SILENCE AFTER THE GODS

Chapter 10 – The desert remembers

The sun had finally calmed down.

Ken and Ashen Ryū walked in silence, their steps imprinted in the still warm sand. All day long, they had stayed near a hidden water point, a rare oasis in this motionless hell.

But the time had come to leave.

"We're going," Ashen said without looking back.

Ken nodded.

They left the water, with no hope of returning.

⸻

They had been walking for several hours without talking, when Ken finally broke the silence:

- "Why... did you want us to stay together, a stranger you don't know? "

Ashen didn't answer right away. He looked at the horizon, then said, in a flat voice:

— "It's very simple. In a strange place... there must be several. It increases the chances of survival. "

Ken smiled weakly.

- "...You're right on this point. "

They continued their march, two silhouettes lost between sky and sand.

—

Then, suddenly, Ken stopped sharply.

Ashen too.

In front of them, half buried in the desert, a colossal mass came out of the sand like a broken memory.

A tower.

Collapsed. Broken. Forgotten.

But it wasn't just any structure.

It was an observation tower. Ken knew her. Ashen too.

Its architecture was unique - this tower existed in their world of origin, near a former university campus, a banal place where students spent their time dreaming of a future that would never exist.

Ashen frowned.

Ken remained frozen.

A silent vertigo crossed them.

- "It's not an illusion..." whispered Ashen.

— "No... She comes from our world. "

A long silence settled.

And, like a wave, a thought struck their minds at the same time.

- "And if... our world had been absorbed by this one? "

- "...So that would mean that everything has been swallowed. Humans. The buildings. The memories. "

They exchanged a heavy look.

But Ken slowly shook his head.

— "No... something's wrong. "

Ashen stared at him.

— "What? "

Ken thought out loud:

- "If our whole world had been absorbed... there would be billions of humans here. But we have seen very little or almost nothing except the two of us. "

He marked a break.

- "Maybe... maybe they arrive in this world at different times. Or in different places. Dispersed. Scattered in time and space. "

Ashen murmured:

Why do you say?

Ken say before telling you I tell a c

A skeleton of a girl who wears a high school outfit of our world. If she came at the same time as the two of us, her body would not be a skeleton.

Ashen says:

- "I see your reasoning Do you think it's intentional? "

Ken replied:

He looked at the sky.

- "Maybe this world absorbed our world"

His hypothesis was fragile.

But terrifying.

This world was not a simple parallel world.

It was a world-eating.

A space without borders, without cause, without end.

A cemetery of universe.

A book that swallows all the stories except one.

⸻

They slowly approached the collapsed tower.

The sand had gnawed its foundations, but on one of the broken walls, an inscription still resisted:

"The observer is always observed. "

Ken ran his hand over the dusty letters. He no longer knew if it was a coincidence, or a warning.

He closed his eyes.

And breathed:

- "If our world was eaten... then there is nothing left to find. "

Ashen looked at the horizon.

- "Maybe there are no more people to come back from. "

Ken remained silent.

Then say softly:

- "Anyway... I never intended to come back. "

Ashen turned his head towards him.

Ken continued:

- "Since I was born I'm just a bastard... our world rejected me broke me build my fact lived every experience pain or Joyful. I thank him for being born in this world dirty his cruelty he gave a child or a shelter without like a dream an impossible to wait but in the new world is possibility so I continue to move forward as always for my dream"

A breath.

— "That's why I walk. Not to go home. But to go to the end. Understand this world. What he is. Why it exists. And what he expects from me. "

Then internally, without a word:

- At the end of the account, only me remains.

Ashen didn't answer.

But he nodded his head.

It was not pity.

It was gratitude.

⸻

They left, leaving the tower engulfed behind them.

But one thing was clear, now:

The desert... remembered.

And somewhere, under its infinite dunes, it kept the traces of a forgotten world.

A world that, perhaps, had never been real.

—

End of Chapter 10