The earth was not dead.
It breathed.
Aiden felt it with every step he took across the soft, blank soil. Each footprint pressed into something not entirely physical—a surface that yielded like mist but held like memory. This was no ordinary land. It was the beginning of what could be.
And it was contested.
Around him, the Blank Sky Pact advanced in loose formation, the Seeds cradled carefully between them. The artifacts glowed faintly against the growing dimness that gathered at the world's edges.
The first Seed must be planted.
But already, the Ghosts had come.
They were not truly ghosts—no souls of the dead, no mourners lingering from battles past.
They were worse.
Remnants of stories never told, aborted before they could find voice.
They had no names, only hunger.
They clustered in the mist like broken statues, their faces a shifting collage of might-have-beens. Each one a living accusation against existence itself.
Aiden slowed as they neared the first gathering.
