Inferna circled above me as I stood on the End's central island, her massive form blocking out the void's strange light.
"THE MORTALS," she said. "YOU TAUGHT THEM. GENERATIONS OF THEM."
"I had time."
"YOU CARED FOR THEM. I FELT IT. EMOTIONS THAT HAD NO PLACE IN YOUR OBSESSION."
"They gave me purpose."
"PURPOSE IS A CHAIN. YOU COULD HAVE LEFT CENTURIES EARLIER WITHOUT THEIR WEIGHT."
"Maybe. Or maybe I would have given up entirely without them."
She didn't argue. She knew what the Gray Time had been like.
---
Year 100-150.
It all started with the first villager I met. I knew they weren't just NPCs; they could communicate, learn, and—most of all—create. As I lived in this world, I involuntarily influenced reality, making Minecraft so realistic that the villager became a true inhabitant of his world. And as I awakened, I saw the change that I had influenced the most.
Eterna grew.
The village that had built itself around my silent form became a town, then a city. The villagers developed systems I'd never taught them---irrigation, crop rotation, structural engineering. They built walls of stone and towers of wood. They created a government, a militia, a school.
They created a civilization.
And they called me their god.
I tried to correct them. "I'm not a god. I'm just... old. And hard to kill."
They didn't believe me. How could they? I'd been sitting on their hill when their great-grandparents were born. I would be sitting there when their great-grandchildren died.
To them, I was eternal. I was the Silent God who had awakened, the Eternal One who had spoken.
I was something to worship.
---
Year 150. The first student.
Her name was Sera. Ten years old, curious, fearless. She climbed my hill while her parents weren't watching and sat down next to me.
"You're the Eternal One," she said.
"So they tell me."
"Why don't you talk to us?"
I looked at her. She was young. Innocent. The kind of child who would grow up, have children, grow old, and die while I remained exactly the same.
"What would I say?"
"Anything. Everything. You've seen things. You know things. Teach us."
Teach them. The idea hadn't occurred to me. I'd been so focused on my own goals---escaping, breaking the world, finding freedom---that I hadn't considered sharing what I knew.
"What do you want to learn?"
Her eyes lit up. "Everything."
---
I started small.
Sera came to my hill every day after her chores. I taught her to read and write---skills the villagers had developed but not mastered. I taught her basic arithmetic, enough to calculate crop yields and trade values.
Then I taught her more.
The properties of stone and wood. How to build structures that wouldn't collapse. How to smelt ore into metal. How to forge tools and weapons.
She absorbed everything like a sponge.
"Why do you know so much?" she asked one day.
"I've had a long time to learn."
"How long?"
I considered lying. The truth seemed cruel. "Longer than you can imagine."
"How long?" she pressed.
"One hundred and fifty years. Give or take."
She stared at me. I watched the math happen in her head---generations, lifetimes, centuries.
"That's... you're..."
"Old. Yes."
"You remember one hundred and fifty years?"
"Most of them. Some are... fuzzy."
"What was it like? Being alone for so long?"
I looked at the horizon. The blocky sun was setting, painting the sky in oranges and purples.
"Quiet. Very quiet. And then loud. And then quiet again."
"That sounds sad."
"It was. But I'm not alone anymore."
She smiled. "Teach me more tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow."
---
Year 160. The school.
Word spread. The Eternal One was teaching. Children started coming to my hill---first Sera's friends, then their siblings, then children from other families.
I built a structure. A simple building of stone and wood, with benches and tables and a roof to keep out the rain. The villagers called it a temple. I called it a school.
The curriculum expanded. Reading, writing, arithmetic. History---both theirs and mine, carefully edited. Science---physics, chemistry, biology, translated into concepts they could understand. Combat---not just swordplay, but strategy, tactics, logistics.
They were hungry for knowledge. Desperate for it. And I had centuries of it to give.
---
Year 170. The first generation graduates.
Sera was thirty now. Married, with children of her own. She stood in front of the school with fifteen other students---the first class to complete my full curriculum.
They wore simple robes, a tradition the villagers had invented. They held scrolls I'd helped them write, records of everything they'd learned.
"What do we do now?" Sera asked.
"Whatever you want. You have knowledge. Use it."
"How do we pay you back?"
I thought about it. Pay me back. What could they give me? I didn't need food or shelter. I didn't need money or tools.
"Teach others," I said. "Pass it on. Build schools in other villages. Spread knowledge. Make the world better."
"We will," she promised.
And she did.
---
Year 180-200. The expansion.
Sera's students became teachers. They traveled to other villages, established schools, taught what they'd learned. Knowledge spread like fire through dry grass.
The villagers of Eterna became known as scholars, craftsmen, warriors. Their goods were the finest. Their soldiers were the best trained. Their healers were the most skilled.
And they all traced their knowledge back to me.
The Eternal One. The Teacher. The Silent God who had spoken.
Temples appeared in other villages. Not to worship me, exactly---more to honor what I represented. Knowledge. Progress. The idea that one being could change the world through patience and teaching.
I didn't want worship. But I couldn't deny that what I'd started was growing beyond me.
---
Year 200-250. The generations.
