The San Marino breeze carried a sound along the cliffs—an extended, murmuring breath that told of heights and boundless heavens. Devon rested on a bench made from local stone the note from Croft folded inside his jacket its fresh emblem a subtle warmth, near his heart. Below the Republic's terrain dropped away in layered tiers of green and ochre calm and orderly. Past the boundary Italy extended in a haze of heat and activity a smudged artwork of ambition.
He sensed the draw. Not as a vacuum but as a profound physical harmony with the gradient of the terrain the gradual curve of the sun the steady wearing away of the rock underfoot. It would be effortless to allow his resolve to fade into this scene to transform into another quiet spot, in the landscape. Croft's refined emblem gave a term for that condition: Dormancy. A graceful deliberate pause. The definitive honorable exhaustion.
Yet consider the opposite. The heat from the sun on the nape of his neck was far, from calming. It demanded attention. A minuscule atomic prompt. A bird, a dot of brown and rage dashed by the edge of the cliff propelled by some pressing minute goal. His lungs pulled in air involuntarily—a bodily function.
He pulled the letter out of his pocket. He spread it open resting the paper on his knee. The emblem gazed back a self-contained system of limitless possibility. It represented an answer. The final answer he would ever require.
He. Sketched it in the dirt nor memorized it as a doctrine.
He. Ripped it apart nor dismissed its reasoning.
He merely stared at it until the characters stopped conveying meaning and were merely lines. Until the ink was merely ink and the paper merely paper.
Then he rose. He took steps, toward where the cliff ended and scattered smaller stones lay. He selected a weighty rock, dull grey and unremarkable. He bent down the movement causing a familiar sting. He set Croft's letter on the exposed soil then gently positioned the stone atop it securing it in place.
It wasn't an act. It wasn't done for preservation. It was an act of positioning. The concept was present. It was real. It wouldn't be scattered by the wind. It would endure the elements. It would integrate into the terrain beneath the rock.
He faced away, from it.
He started walking neither descending toward the town nor ascending towards the fortress towers. Instead he chose a side trail that followed the mountains edge his end point unclear. His steps ground against the gravel. The sunlight warmed the back of his neck. The expansive silent panorama enveloped him on the outskirts of his vision.
The being—Belphegor, the essence the force—remained present. It resided in the incline of the terrain. It lingered in the diminishing recollection of the void's quiet. It rested in the tired core of his very bones. It was biding its time. It possessed endurance.
And so, for now, was he.
He awaited nothing. He wasn't postponing anything. He was merely… moving forward. The struggle between doing and not doing which had formerly rocked continents and broken spirits had become something within him. It was the constant strain between his step, on the trail and the valley's downward draw. Between the sun's persistence and the wind's ceaseless whisper.
He kept walking until he decided to pause. Not due to the incline compelling him nor because a sign instructed it but because his legs felt weary or his interest in the curve surpassed his exhaustion. It was a decision of ideology a simple ordinary deed, in a cosmos filled with vast conflicting powers.
He was the fighter who had surrendered his weapons yet remained on the battlefield. He was the examiner who had shut the case. Retained the records. The world moved a bit slowly. He was more silent. The conflict had ended. The ceasefire was complete.. At the core of that ceasefire beneath an unadorned stone, on a rocky ledge rested a map to a sanctuary of peace he would never reach and from which he would never have to escape.
He walked on, the path unwinding before him, the vast, patient stillness of the mountain holding him in a gentle, unbreakable, and utterly silent embrace.