"Strange… These glances.
I was never one of them.
And yet, their betrayal weighs on me."
Anor'ven sat at the edge of the village.
The wind brushed through the tall grass, carrying scents of fire, earth, and ancient tears.
He watched.
No longer as a distant witness,
but as a survivor,
adrift in a world that no longer knew whether to love him or fear him.
The nights had grown colder.
Not because of the seasons,
but because of the silence thickening around him —
a heavy silence, swollen with suspicion and unspoken questions.
The children no longer clung to his legs.
The women turned their eyes away as he passed.
Even the dogs, once so quick to seek his presence, now avoided his shadow.
He had lived through this before.
Under different skies.
Among different ruins.
But this time… something inside him bent.
Not with anger.
Not with hatred.
With exhaustion.
With erosion.
Time had worn down their trust, drop by drop, word by word.
At first, it had been only whispers around the hearths.
Then came the stares.
Then came the words:
— "Why him?"
— "Why does he remain while we decay?"
— "What debt does he demand?"
The poison seeped under the roofs, between the roots, into their hearts.
And Anor'ven, motionless, already sensed the inevitable approaching.
Like one feels the rain before it falls.
Like one smells blood before it spills.
One moonless night, under a sky torn by clouds, they came.
Seven men.
Not leaders.
Not sages.
Just wounded souls, worn down by the fear of dying.
They carried trembling torches, crude knives, jagged stones.
Their hatred was not noble.
It was not righteous.
It was miserable.
They circled Anor'ven.
— "Share your secret, Immortal!"
— "Give us your life, or give us your death!"
Their voices cracked with emotion.
Their gestures were clumsy.
Their eyes…
Their eyes were not cruel.
They were desperate.
Anor'ven stood there.
Silent.
Arms hanging loose.
He looked at them.
And he recognized them.
The same faces he had helped to lift, to feed, to protect.
And despite himself, something stirred within his chest.
An old wound.
A nameless grief.
He wanted to speak.
To find a word, a breath, a gesture.
But the blade came first.
A boy — frail, young, paralyzed by his own daring — drove a stone knife into his ribs.
The blood surged forth, dark and heavy.
The village, asleep in its ignorance, remained still.
Only the seven men saw.
And in their eyes, terror smothered hatred.
Anor'ven lowered his gaze to the wound.
He could have forgiven them.
He could have fallen.
He could have remained frozen within his eternity, as he had so many times before.
But not this time.
That night, fatigue weighed heavier than compassion.
That night, even immortality bent under the weight of contempt.
He raised his arm.
Calmly.
Slowly.
His hand, precise and unrelenting, came down.
A sharp crack.
A strangled cry.
The boy collapsed, his skull shattered under the blow.
His blood soaked the earth — warm, human, fragile.
The others staggered back,
then fled,
stumbling through the mud,
running from their own betrayal.
Anor'ven remained standing.
Unmoving.
His breath almost nonexistent.
His gaze hollow.
He looked down at the body on the ground.
Not with anger.
Not with regret.
But with that cold clarity that left no room for illusions.
The night thickened.
The flames wavered.
The village, still sleeping, did not yet know it had crossed a threshold.
It was not only a boy who had fallen.
It was a world.
A fragile world, woven from naïveté, silent gratitude, and unspoken acceptance.
A world that could have been different.
A world that Anor'ven, in a single heartbeat of eternity, had condemned himself.
He turned his back.
Walked away.
Without looking back.
He passed through blackened grass, among stones, under a mute sky.
And in the broken silence within him, a whisper rose:
"Perhaps… somewhere…
there is still a place where I can simply exist,
without becoming a burden."
The wind carried those words,
and only the void listened.