Chapter 8: The Man Who Never Settles
People think that when you're immortal, you hoard things.
Gold. Power. Secrets. Women. Titles.
But the truth is, after five thousand years, you stop clinging to things. You learn to let go.
Still, I had my share.
I owned twelve properties across the world. A vineyard in Italy. A penthouse in Dubai. A mountainside cabin in Bhutan. I had businesses, too — ones I never visited anymore. Tech companies, hospitals, shipping routes, and more. Some I started centuries ago under different names. Others I acquired quietly through handshakes and whispers.
I funded schools in countries that no longer existed. Built hospitals in war zones. Left endowments behind like breadcrumbs I never intended to follow.
Some nights I wonder if I did it out of guilt.
Other nights I just need something to do between contracts.
---
I never sleep in the same place more than a month.
That isn't superstition. It's survival.
Stay in one place too long and the walls start to remember you. The dust settles in patterns. The air changes. Your name begins to mean something to the barista down the street. The landlord starts asking where you're from. You begin to think about buying plants.
And that's how it starts.
Rooting.
I don't root. I float. I pass through cities like wind through open windows.
Once, in the 1600s, I stayed in Vienna for two full years. I had a lover. I had friends. I almost had a dog.
Then I watched all of them die in a plague I couldn't stop.
I buried them myself. Planted roses where the dog would have been.
After that, I learned. Movement is protection. From pain. From connection. From forgetting I can't follow anyone into the grave.
---
Today I was in Istanbul. A brownstone apartment overlooking the Bosphorus. The air smelled of spice and rain.
I drank dark coffee from a ceramic cup and scrolled through contracts waiting for fulfillment. Two were nearly due. One in Argentina. One in Nigeria. I'd see them soon enough.
My phone buzzed. A message from an old friend.
[Iskender D.] — "Still wandering, ghost man?"
I smiled. [Reply] — "Still watching. Still waiting. Same balcony, same view."
Iskender was ninety-five years old now. He looked seventy. One of the few favors I had granted decades ago without much hesitation.
He hadn't asked for wealth or love or fame.
He'd asked for a full life — one where his body never broke down. Perfect health. Just that. The right to age slowly, to live long, to savor everything.
I respected it.
He still lived in the same apartment near the spice bazaar. Ran a small bookshop three days a week. Walked every morning. Ate fruit from the same vendor since 1986.
That evening, I visited him.
We sat under hanging lights, sipping tea, eating baklava that tasted like golden memory.
"You still look the same," he said.
"You look better than you should."
He laughed. "Maybe. But I earned every line."
I nodded. "And you'll earn more. Another decade, maybe two."
"That's all I asked for. A life that didn't break before I was done with it."
We didn't speak of the Wheel. Not that night.
Instead, we watched the boats drift past the moonlit water, and for a while, time stopped.
Not because of power. Not because of magic.
But because two old men — one mortal, one not — had nothing left to prove.
Only moments left to enjoy.