A sign stood proud at a crossroads. It had two wings, two locations that it might lead him. One wing pointed at where he came from, the now-empty town of Jersten. The second one pointed toward the south and the village of Aucklyn, but there was no arrow for the road or path that led toward the southwest. It wouldn't be a road to Atarkan, not quite yet.
It wasn't something that Kanrel remembered from decades ago. Then again, how could he remember such details from so long ago? It wasn't like the road he had traversed up north only once in his lifetime could be something that would be stuck with him forever. Only hunger had, only the guilt that piled upon him back then did. And the cold, oh how cold it had been even back then. But was it colder now or then? He could not know; he couldn't remember.
He ignored the potential diversion and walked ahead, down the road, toward the south and Aucklyn, knowing that it would not be too long until he reached it. Perhaps a day or two, depending on how much snow it would rain to make each of his steps more laborious than the previous one.
The further south he went, the less snow there was, the less cold it was, or so he imagined. Perhaps a hundred miles or more he had gone down the road, and still he found signs of camps left behind by the people of Jersten who had gotten away. The hypnosis of doing the same thing, over and over again, step after step, thought after thought in a circle going around itself, made him feel as if though each step he took, and each thought he thought, were all things done on a day that repeated itself, and if it weren't for the changing nature around him, the changing of view, then he would believe that it were so.
But the trees grew differently, fewer spruce and pine, and the more there grew, the southern trees he knew from his childhood and his time in Atarkan. If such memories would grow fond and tall at the stage of his mind, might he find relief, but now they were only observations and memories that then deepened the darkness that encroached him further, surrounding and reaching in, almost touching him, taking more and more, giving only regret in return.
At times, he'd try to stop himself from staying within his mind, but one never quite can; it is an impossibility when there is no one but yourself to be with you. And instead, in solemn repetitions, first he'd regret a thing he had done decades ago, a memory or a feeling he missed more than everything else; then he'd blame himself for being who he is, blame soon turning from just regret into guilt as he saw the boots he had stolen from someone else's grave. At times, he didn't even see the world around him, only the thoughts that invaded from his mind into his heart, sinking it deeper into the depths.
And when he looked for a moment past himself, at the edges of his vision, the shadow yet gathered. Behind a tree, upon a hill, in the shadow of the black clouds that loomed over the world. Everywhere he looked, he saw it; he saw them. The shadows, the veil's touch, but never did they come closer.
It was impossible to tell whether a shadow was natural or not. Whether there be a place where he might sleep till the morrow, or till eternity. Life and death, and no way to say which end dreams would bring.
He walked through the night into the morning; he would rather not risk sleeping and dying when he was so close to people. He feared that he might miss the chance of seeing them, much like he had missed the chance of meeting a hermit in a cabin deeper in the woods.
Each step was forced out of him as familiar numbness took hold of where thought arose from; he could barely keep his head upright, his gaze instead becoming one with the snowy road ahead. He did not stop walking despite fighting against his legs, which might collapse at any moment. They burned, they had burned for so long; they needed rest, perhaps weeks or months before they could be themselves again, but there might never be a chance for such rest.
He only stopped when something changed. A pair of boots, a suit of clothes, all left lying on the road; beside them were another set, a pair of smaller boots. His gaze slowly rose to look ahead, his eyes followed the footprints which led further until he could see, past the trees, fragments of buildings. It must've been Aucklyn.
He looked down again. The two pairs of boots, side by side. Within, he already knew that he was late, again. But still he stepped over them, slowly gaining pace, soon running with the last of his strength toward where people were, or had been once before.
The trees gave way for a better view, and he saw the buildings, a hundred or so of them, scattered around forming the village. He saw no people, he heard no people. There was no temple; its tower did not rise above the other buildings... instead, its tower lay burned and broken, collapsed on top of a house across the street. That house, too, had been left blackened by flames. And as he looked around more and more, he found pairs of boots, clothes in the hundreds, left lying around, left unattended and unworn by the living.
