Two days after first waking up, Patxi finally felt strong enough to accompany Fujimaru and Mash on their excursions outside the Shadow Border investigating what da Vinci had termed "remnants": bleached, warped buildings that had somehow managed to survive whatever it was that had destroyed the timeline Chaldea hailed from. From what he'd gathered Chaldea insisted on searching each one in case there were any survivors to rescue - with nary a concern over the potential strain on foodstuffs, Patxi noted in direct contrast to Goredolf's complaints about him - as well as any information relating to why exactly almost everything on Earth had been wiped away, but so far the expeditions had managed to turn up absolutely nothing but scant traces of recent inhabitants. It was rather unnerving, Patxi felt, the descriptions reminding him uncomfortably of what occasionally happened when a poor Yaga living right on the edge of town was set upon by a wandering Demonic Beast.

That being said, the empty ruins and uncanny resemblance to Demonic Beast attacks were nowhere near as unsettling as the very sky the three of them walked under as they headed towards the remnant. The sky back in Russia had always been a uniform grey, with an unbroken mass of clouds spreading from one end of the horizon to the other, but here the clouds were few in number and spread out over a vast expanse of endless, unchanging blue. Looking up at the unending sky, one far more open than anything he'd ever seen in his life, Patxi felt completely exposed.

"Is it always like that up there?" He finally asked after one too many minutes staring upwards.

"You mean the sky?" Fujimaru shook his head. "No, not really. At least, not all the time - I've seen plenty of days where it's pretty much this exact weather, but never for a solid week straight."

"I don't get how you guys could handle a day of it, let alone a week." Patxi shuddered. "Almost feels like everything's starting to close in and press down on me."

"I know what you mean." Mash was looking up as well. "The first time I saw the open sky like this back in the Orleans Singularity, it almost seemed like a dream. We never saw skies this cloudless back in Chaldea."

"What about that?" Patxi pointed up at the sun with his good hand. "Isn't that thing supposed to move?"

"Yes." Mash frowned. "It hasn't since Russia vanished, and it's probably got something to do with the Alien God and whatever it did to the Earth."

"Yeah, probably." Patxi replied, trying to ignore the tightness that had taken over his entire body when Mash had said 'since Russia vanished'. Unbelievable. Two whole days, and that still hits as hard as it did when they first told me. Patxi shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts: there would be time to think everything over once they got back to the Border , and in the meantime they still had the remnants to explore.

The building was absolutely massive, or at least it had been before the 'Alien God' thingy Chaldea kept talking about came down and smashed it to bits. Patxi still found the warped remains of whatever an airport was to be impressive, though, even if he needed to cut his gaping short and focus on the search for information. The three of them spent a better part of an hour combing over what Fujimaru dubbed the main terminal, and Patxi was investigating a couple of odd marks tucked away in a corner when he heard the human yelling that he'd found something.

"This letter was tucked away under that bench over there," Fujimaru explained, "but I can't read it. Da Vinci, do you copy?"

"Loud and clear." Patxi jumped a good foot in the air at the appearance of a blue, see-through da Vinci a couple feet from Fujimaru. Yeesh, that's so creepy to look at.

"Can you translate this for us?" Fujimaru asked, seemingly oblivious to Patxi's near heart attack.

"Yep. Just give me a second here…" Da Vinci slipped on a pair of glasses and leaned over, reading. "Well, that was something." Da Vinci stated after she was finished. "Seems that whoever wrote this tried to catch a flight out of here hoping that the rest of the world was still fine. When they saw the airport was ruined they just gave up, and declared that everything was over and life was pointless."

"When was the note written?" Mash asked. "If it was recent, maybe they're still around here somewhere?"

Da Vinci shook her head. "No, by the looks of it this letter's a good two months old. They're probably dead, either from thirst or suicide."

"Oh, right." Fujimaru looked down at the paper before folding it up and stuffing it in his shirt pocket. "I don't suppose it's likely we could find the body anywhere, is it?"

"I doubt it, Senpai. Considering that da Vinci said the letter was written two months ago, the body's probably been bleached off the planet like everything else."

Just like the other Yaga , Patxi thought. "You gonna keep the paper as a memorial?"

"Probably." Fujimaru looked around the room again. "I don't see anything else here besides all the ruins, so we might as well check out one of the other buildings."

Mash and Fujimaru were halfway across the building before the former noticed that Patxi wasn't following them. "Did you see something?"

"Maybe. You two can go on ahead, though - I'll catch up to you."

Once they were gone, Patxi returned to the odd marks he'd seen before. Upon closer inspection they appeared to have been made in some of the dust that had blown in over the past few months, which struck him as odd. So someone was here more recently than whoever wrote that letter? There was something else about the marks - their shape was extremely strange, certainly unlike anything he'd seen in Russia, and unlike the sort of mark he figured that humans would leave. They actually look sort of like the path the Border leaves, don't they? And that would mean there's someone else out here with a vehicle? If that was true, it would be significant: not only was there someone still alive, but they were on the move. Maybe they're heading towards the Lostbelts too?

