It was an ancient battlefield.

It stretched before Everlearn, a desolate realm frozen in eternal ruin.

The golden ground beneath his feet was cracked and barren, and all around him lay endless mounds of bones, broken blades, and shattered armor, half-buried in the earth.

Jagged spears and axes pierced the ground like gravestones, and enormous skeletal remains of beings that were once divine loomed over the horizon.

Wisps of faint, shimmering mist drifted through the air, and amidst the decay, tufts of golden grass swayed silently in patches around the battlefield.

The breeze was harsh against the skin, though there was no dust.

He turned his head, looking up at the sky, and found a golden sky with three cracks running across its surface, pitch-black voids that stretched deep into the unknown.

There was a sun shining upon the battlefield, yet, just like the sky itself, it was also covered in dark cracks.

"The others…"

He mused, turning to look around him and noticing there was nobody nearby.

'Where we separated, or did I let go of them at the last moment?' Everlearn wondered to himself.

"Remain calm, Everlearn. Though it might seem you've been separated from the rest, you're safe."

The voice came from within his ears, confirming that he had indeed been isolated from the others.

But,

"We can see through you." It said, and Everlearn now knew who was talking.

It was the NCEGs sending him audio messages.

"Turn back, can you see a door that leads out of that place?"

They asked, and Everlearn turned behind him.

His heart slightly sank when he saw nothing but the same cracked golden earth.

"There's no portal back."

"That's still okay. More than likely, you'll find one at the end."

"For now, just calm breath, and focus," the voice said, and he exhaled, calming his slowly spiking heart.

"What should I do?" he asked after.

"Good."

"Why don't you try picking up one of the broken weapons?"

The voice asked, and Everlearn turned to the scattered weapons on the ground.

Grabbing what seemed like a large axe with a half-broken handle, his face changed slightly.

Though he tried to move it, it remained unmoving.

"What the!? It's so heavy!"

He said out loud, his second hand reaching out and grabbing the weapon to pull it out, but he paused when the voice echoed again.

"No need to lift it. We only need data on the weapon's material."

"Just keep your hands on it for about a minute."

The voice instructed, and Everlearn stopped pulling.

Still, his mind reeled as he unconsciously tried to lift it again, yet the axe wouldn't budge.

He was more than seven times stronger than an average human right now, yet he couldn't lift an axe!?

Then just how strong were the ones who once wielded these weapons?

And speaking of that, he turned around, noticing the bones scattered upon the battlefield.

Forty-five seconds later...

"Good. We've gotten the data."

The voice came, and Everlearn let go of the axe before walking toward an especially eye-catching bone on the battlefield.

It was the shape of what seemed to have been half-buried ribs.

His hands reached forward, rubbing over its surface.

The second he did, he backed off instantly as sudden lines of darkness gleamed over the surface of the bone.

They glimmered for a couple of seconds before dimming, and right before his eyes, he watched the bones fade away into dark ashes.

But even after, Everlearn remained rooted to the spot, his hand frozen mid-air with his mouth slightly agape.

'Did I just hear...a song?'

"Hey, Everlearn, you okay?"

The voice came from the other side, and he snapped out of his stupor, giving a quick nod.

"Yes. Did you capture that?"

He asked.

"Yes. It faded off too fast to do any scan, though," it said, and Everlearn walked toward the nearest bone.

His hand touched its surface, and just like before, dark runic lines seethed across it.

Everlearn didn't step back this time.

He waited silently, and then he could hear the voices.

Not in his ears, but in his heart.

A war song that went:

"We came from the Cliffs and the Broken Coasts,"

"The Winds that are at max, no songs, no moist,"

"We ride with the rust, and we ride with wrath,"

"No Gods. No Kings. No songs we own,"

"Just the oath we swore, By Blade, By Bone!"

_____

It ended at that point, and Everlearn's eyes refocused, watching as the light dimmed from the bones, and they too soon turned into ashes.

"We've got the scans. You can forget them. Just keep walking on…"

The voice instructed, and he rose to his feet, silently walking through the battlefield.

The deeper he walked, the more these bones grew, both in number and in the size of the piles of broken weapons that filled the ground.

"So this… this is war?"

Everlearn muttered, his heart thumping.

The thought that each of these bones once belonged to a living soul, and that each of these hundreds of thousands of weapons had a master of its own, yet all of it reduced to such desolation, petrified him.

'How long has this been? What kind of enemies did they fight to be reduced to such a state?'

He mused to himself, but though petrified, he continued forward.

He walked and walked, and walked, for hours he couldn't count, before finally coming to a stop.

It was the end of the wide expanse.

A large mountain, no, two, stood side by side, with a narrow path between them.

Naturally, he ought to continue into that open path, but there was a problem.

Recling on one of the mountains, just before that path stood a titanic figure, around ten meters tall, its features hidden beneath ragged, pitch-black robes.

The sleeves of the robe had been torn apart, revealing skeletal limbs underneath.

It was the first being Everlearn had seen still standing upright, but his eyes displayed caution as he noticed the corpse seemingly blocking the path forward.

Was it a corpse that had died standing, or…

In the next moment, his suspicion was confirmed, and Everlearn's face immediately changed.

CLAAANK!

It was the sound of bones clattering together as he watched the finger bones of the being twitch.

In the next instant, its hands flexed, and it rose upright from where it had reclined against the mountain.

CLAAANK!

CLAAANK!

The sound of more bones clanking resounded as it straightened itself, curling and uncurling its skeletal hands before the space where its face should have been.

It soon paused, and its unseen gaze landed upon Everlearn, standing fifty meters away.

"Y…"

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