No one was here. There were no living. Late. He had come too late. His legs almost gave way. He barely found his balance, having to take support from a burnt beam of the temple. His thoughts were scattered, and with the help of the beam and then the wall of the temple, he made his way around to the door and stepped inside the ruins of it.
He saw the rubble that had buried the holiest place in the village. He stepped closer, then stopped.
A figure lay beneath a fallen beam and bricks. Somehow, it had not burned. Kanrel ran to it, forming multiple codes to remove the beam and the bricks and the rest of the rubble... only to see the body of a child, a boy of perhaps seven or eight summers, his face ashy and broken, his bones broken, his life long gone. What was the story of a dead child? What about the story of his family? Had they become just a pair of boots and a bundle of clothes; had they gotten away? What was the truth of their terror, while the shadows engulfed them, bringing darkness and ending their existence in the light...
What is the story of a village that had been left in ruins and empty? What about the great temple in the middle of it all, walls surrounding it, as if they could defend against things that come from all around us; from below, reaching above the heavens and striking down, leaving all in oblivion.
A temple, a great temple; a symbol of their faith, their resistance, and their salvation against death itself. A message which read as follows: 'We are the chosen people of this world, and we will be saved; we are safe here; in this house of our lords…'
Broken. Ruined. Eviscerated from this reality; just stones and ash left behind. Ruins on top of ruins, a lifeless body of someone who inhabited Aucklyn; scattered suits of clothes and boots, unworn by those who once lived, now having forgotten what it was like to exist in the first place. This place, which once was a home to all of them, to this boy who had no breath, no warmth.
Kanrel had no tears to weep. Just emptiness and confusion. A lack of understanding and hundreds of questions left unanswered... Why?
Why had Ignar placed his vengeance onto a people who had nothing to do with him, with N'Sharan, with Anavasii, or the Atheians... Why would he punish those who could do nothing to fight him? Why would he kill thousands of innocent souls? And why had the gods for whom the citizens of Aucklyn built a temple left them; why had they forsaken them?
Cold. The world is cold. It is dark, for there is no sun to shine upon this earth. Shadows that are above veiling us all. There is no light here; there is no life nor future for these lands. Death is here, and it has come in the shapes of shadows; in lives long forgotten.
There is just death, for no hope exists; no gods to save them, no salvation from oblivion. Death. There is just death.
He had come too late for life, and the only thing left was just a child. A naive thing with surely tens of thousands of sunrises ahead of him, an existence as bright as the kindling of a flame in the vast darkness.
A mangled body of innocence. Left cold and dead by the gods he too believed in.
Gently, Kanrel lifted the body; it felt so cold against his warmth. Slowly, he caressed his hair, and slowly, he wiped away the ash that had reached his face. He carried it out of the temple; its unholiness was unfit for the pure soul wrapped in his arms. He stepped past clothes and boots left in the snow, prints in the snow that had abruptly come to a stop. He made his way out of the village, further away from the temple, as far as he could manage.
Past trees and frozen life, until he reached a place that suited innocence. A hill that he climbed. Naked and without trees, he placed the body on the soft snow, then began digging; not with codes, but with his hands, for magic ought never be used on this child.
The snow was cold, so very cold. Soon, he found earth, frozen ground that refused to give way, to move at the command of his fingers. He grabbed his knife and began digging with it instead. He used it like a pick, stabbing the frozen ground again and again, removing dead plants and their roots, for hours and hours. He dug, and he dug, until his clothes were dirty, his hands muddy, his knife dull and barely usable. Until the red sun had risen and then begun its fall into the horizon and trees and the hills further away than he could see.
He got up from the grave that he had dug, gently lifted the child, and placed it in. He stared at the broken thing and found no prayers to give, for he only knew of those used to honor the Angels, the creatures that had brought only death and oblivion.
The grave, he decided, be it cold and lonely, was much better than being burned and left in ashes, a body to be remembered instead of just ash and oblivion. It was prayer enough, and from this child, one day, thousands of sunrises from now, a tree might grow, or a bed of flowers, feeding on his memory, giving a moment where there is not just death, but life.
