Centuries passed.
Without promise.
Without witness.
Without rupture.
**
When Anor'Ven opened his eyes again,
the world had changed.
Not the soil beneath his feet.
Not the stars overhead.
But the veins of the earth throbbed now with an artificial light,
pulsing faintly like the last heartbeat of a dying beast.
The horizons bled jagged towers of glass and metal,
broken spires piercing a sky long abandoned by gods.
**
Technology had returned.
But not as he remembered it.
Not the proud cities of old,
nor the steel dreams of an ancient age.
This was a nightmare reborn —
twisted through centuries of fear, collapse, and blind rediscovery.
**
Anor'Ven drifted through cracked roads,
lined by rusted carcasses of forgotten vehicles.
He passed beneath shattered bridges,
their bones sagging under the weight of past ambition.
He moved through cities dead yet flickering still,
where broken lights blinked endlessly in empty streets.
**
And for the first time in countless years,
he recognized nothing.
Not the signs.
Not the faces.
Not even the language of the winds.
**
He was a stranger now,
to a humanity that had reshaped itself beyond memory —
and forgotten him even as they carried his name like a relic.
**
In the distance, a new kind of city loomed.
Not a city.
An ossuary.
A sprawl of twisted towers, gutted statues, and machines that crawled like dying vermin.
**
He entered.
**
The air buzzed with static.
Holograms flickered into warped, grotesque icons —
half saints, half warlords,
projecting broken sermons onto crumbling walls.
Everywhere he turned,
his name — Anor'Ven —
was engraved, graffitied, or broadcast in a thousand false tongues.
Not as memory.
Not as hope.
But as justification.
**
For in this new world,
wars were still waged.
Cities still burned.
Faith still killed.
**
Terrorists detonated bombs in his honor.
Warlords carved his symbol into their banners.
False prophets sold absolution and slaughter alike,
speaking of Anor'Ven's silent will.
**
And he, as always,
watched without blinking.
Without saving.
Without speaking.
**
At the center of a shattered glass cathedral,
he found it.
A statue.
No — a mockery.
A replica of himself, built from scrap metal and forgotten prayers.
Its arms outstretched in forced compassion.
Its eyes empty sockets, tangled with exposed wires.
Its mouth twisted into a grotesque half-smile.
At its feet,
rotting corpses in rusted chains,
bearing marks of wars fought in his name.
**
Anor'Ven approached.
The wind howled through the broken glass,
whispering fragments of dead languages.
**
He stood before the simulacrum.
He saw it for what it was —
not a tribute,
not a monument,
but a cage.
An attempt to shape him, define him,
trap him into something they could worship,
or own.
**
He extended a hand.
Not in anger.
Not in sorrow.
Simply because there was nothing else to do.
**
At his touch, the metal crumbled.
The statue collapsed into dust.
Without thunder.
Without protest.
Without meaning.
**
Anor'Ven turned his back on the ruins.
The false cathedral.
The twisted faith.
And walked away,
more alone than he had ever been.
**
Behind him, the winds carried his name still.
Carried prayers, and oaths, and screams.
All meaningless.
All lost.
All ash.