“Even in the deepest solitude, a light may sometimes flicker.

  But it is only a memory of time — not a promise.”

  **

  There came a day when he stopped.

  Not to contemplate.

  Not to decide.

  Simply because a child had fallen at his feet.

  **

  The boy’s leg was twisted, broken.

  His face — raw, terrified,

  gazing up through eyes too young to understand despair.

  And Anor’Ven, without thought,

  without plan,

  reached out a hand.

  Not to save.

  Not to comfort.

  Simply…

  Because it was easier to move forward that way.

  **

  He lifted the boy onto shaking legs.

  Released him.

  And continued onward.

  Wordless.

  Weightless.

  **

  But the world saw.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  **

  The gesture crossed generations like fire through dry grass.

  They said he had blessed the child.

  That he had pardoned mankind.

  That his hand carried redemption hidden in silence.

  A sanctuary was raised on the dust he had once disturbed.

  Banners flew in winds he never summoned.

  **

  Later, a woman crawled broken through the ashes of battle.

  Blood caked her skin, her breath a dying whisper.

  Anor’Ven approached.

  Paused.

  He shifted a fallen stone, clearing a path.

  Nothing more.

  **

  She screamed of salvation.

  Her people crowned her a prophetess.

  Shrines rose in her name.

  And with each silent movement,

  Anor’Ven became less a man —

  and more a god he had never chosen to be.

  **

  In his gaze,

  no light flickered.

  No anger blazed.

  No regret lived.

  Only silence.

  Endless.

  Heavy.

  **

  The lie grew thick and tangled behind him.

  Fed by hunger.

  By memory.

  By desperate, failing faith.

  **

  And the world…

  continued to turn.

  **

  It was no longer the world he had once known.

  The forests thinned into broken veins.

  The plains deepened into scars.

  Even the mountains bowed under the burden of centuries.

  **

  Anor’Ven’s steps lost their mechanical rhythm.

  Sometimes, he halted before a twisted tree, bent by ancient winds.

  Sometimes, he sat upon crumbled walls, staring at a sky too young to remember gods.

  Sometimes, he turned away from villages drowned in their own dead beliefs.

  **

  Solitude had ceased to be a cloak.

  It had become his skin.

  **

  Men crossed his path still,

  but less often.

  Thinner.

  Quieter.

  Some knelt —

  out of instinct or old stories.

  Others turned their faces away,

  ashamed to look.

  Most simply passed him by,

  as if he were a shadow already.

  **

  One day, he drifted through a field of broken crosses.

  The corpses had long since vanished.

  Only shadows remained, twisted by time,

  and a wind heavy with the scent of ancient ash.

  He paused.

  Not to pray.

  Not to mourn.

  Only because here, at last,

  the earth demanded nothing.

  **

  Further along the wasteland,

  his steps carried him past a woman clothed in rags,

  a stone raised in trembling hands.

  Her eyes — wild, hollow, starving.

  Anor’Ven did not flinch.

  Did not lift a hand.

  The stone slipped from her grasp.

  And she collapsed at his feet,

  weeping,

  as if hatred itself had betrayed her.

  **

  Sometimes, he listened.

  Not to words.

  But to the fractures between them.

  The aborted prayers.

  The muffled cries.

  The songs broken before they could ever soar.

  It was there —

  in the broken spaces —

  that the true voice of the world whispered.

  **

  Days were no longer days.

  Time no longer a thread.

  It gathered like dust upon his shoulders,

  but never enough to bury him.

  **

  On distant horizons,

  lines of black scarred the sky.

  Crumbling towers.

  Cities dragged into being by hands too desperate to know why they built.

  Not born of hope —

  but of hunger.

  **

  He wandered on,

  untethered by time,

  unclaimed by memory.

  **

  The world moved.

  Not toward light.

  Not toward wisdom.

  Only toward something else.

  Something stranger.

  Something lost.

  **

  And so he continued.

  Not by duty.

  Not by desire.

  He had to.

  **

  Because even as memories rotted and civilizations crumbled,

  he endured.

  Because he was the last echo the world could not silence.