If there was another bearcat inside the collapsed tower, it probably would have come out during all of the growling and shouting. Still, Symon wasn't interested in getting his legs chewed off just because he was impatient to get out of the sun. He decided he'd take the main entrance in case he needed make a quick getaway, as while he could fit through most the the windows they would be a bit of a squeeze.

Climbing onto the rubble half filling the original entrance, he peered inwards. It was unchanged from what he'd spied through the windows; nothing present in the gloom except for shadows and rubble. After waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness -- the windows were deep and let in only narrow slivers of light -- he entered with soft stops.

Internally, he revelled in the lack of pain from his leg and stomach as he slowly made his way over the rubble and into the main room. After hours of limping through the desert, he was finally pain-free after using the bearcat's vitality to heal himself. He hadn't realised just how painful it was until he'd been cured of his wounds.

Walking deeper into the room, Symon noticed a few things. There was a pile of bones in one corner, and a hole in the opposite wall that must have been the entrance to the next floor, back when the tower was upright. The bearcat must have been here for a while, as the pile of bones was pretty extensive. Dozens of creatures must have died and then had their remains left. He didn't recognise any of the creatures they must have come from, although there were pieces of brittle carapace that could have come from a centipede or something similar.

He rooted through the pile, although he wasn't sure what he was even looking for. The fact that it was something and not just endless white sand meant he couldn't help but investigate it further. He found nothing useful in the pile, and accidentally destabilised the structure, sending it clattering to the ground with a loud noise. He winced out of principle, although he found it unlikely that anything else living was inside this tower.

Turning away to check out the rest of the room, he saw something new had been exposed. Previously buried at the very bottom was something unnervingly familiar. He wasn't sure if it was good or bad news.

Symon carefully, almost reverently, picked up the human skull. It was bleached white, and he wondered if he'd ever unknowingly passed more bones on his journey here -- it was almost the exact colour of the sand. He didn't know enough to be able to tell any details as to who this skull belonged to, other than that it was adult-sized. He felt emotion welling up, tightening his throat at the implication.

People.

Ill-fated as this individual might have been, they meant humanity existed here. Wherever Symon had ended up, it wasn't just a near-lifeless desert. There were people, somewhere, and he hadn't realised just how worried he was that he'd be alone forever. Maybe they'd be near the trees -- where the water was -- or maybe they were elsewhere. They existed, at least, which meant as long as he survived the desert long enough it was only a matter of time until he found others.

Gently placing the skull into a new spot away from the large pile of bones -- he felt it didn't deserve to be tossed back in with the monsters -- he brushed some of the sand and dust off that he'd gathered while rummaging through the pile before approaching the entrance to the next room.

Currently, it was simply a wall with a hole in it leading to the next room, although in the past it would have been the way up to the next floor. Poking his head through, he saw the old door, broken off from its frame and flat on the ground. It was made of wood, thick and so dry that rapping his knuckles against it felt like stone. This room was darker than the last and noticeably cooler, although still uncomfortably warm. At least his healing had fixed his sunburn.

The passage of time made it difficult to determine what the room was intended for, containing only sand, loose stones, and rotted wood. There were a few small bones too, but nothing recognizable -- human or otherwise. It could have been a dining room, a bedroom, or a prison; it was simply too old and ruined for anything to survive.

The door to the next room was still sealed into its frame, which meant this must have been a hatch to the next floor, back when the tower was upright. Symon took this as a good sign, there'd been no windows or large cracks he could look through to see into this area, and the only entrance was still sealed. The hatch didn't have a proper handle, but there was a little concave area that could be used to get a grip. He pulled on it, and when that did nothing, pushed it. It shifted open a fraction, then stopped.

Must be blocked...

He tried to look through the tiny crack he'd made, but the room was pitch black. This being the only entrance he knew of to the final remaining room, he was pretty confident that there was no way for a dangerous creature to be in this room. With that in mind, he abandoned his pretences of stealth and delivered a solid kick to the hatch. It wasn't locked, but there was definitely something physically blocking it from opening on the other side.

He delivered a series of kicks over a few minutes until he'd eventually opened it large enough to fit his hands through. With that, progress was rapid as he put his back against the door, wedging his arms and then his legs against the doorway to give him something to push off. Finally, he opened it enough to slip through -- after confirming it wasn't about to slam back into place -- and took in the gloomy room.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Ironically, the fact that it was comparatively well-preserved made the room messier. Half-destroyed shelves filled with rotting books lined the walls, and beds with sheets that had turned to dust were strewn haphazardly throughout the room. However, what first caught his eye was the massive metal contraption in the centre of the room -- it looked like a giant brass telescope with dozens of tubes jutting out from it. As with everything else in the room, it was covered in a thick layer of dust. He had absolutely no clue what it was for.

