They had walked for countless days,
leaving behind gray lands, memories devoured by the wind.
When Anor'ven stopped, it was without a word.
He stood facing a barren stretch of earth, bordered by twisted trees,
under a sky so pale it seemed the world had been drained of its blood.
He simply looked at the place.
And without knowing why,
the others began to build.
Meager shelters.
Crude barriers.
Fragile hearths where flames fought against the night.
They worked,
because there was nothing else to do.
They planted,
because they had to survive.
No enthusiasm.
No dreams.
Only this mute certainty:
here, silence would be their god,
and Anor'ven, its first priest.
**
Time unraveled,
not in days, but in slow pains.
Arms weakened.
Eyes grew hollow.
Life persisted,
out of habit more than will.
And among them,
always,
Anor'ven.
Not as a king.
Not as a guide.
As a shadow that even the light dared not touch.
**
Then came the fracture.
A burst of voice,
brutal,
jarring,
split the dry air.
Two men.
A torn sack of seeds between their hands.
Words spat with the dull rage of cornered beasts.
Nothing but a miserable quarrel.
Nothing but the friction of survival.
But in Anor'ven's mind,
it was something else.
A warning.
A scent of failure
already heralding the end.
**
He rose.
He walked.
Each step seemed to smother the world around him.
The entire camp held its breath.
Even the fires' flames seemed to falter.
He approached.
Not with violence.
Not with theatrical speed.
He approached like winter crawling over a bare field.
And when his eyes fell upon the two men,
they did not meet a man's gaze.
They met a chasm.
Cold.
Ancient.
Endless.
A chasm where every quarrel, every pride, every anger became ridiculous,
futile,
already dead before it could be born.
The two men froze.
One lowered his eyes.
The other dropped the handful of seeds,
scattering them into the dust.
No word was spoken.
Anor'ven simply looked at them,
until their shoulders collapsed under a weight they could not name.
**
He did not punish them.
He did not strike them.
He judged them without needing a single gesture.
Then, without a word,
he turned away,
returning to the edge of the camp.
Where the fire did not reach the shadows.
**
The men and women resumed their labor.
Slower.
Heavier.
The silence now was thicker than any oath.
A silence of submission.
A silence of fear.
And Anor'ven, sitting alone in the darkness,
felt neither satisfaction,
nor relief.
He knew.
He knew that what he had begun was not a utopia.
It was only another cage.
A cage of which he was both the wall, the key,
and the first prisoner.