People complain about the Badlands, and I get why. Sandstorms are relentless, sweeping through settlements with deafening roars, burying homes under layers of suffocating dust. They strip flesh from bone, turning the unprepared into nothing but echoes in the wind. The wildlife, mutated and unpredictable, stirs the storms like vengeful spirits, their movements shifting the landscape itself. There's no stopping any of it—only surviving for as long as fate allows.


We live fleeting, fragile lives, constantly at the mercy of the Badlands. Few of us see thirty, and those who do are hardened remnants of what they once were. At nineteen, I’m already past my prime—each passing year a gamble against starvation, the storms, or the monsters that lurk just beyond sight. Most don’t even make it to twenty-five. Wind-driven debris tears apart some, some waste away with nothing to eat, and others simply vanish, claimed by the dunes without a trace.


And some—like my father—are just unlucky.


My father was the last to go out of my family, just last year. Even now, when someone mentions him, my chest tightens, my throat locks up. He was the reason I survived this long. Without him… I’m just another soul trying to outlast the inevitable.


Food is hard to come by. The soil is dry and lifeless, refusing to yield crops, and the wildlife that does survive is as dangerous as it is scarce. Water sources are few and fiercely guarded, leaving many to wither away from hunger before they can even hope to trade for a meal. We all struggle to feed ourselves, yet every day, another body turns to dust in the streets.


Basha, my settlement, has teetered on the brink of annihilation more times than I can count, nearly swept away by towering twisters that dwarf any structure I have ever seen. Within an hour, the entire landscape can be reshaped, homes torn apart like brittle parchment, leaving behind only rubble and grief. The death toll is staggering—half of our settlement, on average, is lost to each storm. The walls we build, the shelters we reinforce, they mean nothing against the sheer force of nature. Thankfully, they don’t happen often—but when they do, survival is a matter of cruel chance.


Basha has ties to the trade in the east, where the Yular region lays. It is said that the food is plenty there because of the ocean providing many creatures to hunt. Yular is a very well-off region although far away from Basha. It takes almost a week of walking, if you’re not hiding or running away from things that can kill you in an instant, like the mutants or Oro’Mastaras. The beings of rumor in town are never questioned as a lot of us refuse to leave here when we come in. The ones born here hardly ever leave.


We live in fear of the Badlands, of the things lurking beyond Basha. No one leaves alone. Not if they want to come back. The land itself is a death trap—shifting dunes swallow travelers whole, the air is dry enough to crack skin in hours, and the scorching sun turns days into an unrelenting trial. Even those who come prepared are at the mercy of creatures that stalk the wastes, waiting for the weary and desperate to wander too far from safety.


It seems like our future is bleak, but we keep hoping that we will surpass the mutations of the old world and find a way to live prosperously. If the old world had not been destroyed by a war, we all could see what they lived like. Huge structures stick from within the sands of the Badlands. In some places, you can even see places of which the old world people had taken shelter. Although, I admit that is speculation of the general population.


Everyone in Basha lives in a shack made up of mud and metal that we dug up from the sands. Each home is pretty strong, although if we make one mistake, the whole place will fall if a desert twister hits us.


We all avoid leaving because of the monsters that await out there. Some travel with swords and guns, however they eventually end up never returning too. I can't help but wish for better of this world. Perhaps we just need the right person to show us the best of the world's offerings. If only we could have a safe place in all truth.


A true safe place—no one’s ever seen it, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. What if there was a way to carve out a refuge from the chaos, a place where storms couldn't reach and monsters dared not tread? Maybe that’s the only way humanity survives—not by running, but by creating something stronger than the Badlands themselves.