I have the last half of my ration cigarette left.
On the south wall of Wind Breath City, I leaned against the crenel, moved the cigarette butt from the corner of my mouth to my fingers, and squinted at the gray-white wall in the distance. That wall is not made of stone, but of fog.
The shallow mist three years ago was just clinging to the ground, like moisture that had not dispersed in the morning, making people dizzy for at most two days. Now it has reached one-third of the horizon, like a giant beast that is standing up, slowly pressing towards us.
Normally at this time, the boundary line of the fog should still be at the abandoned gas station to the east. But today I stared at it for two hours, and it had already swallowed up the iron tower next to the gas station.
Two hours faster than expected.
I stubbed out the cigarette butt in the gap between the bricks of the city wall, turned around and walked down. The south wall is not too high, about twelve meters, and underneath is a temporary fortification. Machine gun positions made of sandbags, iron caltrops, and crookedly welded iron fences are all put together in a mess, which looks unreliable. The people in the garrison were leaning against the wall and taking a nap in twos and threes. Some people saw me coming down and just raised their eyelids.
No one paid any attention to me. I don't need their attention either.
The position of scout is a joke in Wind's End City. When the fog first came three years ago, the scouts could still explore the roads to see which areas could still be inhabited. Now that the entire continent has been swallowed up by fog, the only stronghold left within a radius of 300 kilometers is Wind's Breath City. The scout's job has become "seeing when the fog will drift over."
Like a countdown clock.
