You sit alone in the dark, hunched over the charred remains of a campfire. Shadows cast long from jagged cliffs that ring the valley, black against night sky that swallows the stars.

The forest presses close, ancient and silent except for the occasional snap of twig or howl of wind that echoes cold up a mountain pass long since abandoned.

Everything has a smell of decay: rotten leaves, damp earth, old blood from animals hunted so often they're more memory now than meat. Even the river winding away to the west smells sickly sweet, filled with debris from cities that once were.

This ain't home.

Just hell.

But it's all you have.

You press two stones together—hard—trying to start a spark that will breathe heat into the cold. The rocks clatter like broken teeth against each other, but no flame, no heat, no life. You know this song - have sang it a hundred times before.

And like every time before, the world remains dark and empty.

And you feel as empty as it.