The valley changed.
The trees thickened.
The children grew taller.
The faces of the villagers deepened with new lines,
new stories etched by wind and time.
The village sprawled wider,
huts of wood and clay settling into the land like tired bones.
Smoke rose lazily from dozens of hearths.
Among them,
Anor'ven remained.
Not untouched by life —
for he carried every silence,
every grief —
but untouched by time.
His hair stayed dark.
His steps stayed sure.
His eyes stayed silent.
No one noticed at first.
The world was too busy spinning itself forward.
They lived.
They loved.
They fought small wars against hunger, cold, and sorrow.
Who counts the stones at the river's edge when the current threatens to pull you under?
**
But time sharpens even the dullest blades.
Slowly,
the glances began.
Lingering.
Weighting.
Wondering.
He did not gray.
He did not falter.
He did not leave.
Whispers crept through the village like cold fingers:
"He is the same."
"He does not bend."
"Why him?"
Anor'ven felt them.
The glances.
The silence blooming like mold after rain.
He continued as he always had —
lifting beams, mending broken walls, carrying the lost home.
But now, each small kindness seemed to carve a deeper trench around him.
The children who had once tumbled laughing at his feet
now paused,
half-afraid to meet his gaze.
The old ones —
those who had first welcomed him —
were gone.
Buried in shallow graves.
Their songs faded into dust.
And with their passing,
the thin thread tying him to the living began to fray.
**
One evening,
as the fires crackled low and the stars hung heavy above,
Anor'ven caught his reflection in a pool of water.
The same face.
The same cold stillness.
Behind him,
the village murmured —
a fragile, breathing thing.
He turned back toward it,
and smiled a dry, broken smile only the wind could see.
They did not need him.
Not really.
They lived without him.
They would die without him.
And he —
he would remain.
As he always had.
As he always would.
**
The valley sang on,
oblivious.
But under the singing,
under the harvests and the births and the fires —
the first fracture had formed.
Small.
Invisible.
Inevitable.