Inferna's fire scorched my armor—the same armor I'd worn for decades, the same armor that had been with me through the Gray Time and beyond.
"YOUR FOLLOWERS," she said. "THEY BUILT A KINGDOM AROUND YOUR SILENCE. YOU GAVE THEM NOTHING."
"I gave them purpose," I replied. "Purpose is something."
"PURPOSE WITHOUT GUIDANCE. FAITH WITHOUT ANSWER."
"They didn't need answers. They needed hope."
"AND WHAT DID YOU NEED?"
The question hit harder than her claws. What had I needed? What had I been missing?
"I needed to feel again," I admitted. "And I couldn't."
---
Year 10-50.
The Gray Time wasn't empty.
That's what I'd tell myself later, when I tried to make sense of those decades. It wasn't that I felt nothing—it was that I felt too much, and my mind had shut down to protect itself.
Immortality is a curse.
I don't say that dramatically. I say it as a fact, the same way I'd say "fire burns" or "water flows." When you cannot die, you lose something fundamental about existence.
Stakes. Consequence. Meaning.
Every action, every choice, every risk—all of it becomes hollow when the ultimate consequence is removed. Death gives life its weight. Without death, life is just... existence. Endless, meaningless existence.
---
I sat on that hill for thirty-two years.
That's hard to imagine, I know. Thirty-two years of barely moving, barely thinking, barely existing.
But time passed differently for me. My mind had retreated somewhere deep, somewhere safe. I wasn't consciously experiencing those decades—they were just happening around me while I floated in a gray fog.
Sometimes I would surface briefly. A sound would penetrate—screaming, celebrating, crying. I would notice, process, and sink back into the fog.
Most of the time, I wasn't there at all.
---
The villagers built their civilization around me.
I learned about it later, after I emerged. They'd started as a small settlement—maybe thirty people, living in simple huts near the hill where I sat. Over generations, they grew.
They farmed the land efficiently, rotating crops and managing soil health. They built walls to protect against raids. They developed a writing system to record their history. They established trade routes with other villages, creating networks of commerce and communication.
And at the center of it all, I sat.
Their Silent God. Their Eternal One.
They believed I was watching over them. Guiding them. Protecting them.
I wasn't doing any of those things. I was just existing in their general vicinity.
But maybe that was enough. Maybe they didn't need me to be an active god—just a present one. A symbol of permanence in a changing world.
---
Year 55. Eterna was founded.
The village had grown into a town, and the town had grown into something more. The villagers declared it a city and named it Eterna, after their Eternal God.
Me.
They built a throne on my hill—not for me to sit on, because I was already sitting on the ground, but as a symbol. A monument to their god who watched without speaking, guided without moving, protected without acting.
The throne was made of gold and diamonds, two materials I'd spent years collecting before my descent into the gray. It was beautiful in a gaudy way, the product of generations of labor by people who believed I was something more than a broken man.
I didn't acknowledge it. I didn't acknowledge anything.
But somewhere deep inside, beneath layers of apathy and despair, something stirred.
The first thought I'd had in over a century:
They care.
They care about me.
Why?