They stepped off the boat in staggered silence. Water lapped faintly against the hull behind them, and yet it sounded distant, like it didn't belong in this world anymore.
Boots met the shore with a soft crunch, but it wasn't the coarse resistance of sand beneath them. The texture was wrong. Muffled. Too brittle. Too light.
Ludwig crouched low, brushing two fingers across the strange white terrain, and lifted a pinch between gloved fingers.
It flaked instantly—dusty, soft, like powdered shell. But finer. It didn't cling like sand would. Instead, it shimmered faintly under the ghost-light of the massive eye above them.
He didn't need to speak to know what it was. Bone. Crushed and washed, aged and crumbled into something that now passed as earth. This entire stretch of beach—if it could be called that—was made of it.
Not sand. Not stone.
Remains.
