Chapter 2: The peach Hills
The sky remained dark,...still through the horizon the sun waved the gentle light of orange-red dusk
Kevin turned to Leon, his expression carrying both warmth and a quiet weight. With a gentle smile that lingered like the fading light of dusk, he raised a hand in parting.
Kevin smirked, calling out as Leon turned away.
"Smell ya later, navigator! And don't go starting a fight without me!"
Leon didn't stop walking. His voice drifted back, low and steady.
"No promises."
Then, without looking over his shoulder, he raised his hand high toward the sky. The dusk sun swallowed his figure in gold, his lone silhouette fading into the horizon
The words were simple, yet they carried the heaviness of unspoken feelings—like a thread stretched between two brothers , destined to be severed by the march of time
People walked at their own pace, each caught within the prison of their own perception. Some were trapped in the glow of their phones, their eyes lost to a world beyond the present. Others wandered with steps that carried no destination, chasing a purpose they had yet to grasp.
Buses roared, cars weaved through the veins of the city, their horns blurring into a single, restless heartbeat. Children clutched the hands of their parents, their small voices rising and fading like fragile sparks against the endless murmur of the crowd.
And amid this ordinary chaos, the city breathed—alive, indifferent, and quietly unforgiving.
By the time leon realised he had reached a hill covered in peach blossoms
stairs made of stone laied before leon started climbing
.....toward a forgotten hill draped in peach blossoms. Petals danced in the breeze, brushing past his shoulders like fading memories.
As he moved through the trees, his childhood memories flooded a child's small hand holding a mans and women hand their face unrecognizable then slowly slipping away, leaving him behind.
This hill was a memorial
Names etched on ever corners of the trees that grew here
"Many people come here to etch their names, leaving behind a token of love… and memory."
The hill stood quiet beneath the waning sky, its surface carved with countless fleeting testaments to lives once intertwined.
Yet just beyond its crest lay a graveyard—rows of silent stones watching over the earth. It was a reminder that the place where some stories begin… is also the place where others quietly reach their end.
"WHO IS THERE !" a sound of a man in his 60s erupted
A man half the size of leon stood there with a thick grey mustach ,chalf opened eyelids and average fat body wearing a yellow t-shirt pants with blue and white strips and an apron
Stood there
"Its leon ,grandpa tatu"
"Oh leon my boy .it was you ,ha !.I got scared for a second"
"Oh boy do you need me to prepare some tea? "
"No need grandpa"
Psssshuuuuu*
A whistle of a pressure cooker can be heard .
"Oh boy! My chicken must have become soup"
Tatu ran inside a small house constructed near the graveyard.
"This is grandpa tatu he is the guardian of this graveyard .For centuries it is his family who have been safe keeping those who rest here from grave robbers and diggers he lives here .well if you ask about his family his wife ran off with someone and he has 2 sons"
Leon's steps carried him through the silence until he stood before a row of concrete tombs. Each one bore the same beginning, etched in solemn stone:
Here lies…
He stopped at a familiar marker. His gaze lingered on the names engraved there—
Asher Corvin.
Daliya Corvin.
His father. His mother.
Leon lowered himself to his knees, the blossoms drifting around him like a quiet requiem. Bowing his head, he whispered, his voice trembling despite the stoic mask he wore:
"I've returned, Mom… Dad. I've come home."
But beneath that cold, unyielding shell, the wound tore open anew. Memories surged like needles pressing into flesh, merciless in their clarity.
In the stillness, he could almost hear their voices again—gentle, steady, calling to him across the years.
Stay with us, Leon. Don't wander off…
They had always warned him to stay close. Always reached for his hand.
And yet now, it was they who had gone, leaving him behind—his outstretched hand grasping only the emptiness of the wind.
the peach trees shedding petals like tears. But Leon's eyes held no sorrow. Only remembrance.
Maybe it was the spirits.
Maybe it was the wind.
The air howled through the trees, almost as if the world itself was grieving-gray clouds...
stretching like bruises across the sky.
His father once told him this was the place where he met Leon's mother-where they fell in love.in a beautifully dead place can blossom?.
But for Leon, this was not a place of love.
It was a graveyard of hope. A place of dread.
A place covered the sour memories of a five year old. The peach blossoms here grew from tears and memories of the forgotten ones embraced by mother earth .
The land still glowed under the fading light of day, but shadows stretched longer now.
Leon lit a black cigarette, its gold-lined filter catching the last traces of fading light. By then, the wind had risen—howling across the hill, snuffing out what little warmth the dusk carried. Above, dark clouds gathered, shifting restlessly with the storm's breath.
He drew in a long breath and exhaled, the smoke unraveling into the air. It twisted and writhed in the gale, as though dancing with the chaos of nature itself, complementing its violence.
Cold memories stirred, fluttering like torn pages carried by the wind—memories that refused to fade, no matter how far he walked. And yet, in that moment, it was not the past that kept him steady. It was the smoke curling in his lungs, a fleeting warmth against the chill of everything he had lost.
They were archaeologists,
Explorers of ancient ruins and lost truths.
On my fifth birthday, they left me with Grandma,
and never returned alive.
They came back in caskets. Cold. Lifeless....
In my past life... I failed to uncover what happened to them.
But this time... I won't fail again.
Maybe the truth still lies in my father's study.
---
Meanwhile...
Deep underground, in the heart of a remote valley, a squad of soldiers and men in black suits gathered outside a cave. The atmosphere was thick with tension.
Among them stood a group of elites... and a fat man with deep eye bags and a manic gleam in his eye. He raised a hand, silencing the crowd.
"Today," he said," I welcome all my brothers and sisters ""we were once the trampled, the forgotten. Broken by society. But no more."
"Each of us came here for our own reason-revenge, power, survival.
What ever it may be today we are one "
"TOGETHER "
"Gentlemen, today... we make history."
"We will find the Relic of Evil-and make our dream... a reality."
Carved into the stone at the cave entrance was a strange symbol:
A circle, enclosing a triangle, within which sat an eye-bleeding.
As if the stone itself was weeping blood.
And deeper inside the cave...
An oil lamp flickered.
Already lit.
But by whom?
And why?...
[To be continued]