the shadows where the road fractured into the outskirts.

A shape moved. Quick, then gone. At first she thought it was rubble shifting in the wind. But then came the sound—a faint scrape, deliberate, as though someone, or something, moved just beyond the reach of her lantern’s glow.

Her breath caught. Was it him? Silen? Or one of the gangs that still prowled the ruins after dark, knives flashing like fangs in the half-light?

She tightened her grip on the lantern and took a step forward, the flame flickering wildly as if it too sensed what waited in the shadows. The road stretched ahead into the skeletal city, darker now, deeper.
Whatever followed her was close.

And somewhere, in the silence between heartbeats, a voice seemed to echo—faint, familiar, impossible—calling her name.

She froze. The next step would decide everything.