The land had been dead for eons. Ash and cracked soil stretched endlessly, jagged stones jutting like the bones of a forgotten world. No wind stirred. No bird sang. No river ran. Time had no purchase here. Mountains were mere ruins, rivers were memory, and even the sky seemed frozen in shadow.
Inside a small, roughly hewn wooden house, only a single candle flickered. Its flame never died, unending, a shard of eternity trapped in wax. The walls, scarred and blackened by centuries, seemed to breathe with the faint pulse of timelessness.
A man in black cloth, 164 centimeters tall, sat cross-legged at a rough-hewn table. His form was slight, unremarkable, almost fragile. Yet every gesture, every pause, every breath seemed weighted with aeons of being. Around him, silence had a density, a substance. Even the unending flame shifted subtly in response to his presence.
A lost Sword Saint entered cautiously. Drawn by something beyond reason, he carried offerings of earth liquor and humble food. He placed them carefully on the table, the faint scent of the liquor drifting into the frozen air.
The Saint's voice broke the stillness. "I…have wandered far. I am lost. Who are you?"
The man in black tilted his hooded head slightly. His voice was cold, deliberate, unfathomable—like ice moving across a vast, empty plain:
"I am nothing. I dwell. Nothing else."
The Saint's brow furrowed. "You…dwell? Not walk?"
Khaldrin's gaze remained fixed on the candle, its flame dancing in the shadow of his hood. "I dwell. I do not move through time. Time flows around me. I do not bend. I observe. I endure. All else drifts. You chase fragments."
"And yet…why remain here, tending soil while the world is dead?"
Khaldrin's hands brushed a tiny seedling in a clay pot, tilting it into the soil with slow, deliberate care. "Even in emptiness, life may speak. Even in silence, truth blooms. I claim nothing. I hold nothing. I do not wield. I dwell. Humility is the measure of eternity."
The Sword Saint swallowed hard, feeling a chill creep into his chest. "And yet…you are human. Small. Fragile. Only 164 centimeters. How can you bear such weight?"
"Fragile bone, weak flesh," Khaldrin said softly. "Yet soil remembers. Seed obeys. Silence endures. I dwell, and all bends quietly around me without my will. Humility is not meekness. It is recognition. You call me small, yet I have outlasted eons. You call me frail, yet I hold infinity."
The Saint looked more closely, drawn by the quiet intensity emanating from the tiny figure. "You…speak as though you have seen eternity."
"And eternity sees me," Khaldrin said. Slowly, deliberately, his gaze lifted. The Saint felt an invisible weight pressing against his mind, a stillness beyond comprehension. He met the man's eyes. In them, he saw life in its purest form: rivers flowing through forgotten lands, mountains rising and crumbling over millennia, the fleeting beauty of mortal joy, pain, love, and loss—unfolding simultaneously across countless years.
For a heartbeat, he glimpsed the thousand-year life of the universe condensed into a single, fathomless stare. His heart raced. His thoughts faltered. He felt both insignificant and boundless, alive and unmade. The eyes of the man in black cloth held the weight of existence itself—and the grace of pure humility.
"Why…show me this?" the Saint whispered, his voice trembling.
Khaldrin's response was soft, almost too quiet to hear. Yet each word struck like ice:
"To dwell is to see all without claiming. To endure is to witness without interference. Life, death, beauty, decay—these are not yours to own. You may perceive them. You may cherish them. But none are yours. Humility is the truth of eternity."
The Saint felt a shiver pass through him, as if centuries of unspoken knowledge had passed into his mind in a single instant. "And what of death? Chaos? Time?"
"They flow. I do not flow with them. I dwell. I endure. I claim nothing. Yet all bends quietly around me. The smallest motion, the tiniest gesture—measured, deliberate—touches all without presence. Even life itself obeys, yet never sees."
The Saint's hand trembled. "You…exist beyond comprehension. Yet you sit, a man smaller than the wind could topple. How can…"
Khaldrin's voice cut through the frozen air, colder than ice, quieter than shadow:
"To dwell is not to act. To speak little is not to be silent. To claim nothing is not to be weak. Humility is the measure of all things. The soil grows. The seed rises. The flame burns. I remain, and all endures quietly. You may see me. You may perceive me. You will never grasp me."
A long silence followed. The candle flickered, casting dancing shadows on the walls. The Sword Saint dared not speak. He could sense infinite eons compressed into the smallest human form, a presence that held life and death, beauty and decay, the passage of millennia in perfect quietude.
Khaldrin returned to his soil, adjusting a single seedling with painstaking care. His hands were ordinary. His frame was small. His stature, unremarkable. Yet the Sword Saint felt the echo of eternity in every movement, every pause, every breath.
Finally, the Saint whispered, almost to himself: "Nothing I know…can touch him. Yet everything bends around him."
Khaldrin's voice, soft as frost and darker than shadow, answered from the corner of the candle-lit room:
"Watch. Learn nothing. Speak less. Leave only question. Humility is the weight of all things. Silence is eternity's gift."
The Sword Saint stared into those endless, timeless eyes once more. He glimpsed the beauty of life itself, purified, untouched by greed, power, or chaos, unfolding over thousands of years. His mind reeled. His soul trembled. And yet, the man before him…remained small, silent, ordinary in form, colder than ice, eternal, and unknowable.
The candle flickered. The flame remained unending. Outside, the wasteland stretched, lifeless and eternal. Inside, a man in black cloth tended his mythic soil. A farmer. A witness. The Lord of the Evening.