Sera died at seventy-three. Old age, peaceful, surrounded by family.
I attended her funeral. The villagers were shocked---I rarely left my hill, rarely interacted with them directly. But Sera had been my first student. My first friend in this world.
I watched them lower her body into the ground. I watched her children and grandchildren mourn. I watched a generation pass.
Then I went back to my school and kept teaching.
Her daughter, Miren, took over the school administration. Miren's son, Torin, became Eterna's chief scholar. Torin's daughter, Lira, established the first university.
Generations. I watched them rise and fall like waves against a shore.
Each generation learned faster than the last. They built on what came before, adding discoveries of their own. Metallurgy improved. Architecture advanced. Medicine progressed.
They were becoming something I hadn't expected: a civilization that didn't need me.
---
Year 300. The independence.
The university was my proudest achievement.
A massive building of stone and glass, filled with libraries, laboratories, workshops. Hundreds of students studied there, learning from teachers who had learned from teachers who had learned from me.
I walked through the halls, invisible. They didn't recognize me without my armor. I was just an old man in simple clothes, wandering among the scholars.
I heard them debating. Discussing theories I'd never taught them. Developing ideas I'd never had.
They had surpassed me.
Not in knowledge---I still had centuries on them---but in creativity. They asked questions I'd never thought to ask. They saw connections I'd never noticed.
I wasn't needed anymore. And that was exactly what I'd wanted.
---
Year 350. The records.
Lira---great-great-granddaughter of Sera, head of the university---approached me on my hill.
"Eternal One," she said formally.
"Lira. What brings you here?"
"We've been compiling records. Histories. Everything we know about our origins, our development, our progress."
"And?"
"We want to include your story. Your real story. Where you came from. How you got here. What you were before you became... this."
My real story. I'd never told them. They knew I was old, that I had knowledge from somewhere else, but I'd never explained the truth.
"You wouldn't believe me."
"Try us."
So I did.
I told her about my old life. About the world I'd come from. About waking up in this blocky hellscape with nothing but the clothes on my back. About dying and respawning, dying and respawning, until I understood that I couldn't leave even through death.
I told her about the Gray Time. The centuries of silence. The emptiness that had nearly consumed me.
I told her about Sera. About the child who had reminded me what it meant to care.
Lira listened without interrupting. When I finished, she was crying.
"That's... that's terrible. And beautiful. And terrible."
"It's just truth."
"You stayed. All that time, you stayed. You could have left us, focused on your escape, ignored us entirely. But you stayed."
"You gave me something to stay for."
"Purpose."
"Hope. Maybe they're the same thing."
---
Year 400. The library.
They built a library in my honor. Not a temple---a library. Forty-seven volumes of my research notes, carefully transcribed and bound. Histories of Eterna, of the teaching years, of the generations I'd watched rise and fall.
It was the most beautiful building in the city.
I didn't deserve it. But they gave it to me anyway.
---
Year 450. The farewell.
I knew I would leave eventually. The corruption experiments were progressing. The escape plan was forming. I would break this world and find my way home, or I would die trying.
But before I left, I needed to say goodbye.
I gathered the current leaders of Eterna. Elder Morath, spiritual guide. Knight-Commander Vex, head of the guard. Scholar Aria, chief of the university.
They sat in my school, the same building I'd taught Sera in centuries ago.
"I'm leaving," I said.
"Leaving where?"Morath asked.
"To finish what I started. To find a way out of this world."
"When will you return?" Vex asked.
"Maybe never. Maybe soon. I don't know."
"Take us with you,"Aria said.
I shook my head. "You can't come where I'm going. It's too dangerous. And more importantly---you belong here. You're their future. Their hope."
"Our hope is you,"Morath said quietly.
"No. Your hope is each other. I gave you knowledge, but you built the civilization. You made something worth protecting. That was never me."
They didn't argue. They understood, even if they didn't like it.
"We'll keep teaching," Aria said. "That's what you taught us. Pass it on. Make the world better."
"Do that. And maybe... maybe someday, I'll come back and see what you've built."
I stood up. They stood with me.
"Thank you," Morath said. "For everything. For staying. For teaching. For caring."
"Thank you for needing me. For giving me something to stay for."
I walked out of the school, out of Eterna, toward the laboratory where my corruption experiments waited.
Toward the escape I'd been chasing for four hundred and fifty years.
Toward the dragon I would create, the friend I would lose, the door I would finally open.
Behind me, the city I'd built---no, the city they'd built---shone in the sunset.
My legacy. My purpose. My proof that even in a world of blocks and monsters and code, something real could grow.
Something human.
---
Inferna watched me from above, her massive form casting shadows across the End.
"YOU LOVED THEM."
"Love is a strong word."
"YOU GAVE THEM CENTURIES. YOU TAUGHT THEIR CHILDREN. YOU WATCHED THEM DIE. IF THAT IS NOT LOVE, WHAT IS?"
"Responsibility. Maybe guilt."
"LOVE," she repeated. "YOU LOVED THEM. AND YOU LEFT THEM. THAT IS THE HARDEST THING YOU EVER DID."
She wasn't wrong.
She rarely was.