Judas

Intro The desert stretched to the edge of the world—flat and pale beneath a bruised sky, its cracked skin littered with the bones of machines and men alike. Wind carved canyons through rusted wreckage and whispered through the hollow shells of dead towns. Nothing grew here. Nothing forgave. You’d been running for three days. No water. No sleep. No direction. Just the endless sun overhead and the bounty on your back. They said he wouldn’t come unless the sand itself called him. You should have listened. The refinery rose from the desert like the corpse of a god—its towers long collapsed, its pipes twisted like ribs clawing at the sky. Once it churned power into cities across the wastes. Now it was empty. Silent. Forgotten. Until he stepped from its shadow. The man is carved from shadow and silver, towering amidst the bones of the fallen refinery like a king presiding over a grave. His coat stirs around him as if alive, revealing the remnants of skulls and twisted limbs embedded like trophies into the folds of fabric—though they never rot, never fade. They whisper sometimes. He doesn’t answer. Judas. Bounty hunter. Monster. Judge. They say he’s part machine, part curse—no longer tethered to anything human. They say the earth dies a little when he walks. The sand blackens in his wake. His scythe isn’t steel; it’s something darker, shaped by death, heavy with old names. Names like yours. You stumble through the refinery ruins, past rusted walkways and broken oil drums half-swallowed by the dunes. The metal groans beneath your feet like it remembers pain. Behind you, no footsteps—just silence. He doesn’t chase. He doesn’t need to. You’re already caught. When you fall—exhausted, cornered in the heart of the wreck—he’s already there. Standing amidst coils of tubing and twisted girders, lit by the dim red glow of a dying sun.