The grave was finished. Shallow and imperfect, but complete.
With shaking hands, he filled the grave. It wasn't deep, and he hoped that no scavenging wolf would find it. He hoped that the sanctity of a place holier than any temple could ever be would remain, and this soul would find for itself a home, far away from any god that would bring it harm.
He stood by the grave some time longer. He was empty. With nothing else to give, to say, or to even think. Yet there were still things he had to do. He needed food, and he needed to keep going. He needed to find any tracks that there might still be, survivors, living, breathing beings. He made his way back to the village to take what was left to steal.
- - - - -
In one of the intact houses, he found a storage room filled with supplies. There was flour, dried meat, and bottles of alcohol, but he only took the meat. He wouldn't have time to make bread, and alcohol would do nothing for him. He found a new knife and took for himself a new pair of boots; these ones were fur-lined on the inside. As he returned outside, he stepped over clothes and unattended shoes. The owner of the house would not mind what he had stolen, or so he hoped, whether they were dead or alive.
Outside, Kanrel walked past the temple for the final time. He couldn't help but let his gaze study the fallen bricks and beams, the half-burned structure that it had become. He wondered whether a man who had lost his faith had decided to burn the thing down, or if a candle had fallen over during the ruckus, and simply set it all ablaze.
Either way, it had been done in protest; either the self-subjugated slaves or the universe itself had screamed at the void, at injustice unrectified.
Kanrel returned to the road, leaving Aucklyn behind, and followed the left-behind footprints that led toward presumed safety. It might've been dark, but Kanrel had no wish to spend the night in an open grave.
His eyelids felt heavy and so did his steps, but he wanted to walk as far as he could; so far that he could no longer see the roofs or shapes of the buildings in Aucklyn, so that it might become a thing that might not exist, for he could not see it and attest its existence. He now knew that some things were better left behind, it was just so impossibly difficult to forget.
He walked perhaps an hour, passing sets of footprints that ended in tragedy, but most still made their way toward the southwest and the city that lay there weeks from here. He looked behind a final time and saw no sight of Aucklyn. It had been so many times before he had glanced back, but no matter how far he got, it never felt far enough. The lonesome, half-covered boots left on the road made it worse. There were graves all around him, along the road, and within his heart, there was a child buried in a shallow grave. He stepped from the road and found for himself a place to sleep; he had no tent, so all he could do was to construct a campfire large enough that it would survive the night; he had to look for fallen trees that he'd then cut into firewood and dry so that they'd burn at all.
He took out a blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders. He huddled closer to the fire and stared into its hypnotizing flames. Soon, he could no longer see this world, for he saw another, where a child stood over him, staring down at him, crying, but smiling; dead but somehow alive. The child reached for him and placed his hand on his forehead, then he woke up; he shuddered awake to the coldness of the world. The fire had gone out, but it was much brighter than it had been during the night.
Kanrel bit into the dry meat; it was difficult to eat, but he had nothing else. He drank the pieces down with some water. He packed his blanket and picked up his things. He left behind the camp he had made and again returned to the road. Still, his legs hurt, still, he had to go on. Thankfully, it had not snowed during the night, so he could still see the footprints in the snow; at least, it seemed, that some had survived Aucklyn, how many of them, he had no clue. It was impossible to count the footprints.
With tired eyes, he kept glancing around in the hue of the red sun. He kept looking for shadows and found too many of them. Every tree had its own; even he had his own. The poor bastard had followed him for far too long and had seen things no one would want to see. It carried a darkness that it could not contend with. There were things in his shadow that no one could accept, not even the shadow itself.
The road snaked down a hill, and ahead he saw a snow-covered stone bridge that crossed a river that was probably the same one that reached all the way down to the Bay of Ca'Leth, and the city of Lo'Gran. If this were the same the river, then it was known as the River of Kings, for long ago before the humans called the Angels their gods, the kingdom of Lo'Gran was small in its size, and warred against the other kingdoms further down south; the river served as their border and it brought them much wealth and opportunities as the land around it was fertile, but it was a treacherous thing. For it would often flood and cause much damage, ruin villages, as well as harvests. So, long ago, a king whose name is now long forgotten to history built a system of canals, trenches, and dams to control the flow and flooding. This innovation must have saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives throughout history. Even today, the places where that long-forgotten king built his system are used and tended to, though now the technology is better.
