Chapter 20 - Death comes in the guise of a frozen slumber.
Borz's consciousness flickered like the last dying flame of a candle suspended in the void of his mind. The humid frost drifting down from the ridges of Hendek was like a massive needle piercing through to the very marrow of his bones.
The miles he had covered throughout the night had been reduced to a single, jolting image in his mind: the wet, black earth churning beneath his feet. He was moving, but his legs no longer felt like his own; they were massive leaden weights chained to rusted anchors buried deep beneath the soil.
Hunger had long since ceased to be a mere ache; it had transformed into a savage serpent coiling within his stomach.
His internal organs felt as if they were devouring themselves in a desperate bid to stay alive. His throat was as dry as a piece of sandpapered wood; when he tried to swallow, what went down wasn't saliva, but a handful of broken glass.
Dehydration had sealed his lips shut; if he tried to part them, his skin would crack and bleed, yet he lacked the strength even to suck that salt from his own wounds.
His left shoulder… it was something beyond agony now. With every heartbeat, Borz felt that dull, throbbing ache as a sledgehammer exploding inside his brain, radiating from the joint down to his chest. His arm lay like a corpse inside the hollow of his coat where he had imprisoned it.
His fingertips had long lost all sensation. Pain, after reaching a certain threshold, had ceased to protest; it had been replaced by a hollow, ringing roar.
When he reached the crest of the hill where the rural flats outside Hendek began and the faint lights of the village were first visible, his knees finally declared their independence.
Borz stumbled, taking a step that felt like falling. Gravity seemed to have focused all its fury upon his weary shoulders, pulling him toward the earth. His feet no longer trod upon the ground but stepped into the abyss of a vacuum. Every breath of cold air entering his lungs fanned a fire within, but there wasn't a single drop of moisture to quench the flames.
His eyelids felt as if tons of weight had been hung from each one, dragging them down. His vision blurred, the shadows of the trees bled into one another, and reality dissolved into a hallucination.
When the scent of smoke drifting from those distant chimneys—the unbearable memory of fresh bread, a warm room, and being human—hit his nostrils, Borz paused for a second. To stop was death. To stop was to be crushed under the boots of those angry men with their radios.
But his body was no longer fighting a battle of will; it was finished. Like the last drop of fuel burning away in an engine, even the pagan stubbornness within Borz had been crushed under the weight of this exhaustion.
He crawled toward the dark shadow formed by a fallen hornbeam tree in the thick woods just outside the village. As he leaned his back against the rough, moss-covered trunk, a shiver raced up his spine.
He had nothing left. He braced his hatchet, which he gripped tightly with his right hand, against the ground and perched atop its handle with a shaky balance. This wasn't sitting; it was collapsing.
His dog… that loyal shadow, sensing this total depletion, tucked itself immediately between his legs.
The warmth of the animal pressing against his shins was Borz's last link to this world. The scent of the damp forest in the dog's fur and its rhythmic, wheezing breath became the final anchor for Borz's drifting consciousness. However, the heavy, humid silence of the Hendek woods covered his exhaustion like a thick shroud.
In that moment, Borz felt neither hunger nor thirst nor pain. His mind was falling rapidly toward the bottom of a dark well. He rested his head against the cold bark of the tree. As his eyes slowly closed, there was only one thought in the last fragment of his awareness: he must not be caught.
But the darkness was too powerful; it wasn't just sleep, it felt like an embrace coming from the depths of the earth itself, pulling him in. Borz, with the warmth of his dog at his legs and the mute rage in his heart, surrendered to the eerie sleep of Hendek.
We have witnessed in raw detail the moment Borz reached the absolute limits of his body and soul. Hunger, thirst, and the heavy blow to the shoulder; no human should have endured this for so long. Will Borz, who has fallen into a deep sleep in these silent woods of Hendek, be the same man when he wakes up?
Borz's consciousness was now like a faint candle flame flickering in a blizzard; it did not yearn to stay lit, but rather craved to vanish into the velvet embrace of the dark.
The insidious moisture drifting down from the ridges of Hendek wrapped around him like a freezing shroud, chilling not just his skin, but the deepest layers of his soul. This sleep was no restorative rest; it was the final, most treacherous concession made on the narrow bridge between life and absolute nothingness.
His body heat dissolved into the deafening silence of the wilderness with every shallow breath. His blood flowed through his veins no longer like a river, but like a heavy, reluctant mire on the verge of turning to ice. Even the shoulder pain that had made the world a living hell just moments ago was gone.
His nerve endings had surrendered, crushed under the weight of this relentless fatigue; the agony had been replaced by a hollow, almost peaceful numbness. For a man to be so depleted that he could no longer feel his own wounds was the silent herald that death was waiting on the threshold.
The sparks of hunger in his stomach had died out, replaced by a void made of ice. Every breath he drew into his lungs carried away the last remnants of internal warmth, transforming Borz, step by step, into a statue. When he rested his head against the hard bark of the hornbeam tree, that cold wood felt like the softest pillow in the world. It was a lethal comfort—one that whispered "come," one that whispered "let go."
Had the frost seeped just a fraction deeper into his marrow, Borz would have already slipped into that profound, dreamless winter sleep from which there is no awakening.
The only thing tethering him to this world was the steady, warm breath of his dog pressing against his legs. The faint heat radiating from the animal's body was as vital to Borz as a dying campfire. Death paced around him like a ghost drifting through the branches in the damp darkness of the Hendek woods.
Every time Borz's breathing slowed, the forest seemed to draw a little closer to swallow him whole, the shadows of the giant trees preparing to collapse upon him like a mound of earth.
Only one truth remained: if Borz did not begin to feel the searing ache in his shoulder again with the first light of the sun, this steep slope would be his final stop, and this hornbeam tree his headstone.
Suspended at the darkest hour—where will ends and only a biological struggle for survival remains—Borz hung in the balance between dying in his sleep and preparing for the most difficult awakening of his life.
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Bu karanlık ve hüzünlü bölümü, Borz'un varlığının silinmeye başladığı o son noktayla mühürleyelim:
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The struggle had finally ceased. The fire of revenge, the weight of the hatchet, and the agonizing thrum of his blood all dissolved into the indifferent silence of the Hendek woods. Borz was no longer a man fleeing his destiny; he had become a shadow merging with the roots of the ancient hornbeam. His heartbeat, once a frantic drum of war, slowed to a rhythmic whisper, syncing with the cold breath of the earth.
It did not come with a scythe or a scream, but as a gentle, freezing fog that kissed his brow and stilled his soul. As the last spark of his consciousness faded into the velvet dark, Borz was finally still. The world moved on, but for the warrior in the shadow of the trees, the long march was over.
Death had arrived.
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Borz is at that perilous point where even the pain has fallen silent. Hypothermia and exhaustion are on the verge of claiming him in his sleep. Do you think it will be the fire of revenge or the warmth of his loyal companion that keeps him anchored to life?
Don't forget to drop your POWER STONES to support Borz in his darkest hour!