The arches stood like ribs of a once-living beast, their stone spines reaching for the golden sky. She traced the cracks beneath her feet, her red cloak trailing like a shadow. The city’s silhouette shimmered across the river, sharp and unyielding, a world reborn from the ashes of this one.
She was a wanderer clinging to the echoes of a time when these ruins were whole. But as the sun dipped lower, she felt the pull of the future calling her forward. The arches would endure without her — they always had. Now, it was her turn to find a new horizon.