[Fakir]

He'd taken the night off – the week, actually. The travel agent must have thought him either some insomniac archaeologist, or just outright insane, taking a trip to the old, empty Sacred Lands in the dead of night. But that was what it took to be alone down here – truly alone, away from digital eyes. Even now, so many centuries after their decline, the inherent magics of the Alti'ui lands scrambled observance from the thousands of satellites orbiting over Kalin. He was sick of humanity.

Fakir tread through the broken hills and crags, kicking up dust, ash, chunks of crumbling stone. He made a point not to look to the sky, to the lifeless specter of the moon they were all so obsessed with tonight, gushing about souls and peace for the fallen. Idiots.

That... thing hanging above the clouds, lit only by the miserable reflection of the sun's light, was a corpse, a rotting cosmic bone drifting through the desolation of space. They were children, all of them, believing in dead ideals. This whole world was. It had been a thousand years and more since the Lord and Lady of Toamna had descended to gather the spirits of the dead to their heavenly nurture.

He could just picture them in his mind, their dumb smiles, the contrived thrills in their spines. Pure indulgence. Go on, then, he thought with a wretchedness he'd held at bay for a long, long time, at last releasing it inside his mind. Pray to the skeletons, the Twins of Judgment: maimed, mutilated, and massacred, put to death by fate. This is what you've earned, all of you, humans, Yutri, disgraced Ascent. Fakir looked about the vast vistas around him, taking in the petrified forests, the endless sea of stone where once lushest grass had thrived. A world without angels and a world without gods.

He paused, and tugged at his glove, staring at his weathered hand under the gleam of starlight. He spoke aloud, a lament – and anyone who would have ever cared was dead.

“I'm no different than any of them. Vain. Scraping through days. Alone. Damned like all the rest.”

This was Nox Nocturnalis, a night like any other, filled with the voice of the empty realms above. Silent.

This was the world – all the worlds, for all time to come.

Fallen.