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He tugged at the cloth covering his face as he ascended the ash-covered cliffside, sucking down a shallow breath. His legs were burning, and his back was aching. He hadn't stopped climbing for what felt like days, long past the point of exhaustion, but he had to reach the top. There had to be something left out there; a tower, a building, a settlement, a single farmhouse nestled in the hillside. It couldn't all be gone. A decent vantage point – that was what he needed. It would show him the way - his way back home.

When he reached the top of the mountain and looked across the devastation, he felt that inkling of hope he'd been clinging to since he returned be mercilessly slaughtered. The rolling hills of green grass and rippling blue waters had been choked underneath a blanket of charred soot so tall that the treetops in the lowlands had been swallowed up. To his right, far in the distance, a boiling crater occupied the space where the cantons of Vivec City once stood tall and proud – now godless and lifeless. On his left, a plume of fire and smoke belched ash into the air. It rained down on him and the deadlands.

It was silent. There wasn't a sound to be heard except for the distant booming of the cracked mountain and his own stunted breathing. He wanted to hear a voice, a cry from an animal or the trickle of a stream running down the mountainside.

And yet not a sound reached his ears.

The home he left was gone. In its place was the largest collective tomb he had ever seen.

He fell to his knees and buried his face in his hands, screaming his voice hoarse and begging for death to come to him.

Only the mute ash answered his call.

Nothing more remained.