There wasn't much left of the village.
The houses still stood, mostly. The roofs hadn't collapsed. The well hadn't run dry. But it wasn't a place for living anymore — just a habit shaped into walls.
Asveri walked barefoot through the dust, hands deep in the pockets of a coat two sizes too large. The sleeves dragged a little. People crossed paths with him without truly seeing. He passed like wind: felt, but not met.
It had been a long time. He'd stopped counting.
Days came and went. Nights blurred together. There were no more voices.
No more pain to share, no more joy to carry.
The silence inside him was complete.
His face hadn't changed in years. Still the soft skin of a ten-year-old. Still the same hair.
But his eyes…
His eyes belonged to someone who had lived through centuries of grief.
His mother had died a few weeks ago.
Not violently. Not dramatically.
She had simply… stopped.
One evening, she placed her hand over his. Her skin was thin, warm, almost transparent.
She looked at him for a long time, her eyes soft, tired — but still alive with love.
"Do you still hear them?"
He shook his head.
"No…"
She smiled. Softly. Like someone letting go.
"Then maybe now, you can rest too. Even if it takes time."
Her hand slowly loosened.
Her eyelids fell. Peaceful. Quiet.
Asveri felt his throat tighten.
Felt the first sob break him.
Then the tears came — sudden, bitter, real.
"Mama… please… stay… stay a little longer…"
He collapsed onto her.
And he cried. Loud, helpless, without shame.
He didn't remember how long he stayed there.
But she didn't answer anymore.
He buried her himself. No ceremony.
Just a pile of stones, beneath the willow tree.
He returned to their small house afterward. It felt like nothing had ever lived there.
The blanket on her bed still smelled like her.
There were threads she hadn't finished stitching.
A broken bowl waiting to be mended.
He sat beside it for hours.
Since then, he wandered.
He slept on rooftops. Ate what he found. Repaired fences. Watched birds.
Sometimes he stood in the middle of the square, just… standing.
No one asked him anything. No one dared.
He had become a fixture of the village. A background.
People spoke around him, never to him.
They said he never aged.
They whispered that he was cursed.
But those who had known his mother stayed silent.
They remembered her warmth. Her silence. Her way of never asking for pity.
Asveri became the boy who didn't sleep.
And that was enough.
The seasons passed like sighs.
The leaves turned gold and fell.
The snows came and melted.
The wind shifted.
But nothing truly changed.
There were no more travelers.
The roads had gone quiet.
The utopia was gone — the wanderer had said so, long ago.
No one doubted it now.
The statues had crumbled.
The laws had faded.
And still, Asveri remained.
He hadn't heard a single voice in years.
Sometimes he reached for them, out of instinct.
But there was nothing.
No suffering. No laughter.
Just an empty sky inside his chest.
He didn't know if the world had died.
Or if he was the only one left alive to notice.
One afternoon, he burned his hand on a kettle he had left too long in the fire.
It blistered.
It hurt.
And he felt relief.
The pain was real. Present.
It meant he still had a body.
He pressed the burn against his chest and closed his eyes.
He whispered, "I'm still here," though no one listened.
One autumn morning, as he was fixing a rusted hinge on a neighbor's gate, he noticed the silence shift.
Not around him — beneath him.
A pressure. A presence.
Then the shouting came. Soft at first. Then panicked.
He wiped his hands on his coat and climbed the old mill's roof.
From there, he saw the village gathering.
A man had collapsed in the square. Not hurt. Just… broken.
People circled him, whispering.
And then, in the distance, someone walked.
A figure.
Tall. Slow.
Moving without urgency, without destination.
But coming.
Asveri's breath caught in his throat.
The figure drew closer, step by step, through fields of dust and silence.
Not like a traveler.
Not like someone returning.
He came as if he had always been coming. As if time had only now caught up.
The villagers felt it first.
A woman clutched her child and backed away.
A man fell to his knees.
Someone wept.
The air grew heavy.
As if something enormous hovered just out of sight.
A grief too vast to name.
The man passed the first houses.
He didn't look left or right.
Didn't greet. Didn't speak.
But his presence was unbearable.
Not violent.
But overwhelming.
Like staring into a sea that would never end.
Asveri descended from the roof and walked toward him.
People moved aside as the figure approached.
But Asveri did not.
He stopped.
Just a few steps away.
The man stopped too.
Their eyes met.
And Asveri saw.
Not a man. Not a god.
Not even a ghost.
He saw into him.
And what he found was… nothing.
No hope.
No rage.
No light.
Only knowledge.
Only endurance.
A silence that had witnessed everything — and could no longer cry.
The weight of forgotten empires.
The quiet of abandoned prayers.
The cold of wisdom with no home.
Asveri stood very still.
Inside him, something stretched. Shifted.
He didn't know the name for it.
Only that it recognized what stood before him.
Not as a brother.
Not as a master.
But as something familiar.
Something lonely.
Around them, no one dared move.
The villagers clung to each other.
Terrified, but unsure why.
They felt the grief, the emptiness, the collapse of a world that had once promised more.
But Asveri was not afraid.
His small hands hung loose at his sides.
His chest rose, fell.
And his eyes didn't flinch.
In the silence between them, something passed.
Not a message.
Not a thought.
Just… recognition.
He is like me.
Not because he feels what I feel.
But because he carries it.
Without knowing what to do with it.
Asveri lowered his chin slightly.
Tears welled again — not from pain this time, but from truth.
He whispered, voice trembling:
"…I'm here too"
And in Anor'ven's endless, shattered gaze…
for the first time in years…
Asveri didn't feel alone.