Chapter 5
Chapter 5: The Badlands
The Badlands rose before him like the broken spine of a dead world. Jacob stood at the edge of a vast expanse of rust-colored rock, where the earth had been torn apart into jagged cliffs and deep, shadowed canyons. The ground under his boots was cracked and brittle, as if the land itself had been baked in some ancient fire. There were no trees here, no grass—only stone and dust and the constant whisper of wind threading through narrow ravines.
He checked the compass. East. Always east.
The first day was a brutal descent into a canyon that swallowed the sun by mid-afternoon. Jacob picked his way down a crumbling slope, sending small avalanches of gravel skittering into the darkness below. The walls rose on either side, layered in stripes of ochre and burnt sienna, and the air grew cooler as he descended. He found a dry creek bed at the bottom and followed it, the compass needle steady in his palm.
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