The swordsman drew his blade. The sound was not a heroic shing , but a rough, weary scrape.
He was bleeding. He was alone. The ruins were still ruins. the misty ruins and the lone swordsman
The sun never truly reached the Misty Ruins. It died in the canopy above, strangled by ancient, gnarled oaks whose roots had long since claimed the crumbling stonework. What light remained was a soft, perpetual twilight—a grey drizzle of luminescence that turned the world into a watercolour painting left out in the rain. The swordsman drew his blade
The mist curled around his ankles like the hands of the dead, trying to hold him back. It carried voices: the laughter of a court jester, the clink of a wine cup, the last gasp of a betrayed emperor. The swordsman did not flinch. He had stopped listening to ghosts ten winters ago. He was alone