Following the tracks, Patxi ran outside the building. They lead away from the entire set of structures, heading straight towards the Shadow Border , but a little ways away they twisted off in a different direction. Patxi looked up and around to try and get his bearings the way Holmes had been teaching him, using the Border 's location and stated trajectory -

And realized, with a jolt in the stomach, that he was looking almost directly Southeast. Towards what had recently been the territory of the Russian Lostbelt. And even more specifically, at least going by the Border's maps of Proper Human History, almost directly towards Smolensk. His hometown. He stared, a lump in his throat, the realization that both his home and everything else he'd known were irretrievably gone sinking in once again.

How long he stood there for Patxi had no idea, save that it was long enough for him to hear the steady approach of footsteps indicating that Mash and Fujimaru had finished their search.

"Did you two find anything?" He asked in a voice that was strangely hoarse.

"No, just a bunch of broken stone and a few old cans of food." Mash stepped up besides Patxi and peered off into the distance. "Um...is there something out there?"

That's it, actually. That's exactly it - there's nothing at all, where once there was my mother, and my friends. But that wasn't exactly something he could come out and say , so instead Patxi just shook his head and pointed at the tracks in the dust. "I saw these back in the building, and wanted to see where they went."

Fujimaru bent down and examined the tracks. "That's odd. It looks almost like someone came through here with a motorcycle. And pretty recently, too."

The three of them were silent, considering the implications. It was one thing to find the scattered left-overs of people who had been alive two months ago; proof that someone had passed by just a few days ago, and with a powered vehicle, was something else entirely. They ran back towards the central building, following the tracks. Interestingly enough, although marks were straight on from the curve Patxi had noticed earlier all the way up to the building, a short ways on the other side they randomly curved back again. The curve pointed towards the Southwest, at a much sharper angle than the path they were following in the Shadow Border, stretching off into the endless distance.

"Think we should follow it?" Patxi asked.

"Not for very far, but it might be a good idea to see if we can try and come up with any information as to where our mystery person's headed." Mash turned to Fujimaru. "Can you contact da Vinci, Senpai?"

"On it."

Soon enough, Fujimaru, Mash, and da Vinci were discussing Patxi's discovery and debating the merits of further investigation. Patxi tried to listen as best he could, even though he could really only understand about half of what they were saying, but wound up tuning the discussion out partway through when Goredolf decided to jump in with his own opinion and instead found his gaze turning once again towards home. Or at least, where home had been before Chaldea wiped it out of existence.

Patxi hadn't really understood why Mash and Fujimaru were so insistent upon exploring and studying every single remnant of their world, but standing there looking back towards his home, facing the reality that where once there had been an entire civilization - stagnant and brutal as it was - now there was only an endless desert, he got it. If I came across even the tiniest sign that another Yaga'd been there, I'd probably go nuts over it. Not that we ever will.

"So what was the decision?" Patxi asked once the da Vinci hologram finally blinked out of existence.

"We have ten minutes." Mash explained. "After that, the director's going to call us again and make us return to the border. It's not the longest time, and I know we won't be able to get very far, but it's better than nothing."

"I guess so." Damn it, I was kind of starting to hope we'd have to go back immediately.

They started off once again, jogging down alongside the tracks in silence, Patxi wishing all the while that his left arm and leg would hurry up and finish healing already. Then he could run on all fours, covering more ground and getting more information for the rest of Chaldea, not to mention put a little distance between him and the other two, something that was sounding really nice right about now…

Ten minutes' worth of travel later, by which time Patxi's entire left half was throbbing fiercely, Goredolf duly called in.

"Alright, please tell me you three found something?"

"Well...not really." Fujimaru shifted from one foot to the other. "As far as we can tell, whoever made this is only going Southwest in a straight line. They probably only turned towards the airport to look for survivors, like we did."

"Blast it, I knew this was probably going to be a waste of time." Goredolf sighed before looking at Patxi. "Unless you can see something? You Yaga can see better than normal humans, right?"

Patxi squinted off into the distance. "Hold on, actually, there is something - the track curves again a little bit." Holding his good arm straight out in front of his body, Patxi bent the elbow down at a slight angle. "Like this. No idea why, though."

"Yeah, there's no reason for it." Fujimaru shook his head. "Unless he got contact from another survivor? Maybe he's got a radio."

"Unlikely. Holmes has been monitoring for transmissions of any kind, and since we left Russia the only thing we've picked up is the message from the Wandering Sea."

"But for him to suddenly change direction like that has to mean something ." Mash frowned. "Maybe it was some kind of course correction? There might be some sort of destination out there, like a shelter or colony of some kind."

"It is entirely possible, but at the moment we need to set that aside. Our supplies aren't exactly infinite, as I'm sure you all remember, and we really can't dawdle. Perhaps we can investigate after we reach the Wandering Sea, but for now all our focus needs to be on penetrating the Lostbelt and crossing to the other side. Mash, Fujimaru, Patxi, return to the Border at once, and afterwards prepare for" - Goredolf gulped, suddenly pale - "ulp, prepare for Zero Sail."

Fujimaru and Mash looked annoyed at being shut down like that, but the order to cut the expedition short was fine with Patxi. All of a sudden he really wanted to just be alone for a while, and to not have to stare back towards Smolensk every five seconds.

And besides, he was completely sick of being out in the endless, open sky.