Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but Warhammer 40k

The gaze descends from the summit of the heavens.

Thick, swirling clouds obscured the sky above the world.

The sky was a dark red, symbolizing destruction, with purple vortexes swirling above it, and lightning struggling and twisting within them.

The earth resembled a massive, drained wreck, with crisscrossing rift valleys tearing the plains apart.

Right there on the boundless, gray wasteland.

A lone, dark shadow was moving slowly.

A lone knight clad in tattered armor.

Henry walked alone through the wasteland.

His shoulder armor was covered in cracks.

The dried scabs were visible between the metal seams, and the penetrating wound in his left arm was still bleeding.

But he couldn't feel any pain.

The person in the dream is not yet awake, wandering alone in this world like a lost soul.

Staggering, I didn't know where I should go.

The ruins of a castle stand at the horizon.

The dilapidated tower leans precariously towards the sky.

The collapsed city walls have long been buried by the endless yellow sand.

Henry stood there for a long time.

There was a sense of familiarity, but its name was stuck in my throat and I couldn't say it.

I was struggling internally but couldn't find the reason.

Henry strode away, turned his back, and left.

His footsteps became the only sound in this world.

The route was littered with the scars of war. The wreckage of armored tanks lay half-buried in the sand, main gun barrels broken in the middle, and tons of steel melted down and then reformed into deformed scrap metal.

Human skeletons, along with some deformed non-human skeletons, were intertwined and piled up to form a mound of skulls.

A massive knight mech appeared ahead.

The steel weapon, tens of meters tall, knelt slumped on the wasteland, its head drooping and its knees deeply embedded in the ground.

As Henry walked past those enormous mechanical feet, he felt as insignificant as dust.

He paused, gazing up at the rusty metal mask, a strange ripple stirring within him.

  

It seems familiar.

It seems that a vibrant soul once sat within it, but that person has long since passed away, their name and all traces of the past erased by the passage of time.

Before they could stop walking, a series of regular tremors came from the horizon.

The sound was like war drums, coming from afar and growing closer.

Henry looked in the direction of the sound and saw a shadow of immeasurable size slowly creeping across the horizon.

His body almost disappeared into the clouds, and with each step he took, the entire wasteland resonated with him.

Even though we were tens of kilometers apart, we could still feel an indescribable sense of oppression.

The monster seemed to pay no attention to Henry at all.

Or perhaps it simply doesn't care.

Like Henry, it was just wandering aimlessly.

It's like a natural phenomenon that survives after the world's destruction, serving as a sign that this world belongs to chaos.

Henry observed for a moment, then continued on his journey.

After a long journey, remnants of civilization gradually reappeared in the desolation.

Broken wooden fences, half-collapsed stone farmhouses, dried-up and rusty wells, and ashes of human figures scattered along the roadside.

The victims remained in a state of struggle before their deaths.

Some clasped their hands together, some tightly protected the infants in their arms, and others desperately stretched their arms towards the sky. It was impossible to tell whether they were begging for the mercy of the divine emperor or uttering a vicious curse.

With a mere touch of a fingertip, those fragile statues vanished into thin air.

Henry walked among the dead, and the feeling of déjà vu grew stronger.

A charred wooden frame appeared in the middle of the road, forcing him to stop.

The broken pyre and charred wooden stakes stood forlornly in the middle of the ruins.

Henry stood rooted to the spot, his gaze fixed on the spot for a long time.

As if pricked by a needle, several fragmented images flashed through my mind.

The raging fire, the cheers and curses of the onlookers, the priest's prayers, and a young man trying to explain himself. But as he tried to grasp these fragments of memory, they slipped away like sand through his fingers, vanishing into nothingness.

Henry continued walking forward, filled with doubt.

A wooden road sign lay tilted to the side of the road, its paint peeling and faded, but the characters were still legible.

Baitouwo Town.

When my eyes fell on the handwriting, my heart skipped a beat.

A padlock was quietly opened, and the sealed past began to resurface. He stood there like a wooden stake, some inexplicable obsessions taking root in his mind.

I need to find someone.

Whom to look for? My memory is a complete blank.

Only one intuition remains.

That person is incredibly important; even if the world beneath my feet collapses and shatters, I must find her.

Driven by his unwavering conviction, he ventured into the heart of the town.

The once bustling streets have long since turned into wasteland, with collapsed houses and scorched farmland on the outskirts. Only the scattered ruins remain as evidence of the past vitality.

However, in the very center of the town, there was a building that remained completely intact.

The walls were clean, the courtyard was tidy, and even the flowers and plants in the flowerbeds outside were still full of life.

It seemed to be deliberately avoided by the erosion of chaos, standing out from the surrounding scenery.

Henry stopped in his tracks. It was the miller's house. Every brick and tile matched the reflection in his memory.

I reached out and pushed open the courtyard gate, the unfamiliar hinges creaking loudly.

The room was neatly furnished. The solid wood tables and chairs were spotless, and there was even a half-burnt firewood in the fireplace. All the signs of life suggested that the owner had just gone on a long trip and would return home soon.

Henry climbed the wooden steps one by one and stopped at the end of the second-floor corridor.

A sliver of light shone through the slightly ajar door.

As he placed his palm on the brass doorknob, his chest pounded even harder, as if pushing open this door would fill all the voids deep within his soul.

Click.

The door opened smoothly.

The familiar arrangement rushed towards me. The wooden bed against the wall, the dressing table in the corner, and the potted plant on the windowsill. Everything was exactly as it had been, except that there was no one in the room.

Henry approached the dressing table quietly; a layer of dust covered the polished bronze mirror.

Tucked in the gap of the picture frame was a yellowed piece of paper, seemingly waiting for Henry for a long time.

Pull out the paper strip.

The handwriting above is delicate and neat, and the ink seems to still be warm.

Only a simple sentence was left behind.

"Henry, do you like your heaven?"

He clutched the yellowed piece of paper, and images from the past surged and overlapped in his mind.

The mill in Baitouwo Town, the wheat fields on a summer afternoon, and the blonde girl who always wore a white linen dress and sat on a swing gazing into the distance.

Her smile, the blush on her face when she was shy, the feel of my fingers running through her hair.

She smiled and said to herself, about her dreams, about her future.

Everything was crystal clear.

Salia, Salia...

Where is she now?

He suddenly missed her terribly.

My vision blurred without me even realizing it, and my eyes gradually started to sting.

Just as the tears were about to fall.

A gust of wind blew in through the window.