As I slowly opened my eyes, pain surged through me but the numbing effects worked exactly as I had intended. When I stretched out my hand somehow, the pain lessened considerably. It felt almost like discovering a cheat code in this forsaken Abyss.
Yet, despite this brief respite, the aftereffects soon took hold: the wound had become infected. In a normal world, someone might have advised me to simply amputate the hand, but here in the Abyss, there was no one around to offer advised.
Fortunately, the numbing agent from the bark continued its work, dulling the pain not just in my broken hand but also in my other external cuts. The anguish was still there, but at least it became a little more bearable.
Though I did find my broken hand had swollen to a grotesque size, its skin turned slightly yellow and I had never encountered an infected wound before, so I didn't immediately grasp the full extent of my predicament.
In my stupidly and numbness, I resorted to eating dead tree bark whenever the pain intensified, caring little about the infection it might further provoke. Pain was my constant companion, and immediate relief was all that mattered in that harsh condition
And so, the days passed by in a relentless blur as I wandered through the desert under the star I had named. A beacon of light in this endless dessert.
After traveling endlessly through the desert, I reached a strange balance. My body was slowly healing while my arm kept getting worse with each passing day as it was deteriorating, supported by the cold, harsh winds in this eerie place.
On a strange day amist the shifting sands, I saw something odd—a single finger stuck halfway in the dunes. When I tried to get closer, it vanished. Maybe it was just the sand playing tricks on my eyes, or maybe something more sinister was at work.
For a moment, I feared my old hallucinations were returning. Yet, I felt strangely steady, caught in a repetitive cycle that made it hard to tell if I was really losing my mind from constant pain. The strange timing of that sight made me doubt myself.
I had learned to pass my days here—staring at nothing or taking long, lonely walks. But that image of a lone finger, or possibly even a person, stayed with me, haunting me and urging me to understand its meaning.
I moved toward it using my walking stick. Even though the fast winds made it hard to navigate, I finally reached a sand hill. From the top, I stared in disbelief at what lay before me.
There, buried under the shifting sand, was a city—a striking sight to behold. For the first time since entering the Abyss, I felt true excitement. I hoped to meet others like me, or at least find someone who lived here.
Then, I remember that I saw the shadow of a a person— a human, perhaps. That shadow lifted my hopes even higher, and I could hardly contain my excitement.
It was hard to put that feeling into words. The city was nothing like a modern metropolis—it was a collection of stone buildings, half-buried in sand. It reminded me of the early stages of the Harappa civilization, with some structures still proudly peeking out.
Even though I hadn't fully recovered from the sandstorm, I moved toward the city, quickening my steps in hope and anticipation.