---

Day 6

I'm still here.

When falling asleep last night, or maybe I lost conscience, Charlie must have noticed that I was deteriorating. I was awoken by him pushing his cold wet nose against my cheek in the middle of the night. From the hazy sight of him in my barely open eyes, I felt so grateful for not having to be alone in my final moments. Running my fingers through his long white hair helped me feel ready to face my fate. Charlie was never so eager to be held, but he must have felt that during this time, it kept me at ease to have him so close by. A moment of tranquility and warmth like I had never experienced before. Surreal because it came at a time when despair would be the more fitting emotion.

Nearing the end, you obtain a strange talent to let go, so it seems.

However, I was saved from having to put that talent to use. Because as I was stroking through Charlie's mane, I felt that a collar was hiding underneath it. All entangled, knotted, stuck around my dear dog's neck. And in that, I found a resolve to free him from this discomfort, even if it were the last thing I would do before losing my spirit to that damned bite. It would be my final thank-you to Charlie, who helped me get this far; so I thought. It took sheer willpower to bring my worn-out self to undo the collar knot by knot as to not cause Charlie too much unease. The way he stayed so calm throughout makes me believe that he knew that I was helping him.

As I had finally undone the last knot of hair and was able to take the collar away from Charlie's neck, the moonlight allowed me to notice a small vial dangling from it. On the label of the vial, which contained a dark green liquid, is a cursive handwriting in a foreign language.

"ℋℯ𝓉 𝓁𝒶𝒶𝓉𝓈𝓉ℯ 𝓇ℯ𝒹𝓂𝒾𝒹𝒹ℯ𝓁."

That's what it says. And while I was still clueless as to what those words might mean after pondering it for a while, my guess was that the vial would either contain a poison or a remedy of sorts. And I figured that whichever use it had, there was no way that it could worsen my dire situation. So I decided to open the vial and drink the entirety of its contents. It had a bitter taste. Or maybe it was sweet. Shortly after drinking it, I fell asleep with Charlie still beside me. And here we still are. It is the middle of the day, and I just woke up from the best sleep I had in a long time. My wound is still looking gruesome but the fever has lessened and I feel invigorated in comparison to the drag of these past few days.

It seems that this might not be my last entry in this journal. I'm about to head out, to see if I can gather any useful resources around this overgrown metropolis before the sun sets again. I might attempt to clean my wound, if I find the right means. Tomorrow we'll continue traveling Northward in search of the Sanctuary. Whatever this green liquid might have been, it will surely not keep me going for long with my wound still looking so bad.