The Endless Walk

For the first hundred years, there was only the taste of iron. The world was a skillet of baked earth and vitrified glass. The air tasted of copper and old smoke.

The Pilgrim walked. He did not know why, only that his internal chronometer was ticking, and the silence was too loud to bear standing still.

He was not alone. Beside him walked The Constant, Unit 02. To the few survivors peering from their caves, she looked like a brown mare, lean and desert-hardened. But beneath her synthetic hide lay a cathedral of clockwork, a chassis of transparency and brass.

They walked the spine of the broken world. A legend of rust and mercy.