Ruins

You return to this place every year for reasons that you can't explain. All that's left of the old city is an echo of it's former glory, far from the memories of your childhood. The once busy streets and market place are now empty. You shiver as you get further into the city, almost like the ghosts of all who died here are begging you to free them from these unforgiving desert ruins. You flinch as a small green lizard swiftly skitters across your foot and continues towards the other end of the street. On either side of the wide, sand and gravel path there are old, broken down houses with doors made of sand and decaying wood. An empty shell of a castle sits at the end of the street. Countless spires are still standing as they reach for the sky, longing to grab hold of what they lost of themselves. The doors of the great structure no longer stand where they once were, instead resting with the statues of different Gods that line the foyers walls. It's not the first time you've entered the hollow castle, but it's still as breath-taking as it is every time you visit.  You walk through the room towards the heavy wooden doors on the opposite side. Though the wood is rotting away, you still struggle to open them on your own. You manage to get them open and continue into the vast palace courtyard. The steps are made of bricks and as you climb down them you see that there's no shortage of grass growing between the square lumps or stone. In the middle of the yard is a well that's grown green with moss. The entire courtyard is filled with fauna. The ground is covered in grass, trees are growing in random places, some bear exotic fruit while some don't, and there's an abundance of flowers that seem to grow in beautiful every time you visit. The courtyard is the only place that wasn't hit by the disaster that happened here and has always been your favourite place in the town. You reach the well and as you touch it, all of the memories that you've hidden inside you come back out.

It happened when you were only a child. You were with your friends on the main street, back when there was life everywhere. The hot air was filled with the sound of music and the smell of food. You remember that you had just stolen some fresh bread from one of the market stalls and were running home when it happened. The sky went dark and everything stopped. Monsters emerged from the shadows, the likes of which haunt your nightmares to this very day. Their bodies were like deformed human skeletons covered with a thin layer of skin which looked exactly like paper. They rushed at you and everyone else around you, their sharp claws ripping through flesh. Everything sprang to life in an instant. People were running and screaming, pushing and shoving, crying and dying. You could only stand there as the horror unfolded before your eyes. The once yellow sand turned red with the blood of the people within the city. The beasts were attacking everything, not just people. One of the grotesque beings stopped in front of you, snarling. It's sharp claws dug into your arm, releasing you from your fear induced paralysis. That's when you ran towards the castle, it's spires untouched by time at that point. You ran through the open doors and squeezed through a small gap in the doors to the courtyard before turning to close the doors fully. You waited until the sky had cleared before you went back outside. You were greeted by a wave of death. Bodies lay everywhere along the streets, some half buried in sand. and so you ran, and you didn't stop until you came to the next town.

It's only now that you remember seeing skeletons on your way to the well. There was something odd about them though. You ask yourself what was wrong with the skeletons, but you can't place your finger on it. You try so hard to remember what was wrong with them, and that's when you realise. The skeletons were standing. Rows of human skeletons were standing along the sides of the street. Standing in front of the broken down houses whose doors were made of sand and bone, not wood. There were no statues in the foyer of the castle, only skeletons. Now you can see them. They're surrounding you, and you can see what they're thinking. You look into their empty eye sockets and you can hear the voices of a million souls speaking as one, repeating the same question over and over. "Why do you get to live?"  You flinch as you feel something brush against your hand. You turn to see the well and nothing else. You look inside it and see yourself as a child. Your heart drops as you finally realise what's happening, but it's too late. You look scared. Your eyes are wide and your heart's beating so fast and so hard that you can hear it, even though the well must be far too deep for you to be able to hear anything that's on the bottom. This isn't happening, you know that much. You turn around as you steep away from the well, only to find yourself face to face with a grotesque being. It's body was like a deformed human skeleton covered with a thin layer of skin which looks exactly like paper. It's hands, if you could call them that, end in sharp claws and you can feel the scars on your arm burn in the presence of what created them. It's skin is darker than the night sky, and it's eyes brighter than the sun and moon combined. You feel it's claws dig into your arm as a cool darkness engulfs you.

But you cannot die.

You can see it now, the ancient city. You return to this place every year for reasons that you can't explain. You always return, and yet, you know, deep down inside, that you can never leave this cycle of constant death. However, you cannot die. You refuse to die.