[CW: bones]
It is a hot, wet summer in Din Talin. The air hangs heavy with moisture that dews on the beds of moss lining the crags of the clearing. They have been eroded by time, but a traveller may make out the echoes of steel beams, corrugated sheets and rotted wooden poles. Years of rain and sun and lack of humans has led to the plantlife reclaiming the clearing upon which the Bastion once stood. What is not covered by moss, grass and shrubbery is brown and rusted, even falling apart in some places. Many bled here and died here, but those memories have faded long ago. All that remains are rotting walls, holes that have become mere divots from years of erosion, and the echoes of a people trying desperately to survive.
In the centre of this clearing lies a tree, nascent but growing strongly. In a few decades, it may become a great redwood like its brethren that make up the surrounding forest. Most travellers would remark at a tree like this, oddly placed in the middle of a clearing. Maybe they would use it as a brief resting spot, or carve their names into the bark. Few would notice what lies beneath, hidden under moss and years of dirt built up from the pines of the tree and the rain of the air: a skeleton, the remains of what looks like one. It has been blackened by age, or dirt, or perhaps soot from a fire long ago. Not that it matters: the woods have long reclaimed its minerals and nutrients. All flesh has long since rotted off, with the trunk of the tree emerging from where its heart once was and roots slithering like serpents around its ribs and eye sockets.
If anybody did see it, they would have no way of recognising it. Just another casualty in a long list of casualties caused by the End. They would not recognise the remains of a candle stand, also warped and charred, nor would they see the shards of glass and the bullet casings that litter the ground around the body. They would never know this one's demise was its own doing, a vain attempt at revenge caused by a slight against it caused by a final, ill-fated attempt to secure that was already theirs. They wouldn't know it was a final confirmation of a destiny self-inflicted: failure, failure and failure, every time coming within an inch of success but never realising it.
They wouldn't know, and they wouldn't care. It's just another skeleton, after all.
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