Sometimes, at dawn, the fog didn't rise from the ground, but descended from the hills, as if something up there had sighed and released an ancient weight. In the Region of the Gentle, the air moved without haste. Footsteps didn't raise dust. Voices remained in hushed tones, as if afraid of disturbing the world. Even the clocks ticked lazily, a heartbeat that never quickened. Eron was born there. His mother told him that gentle children didn't cry loudly, so as not to frighten the animals. His father—before becoming a shadow who barely spoke—repeated that shouting was boastful. At school, the teachers taught them to speak softly and not to raise their hands with enthusiasm. "If the silence hears you," Master Obar once said, "that's enough."
And so Eron grew up, without knowing what it was to truly run, or to raise his voice. He was a young man with deep dark circles under his eyes but warm skin, as if his body held a fire his soul had forgotten.
That morning, something broke. The fog descended thicker, enveloping everything in a gray veil. Eron was walking to the communal well when he saw his neighbor Luma by her gate. Her throat was tight, as if something were choking her from within.
"Luma?" he whispered.
She didn't answer. Her chest rose and fell with rage, her lips trembling like leaves in a storm.
"Does it hurt?"
Luma looked at him with eyes that begged permission to shatter everything. Her voice came out broken, almost a stifled scream:
"Not all of us... are gentle because we want to be..."
The sound ripped through the air. The birds froze. Eron felt a ringing in his ears. Luma fell to her knees, then to the ground, like a leaf finally surrendering.
There were no screams, no running, no cries. The gentle make no sound, not even in death. Eron lifted her up, wrapped her in a linen blanket, and buried her behind his house, beneath the low-hanging tree where, as children, they had spoken to the seeds. No one asked questions. And so she remained.
That night, while the village slept, Eron felt a pressure in his chest, an urge to open his mouth and scream until he broke. He covered his face and murmured:
"If she didn't want to be gentle... what am I?"
The wind, for the first time in years, answered with a whisper that smelled of turned earth.
The following evening, he walked to the edge of the village. There, where the lampposts lay fallen, two immaculate signs—maintained with obsessive care—pointed to paths no one took. The one on the left shone a phosphorescent blue, cold as icy metal. The one on the right was immaculate, but its entrance revealed the flaw: perfect facades that concealed the essential.
→ Region of the Cold YURTZ ← Region of Politicians: "Land of Empathic Beings"
Eron stopped at the crossroads. The ground seemed to know it was no longer just soft. He took a step. The air thickened, like honey. His thoughts churned on their own, an invisible hand probing his mind.
Broken voices echoed inside his head: "If you don't choose, you don't choose for yourself..." "Here, you choose for what you were before you were born..."
He tried to back away, but the earth held him fast. Cold sweat trickled down his neck. From the right, an icy breeze blew, smelling of iron. From the left, stale smoke and empty words. In between, silence breathed.
Something moved in the bushes: a child, or what it looked like. Matte gray skin, a scar across his forehead. Where his eyes had been, only smooth shadow, like melted wax.
He approached silently, extending an earthy hand. He gave him a crumpled, damp piece of paper, stained with mud. Eron took it. The boy vanished without looking back.
On the paper, in letters of dried mud: "Here we don't suggest, friend. Here we obey what we never understood."
Eron pressed it to his chest. The fog descended again, and a voice—his, or not—whispered from within:
"Sometimes work doesn't choose you. It chooses the soul that owes it something."
He closed his eyes. The earth trembled slightly. And the dust, for the first time, rose a little with his step.
**Part 2: The Line He Chose for Him**
Eron didn't sleep a wink. The paper of the eyeless boy lay under his pillow, damp, as if it were throbbing. At midnight it rustled, folded itself, rewriting itself. He pulled it out, trembling. New line: "If you don't choose, you'll be chosen."
At dawn, the sky was a sickly shade, neither gray nor blue. Eron returned to the crossroads without thinking. The fear had become such a dense silence that he could hear the insects buzzing. The signs were still there, rusted but pristine. In the center, a thin, black crack, throbbing like a vein.
He stopped inches away. A breath escaped from it. The ground looked down at him.
"Are you… the choice?" he asked the void.
The crack trembled. A voice—neither man nor woman, barely human—answered:
"No, Eron. I am the debt."
"Debt? Why?"
"For being born on borrowed land and working without knowing for whom."
He stepped back, but the ground caught him by the ankles. The black vein slid, grazing his skin, slowly rising. It didn't hurt, but it drained, as if her blood were changing hands.
"Let me choose," she whispered.
"You already chose," the voice said. "When you fell silent."
"When did I fall silent?"
"When..."
—Seeing Luma die and not screaming. You chose silence. And silence serves the faceless.
The vein reached his chest. His heart beat once, twice, slower. On the third beat, the world turned red.
He opened his eyes in another place. Dense, metallic air. Ground tasting of rust. Figures walked in circles: bodies in threadbare suits, headless, their steps identical like gears. From their necks, gray smoke, not blood.
Children among them, a single left arm, withered, dragging papers, boxes, stones. Faces half-erased, like weary drawings.
Eron tried to speak; only a thread of voice came out.
A headless man stopped. Badge on his chest: Official. He traced on the ground with a crooked finger: "You must be naive, son. We don't think here. We only prolong what others ordered."
"What are you doing?" Eron asked.
A child answered, mouthless, the air vibrating: "We uphold dead ideas."
"Why?"
"Repetition feeds us."
"Who commands you?" The child lowered his head. "No one. We inherit it. It survives when consciousness fades." Eron felt a knot. Everything mechanical, uselessly precise. Eternal turns, without flaw or meaning.
A faceless woman approached, unsteady. From her neck, a familiar voice.
"Eron..." It was Luma.
"Luma? You?"
"Not entirely. The part that obeyed."
"What do you do?"
"I work. Always have."
"For whom?"
"For the echo of what we were."
"And the others?"
"They no longer know what they're repeating. They await the order." Eron touched her arm; he pierced it. She was pure routine.
He understood: they were the price of blind obedience, of fulfilling orders without question, of accepting without understanding.
The boy returned and held out a stone. Engraved: "Not all the damned sinned. Some inherited the cost of an ancient obedience."
Eron fell to his knees. He looked at the red sky and murmured:
"What if I refuse to be silent?"
The wind, harsh: "Then you serve memory. But memory exacts its price."
He slept among the ruins of an old ministry. Outside, bodies spun endlessly. He dreamed of the vein throbbing in his chest, reminding him what work does without rebellion.
He awoke to an inscription on the wall: "Work without conscience is a prayer that doesn't reach heaven."
He read it softly, stood up, and left footprints in the red dust as he walked.
Moral of this chapter:
Not all work is dignified. Some merely dress old mistakes in new clothes. And those who don't ask why end up serving hands that never got dirty.