In the center of the abandoned village stood an octagonal structure. It towered over even Cyberdramon, each facet a cardinal direction, light from the data streams falling across vertical sundials. They lay caught there, trapped within crystalline marble, sparkling pink-bright in the everafter. Engraved symbols hovered upon the frieze above the sundials; they morphed and shifted when Ryo blinked.
Ryo placed a hand on the structure. It pulsed beneath his fingertips, millet and liquid both filling the whorls there, cool yet malleable. He half-expected it to give under pressure, let him sink inside, but the strange material held. There was a plaque at the base with words written in English:
Horologion
a splice of alabaster between our shoulderblades, shrugging
Data packets drifted past. All remained quiet.
The horologion cut a vastly different figure from the village architecture. The rest of the buildings were misshapen gray metals carpeted in fur growths. Earth sparkled like an ornate jewel in the artificial sky; everything was tinted the color of rust.
"Ryo," Cyberdramon growled. He stood off to the side, a gray shadow in the reddish surroundings. A muscle in his elongated jaw twitched with impatience.
"Calm down, I want to look around a little more."
Ryo walked into one of the homes. He had to duck at the entrance to avoid banging his head on the frame. The sloped ceiling was badly damaged, dust drifting through the cracks' fragmentary light. Smashed furniture littered the floor, an uncomfortable reminder of why Ryo had to leave home. He swallowed.
The silence was eerie. Moribund. No trace of whoever lived here remained: there were only material skeletons and faint notions.
Something clattered against Ryo's foot, skittering off to the side. He knelt and picked up the wooden block. It was tattered and worn, the pictures carved on it faded to an unrecognizable degree. There was no time for play, here. Life had become little more than striving to prove they had earned the right to exist.
Is this all there is?
Ryo tossed the block up then snatched it out of the air. It was lighter than it looked. After a second inspection, he let the block fall. The thud it made when it struck the ground was oddly muted, almost muffled, as though swallowed whole. Ryo walked out. Cyberdramon was where Ryo had left him, unmoved by and unmoored from the melancholic tragedy.
"What do you think happened here?" Ryo asked.
A pause. Cyberdramon answered: "Who cares? I sense a strong Digimon nearby."
Cyberdramon had a deep, grave voice that reminded Ryo of cemeteries. Maybe he himself was little more than a reanimated corpse remembered via binary code. Ryo sighed—then nodded. What more was there to say? They left the abandoned village without another word.
