A cold wind howled through the wasteland.

He opened his eyes to a world drowned in shadows. The ground beneath him was dry and cracked, littered with bones that stretched endlessly into the dark. Dead trees loomed in the distance, their twisted branches reaching out like skeletal fingers.

And above it all, a massive blue moon hung in the sky, casting its eerie glow over the land.

His breath came out in shuddering mist. The air was frigid, heavy with the scent of decay. He blinked, trying to remember how he got here.

Nothing.

The last thing he recalled was making a delivery—just another routine job. Then… emptiness.

Now he was here.

He wasn’t someone who scared easily. Being a courier had toughened him. He had run through dangerous zones, evaded trouble, even seen death up close. But this place—this silence—felt wrong.

Slowly, he pushed himself to his feet. His boots crunched against brittle bones. The silence stretched on, thick and suffocating.

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Then he saw it.

A ruin.

Half-buried in the dead earth, its jagged stone walls were etched with strange, glowing symbols. They pulsed faintly, like the dying heartbeat of something ancient.

Something inside him told him to turn back. To run.

Instead, he stepped forward.

The air inside the ruin was colder. The symbols on the walls shimmered, casting ghostly patterns on the cracked stone. Shadows flickered unnaturally, shifting as if they were watching him.

Then—whoosh.

A sudden gust of wind rushed past him.

His body tensed. There was no movement, no open space for wind to enter. And yet, the sound had been real. A whisper in the dark.

"Wind… but from where?"

A deep vibration rumbled through the ground. The ruins trembled. A low groan echoed from within the stone, as if something ancient was waking from its slumber.

Dust and debris rained from above. The walls cracked. The air grew heavy.

His instincts screamed at him.

He ran.

The moment he stumbled outside, the sky darkened. The blue moon flickered—just for an instant, as if something enormous had passed in front of it.

Then—blackness.

—

He woke up gasping.

His hands clenched the sheets of his bed. His room was dim, lit only by the glow of streetlights seeping through the curtains. His desk was cluttered—delivery slips, a half-eaten energy bar, his worn-out courier jacket.

A dream.

But his body still felt the cold. His ears still rang with the whisper of wind where there should have been none.

He had been through countless dangerous jobs before. He had faced threats, taken risks, and never lost his nerve.

But this…

This was different.

And deep inside, he knew.

He hadn’t just dreamed it.

He had been there.

His stomach growled, snapping him back to reality. He sighed and got up, heading to the kitchen. The clock on the wall read 2:42 AM.

As he pulled out some leftovers, his mind kept drifting back to the wasteland. The ruins. The whispering wind.

He was 19, a first-year college student, and a courier on the side. He had seen many things.

But for the first time, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what came next.