It was set on a giant gear, which would allow it to rotate presuming he could figure out how, not that he intended to. It was best to not start fucking with unknown machinery, he thought. Inspecting the machine all over, it appeared entirely mechanical; there were no noticeable batteries, charging cables, or anything that looked remotely electronic.

It was a little bit spooky in the way that an abandoned soviet factory was, a massive contraption for some unknown purpose. Regardless of what it was, it was so old that there was no way it was still dangerous. Probably. Surely if it was going to randomly explode, it would have done so already in the many years it must have been here. It did appear remarkably undamaged, although Symon thought that was just because everything else he'd found thus far wasn't as long-lasting as metal was.

Speaking of, he'd been so distracted by the machinery that he hadn't noticed that the low beds had occupants, of a sort. Most of them had pristine skeletons resting on them, although the mattresses or whatever the equivalent used here had rotted away completely, leaving only a wooden frame. The bones were old, although seemed mostly undamaged, and were all neatly laid out in the same position as one another -- as if they'd all died peacefully in their sleep.

They all had their arms crossed over their chest like a pharaoh in their tomb, except for a single skeleton that was sitting slumped against the wall.

Symon frowned to himself. A bunch of skeletons were pretty creepy in and of itself, but there was something more to it.

Why are the beds and shelves so neat if the tower collapsed? Every other room is filled with trash and rubble.

The furniture was hardly in pristine condition, but everything was in its proper place. The books were on their shelves, the beds were upright, and the skeletons were on the beds. The only explanation he could think of was that they'd entered this room after the tower had collapsed. Had they been survivors in the desert, seeking shelter in the collapsed tower just like him? If so, why did they put all the books back into place?

Symon stepped closer to one of the bookcases. It was a simple but solidly made construction -- it had to be to have survived this long, at least a decade but probably much more. The books were in much worse condition, most of them simply breaking apart when he tried to pick them up. There was no water or humidity to have damaged them though, so as long as he ignored the disintegrated leather bindings the pages of the books were partially legible. Or at least they would have been if they were in English.

Foreign languages were not his strong suit at the best of times, the situation not helped by the poor state of the book -- either way, he had no idea what language this was. The letters or characters were all near perfect circles, each one with a different layout of spirals and spokes. They looked a bit like mini mandalas.

Feeling a bit like a child, he carefully flipped through the pages looking for pictures but found none. He couldn't get any information from within the books, but their presence itself was a good sign -- civilisation here was advanced enough to make books. Hopefully, that meant they had plumbing and democracy too.

He chewed on his lip, thinking about the titles in his status. He wasn't sure if they actually did anything, or if they were simply records of past happenings. He'd been doing his best to ignore the implication of this magical status and place he'd woken up in, but that denial could only last so long.

He spoke into the empty air, "Sand, come out, please. Show me everything again." There was barely any sand in the recently unsealed room, but it seemed things still worked. The thick layer of dust shifted, swirling and twisting to reveal his status. Despite the different medium in which it was displayed, the actual contents of his status were unchanged compared to when he last checked it just after defeating the bearcat -- although he paid the rest of it little attention, his focus on the 'Titles' section.

If the sand -- or dust in this case -- was to be believed, and it hadn't misled him yet, he was a World Traveller. He wasn't an idiot, he knew there was only one way he would have gotten it and it wasn't because he'd immersed himself in a lot of books, but it had taken a while to sink in.

Earth had deserts, sure, and some of them probably had white sand, but his position of denial had almost immediately become untenable, even for an expert such as him. Somewhere between the three suns, giant centipedes, magical talking sand, supernatural healing, and monstrous chimeras, his ability to ignore his situation had crumbled.

Maybe there was a powerful wizard somewhere who could send him back home to his family? His parents must think he was dead. Did he leave a body behind? He cut himself off before he could start spiralling.

His memories of that place in between this life and his previous were fuzzy and fractured, but he'd got the feeling that getting a second chance like he'd had wasn't a common occurrence. The chances of there being an established system for getting back to Earth didn't seem high. He'd be stuck here, in the best case for a very long time and in the worst case, forever.

Magical abilities were a poor balm for someone slowly dying alone in a desert, so far away from home the distance wasn't measurable with the terms he knew. His only companions were the dead in the tower, the only other life was the monsters trying to turn him into one of the former. He'd struggled so, so hard in his first life, and on the cusp of the start of a normal life, he'd been whisked away here. His reward for survival far past what the doctors expected was more pain and suffering.

He'd ended up sitting against the wall in his misery, not so far from the lone skeleton -- the only one not positioned like it was asleep in bed.

"Here I am crying over my problems, at least I'm alive and free," he said with a sniffle, turning to the skeleton. "You and your friends must have barricaded yourselves in here, starving for food and water, watching each other slowly wither away. I wonder why you're the only one not with your friends?"

"I dunno mate, why don't you tell me?" the skeleton replied.