Gravel crunched under his black boots.
Every step across the garden seemed to awaken a specter from the past.
Assad walked slowly, gaze hardened, features closed off, his posture rigid like a man condemned to tread toward his own execution.
Ten years had passed.
Ten long years away from this palace, away from the garden that had witnessed his first laughter… and the brutal end of his innocence.
The warm breeze carried the scent of blooming jasmine.
A scent of childhood. A scent of mourning.
Under the arch of white roses, he saw his mother—seated on a pale wooden bench, delicate embroidery between her fingers.
Time had barely touched her features.
Only a discreet fatigue lingered in her dark eyes, years shaped by waiting, hoping, grieving.
Assad slowed his pace.
He knew this conversation was inevitable.
He also knew it would reopen wounds he'd tried for years to close. In vain.
When he reached a few meters away, he bowed briefly.
— "Mother."
She lifted her head and smiled—a trembling smile, brimming with tenderness he'd long since ceased to receive.
— "Assad, my child…" she murmured, placing her embroidery aside. "Seeing you again…"
She rose slowly and approached, extending a hesitant hand as if fearing to break him.
He let her fingers rest on his arm, but he returned no warmth.
Distance, coldness—had become ingrained in him like poison.
— "You've changed so much…" she whispered, eyes traveling over him. "And yet, sometimes… I close my eyes and see you running barefoot in this garden, laughing… Samir on your heels…"
Her voice cracked like a whip across the air.
Assad barely flinched.
Just a slight flutter of an eyelid—almost imperceptible.
But she saw it.
She saw him look away, fix his gaze on the large tree at the garden's end—the ancient tree under which everything had begun… and ended.
A heavy silence settled, drenched in old sorrow.
She continued, voice trembling:
— "I remember… you two would climb to the highest branch. Hours spent up there… Two inseparable souls."
Assad clenched his fists, face still as a statue carved from pain.
Flash.
His laughter ringing bright.
Dares flung in the air.
"You're not scared, Assad!"
"Look at me!"
A pact of innocence etched into happier days.
Flash.
The first time.
A night of forbidden thrill.
A substance slipped beneath his jacket.
A foolish dare.
A burst of laughter.
An unseen trap.
Flash.
The slow descent.
Samir's creeping addiction.
That pleading, hollow look growing more distant.
Flash.
The final day.
A cry for help ignored.
His body discovered at dawn.
Assad closed his eyes for a moment, as one swats away flies hovering around an infected wound.
His mother gently placed a hand on his cheek.
— "Stop, Assad…" she whispered. "Stop bearing this burden alone. It wasn't your fault. You were young—eighteen years old… How could you have known?"
He stepped back, rejecting her touch with an icy hardness.
His gaze met hers.
Two chasms of grief faced each other—only his was filled with ashes and blood.
— "I knew," he said, voice low and sharp as steel. "I knew I was pushing him into an abyss. And I still did it."
His mother shook her head, tears glistening in her fatigued eyes.
— "No, Assad. You were just a child."
He let out a brief, hollow laugh, brittle and broken.
— "At eighteen," he said, "we're old enough to wield a weapon. To fight—and die. Or to kill without meaning to."
He turned away, gazing fixedly at the lone tree at the garden's end.
The wind rustled its leaves—a whisper from the grave. A hushed lament of regrets.
— "I killed him," he said in a voice almost gentle, almost hollow.
Not with a sword. Not with a bullet.
No…
With a simple push. A single phrase: "Come on, just once."
And that had been the end.
His mother sobbed silently, a hand pressed to her lips.
He stood there a long moment, frozen in painful stillness.
Time seemed to stop. Balanced between breaths. Between two shattered lives.
Then he slowly turned back to her.
His features remained impassive. But his eyes…
His eyes betrayed a silent storm.
A sea of bitterness, guilt, self-directed rage.
— "I'm not the son you mourn, Mother. Your son died that day, with Samir."
Without waiting for her reply—without giving her time to reach out—he walked away.
His heavy steps crushed blooms in his path.
He walked tall, head held high, but each step felt harder than the last.
As though carrying on his shoulders the entire weight of his sins.
The garden faded behind him.
Tonight. The memories. The ghosts.
But he knew—no matter the distance, no matter the years…
Some weights never lighten.
And in the evening breeze, among the trembling leaves, he thought he heard a child's laugh.
Distant.
Mocking.
Extinguished.