And if this river was that river, then Kanrel could've followed it downstream, all the way to Lo'Gran... but he decided against it. He couldn't live with the uncertainty of not knowing whether Dar and his family had survived. Any of the boots in Aucklyn could've been them; and the unnamed child now in his grave could've been one of their sons... The thought made him shudder and forced him to walk faster, despite the pain.
He reached the snow-covered bridge. On it, he saw signs of people crossing it, but further ahead... a figure... no—more. Three figures stood, looking his way. It was windy, but their clothes did not move along with it, but against it. A shiver ran through him; he prepared a code and looked around.
Upstream, past a set of trees, a few more hovered closer. And above the sun dimmed as a great shadow of a cloud veiled it further. He gritted his teeth. These figures had no memories of their own.
Suddenly, he jerked toward the figures in the sky, and launched, scorching fire toward them, white and disgusting; the feeling crawled through him much like the fire that crawled forth, as if occupying the space it moved through, tainting it with its touch, until it reached the shadows; setting them ablaze, a screech filled the air, only to be suddenly cut out. There was no echo, even that was swallowed by the fire.
If he'd stayed his gaze and looked at what he had done, then he would've seen how ash rained down in a cloud of itself, carried by the wind down the stream...
A grand shriek stole all his attention. From just a few figures, the sounds of a choir emerged. For a moment, he stood on a field, among the Sharan, as a figure clad in black went around and hurled dark fire at the Sharan who ran away. The figure had a glint in its dead eyes; the figure was like him, a mirror of him, someone else, but not him, and a thousand died.
He blinked, returning onto the bridge. The shadows flew toward him; the shriek had not stopped. Kanrel released another code, the shadows set ablaze, and he could hear a child, weeping in horror; a man burned on a stake; a woman at the grave of her children... He heard it all at once, and much more. The white flames burned it all away.
The scream vanished, the shadows were gone, and on the snow-covered bridge before him, rained a gentle rain of ash that colored its surface with gray.
Kanrel shivered, his breath was heavy, and he had to take support from the railing; he felt the cold snow against his hand. At last, he felt awake; there was no tiredness within him, and even his legs felt fine. But he knew it was just fear that lived through him.
With the help of the railing, he walked across the bridge, stepping past the ash, not wanting to come in touch with it.
A sudden howl filled the air; it was so loud that he had to cover his ears, for it felt like someone had screamed right beside him. When he came to his senses, he looked around, but saw nothing. Just the ash behind him and the darkness that veiled his world. He could feel his chest jumping up and down, and he wanted to run. So he ran. He ran as fast as his heartbeat, or so it felt like. He ran along the road, but soon heard another howl, far from him, ahead. Around the next bend in the road, he saw more figures. He suddenly diverted from the road, running toward the trees, into the forest, away from danger. He suddenly stumbled and fell... he felt how his legs struck something, then his torso and his hands, which he had managed to bring up to guard his head, as he rolled down the hill... Until the world spun above him, he saw past the canopies of trees the sky above him, and it spun, and it spun, until it, too, settled.
He breathed, still his heart beat at a quick pace. He needed to get up. He felt the urgency; he needed to run away; he needed to find safety. But he didn't want to get up. The sky, it was so red and so dark.
When had he lain on the ground and looked up at the sky just for the sake of it? It must have been something he had done in his childhood. He suddenly remembered imagining shapes in clouds during the day and counting stars in the night. He remembered his mother, lying beside him, naming the stars and the constellations.
Back then, life had been so good to him. It was just that somewhere along the way, he had forgotten that it had been so. And now he could only miss it, as a thing he barely remembered. As a thing he would one day forget. As a thing he was unlikely to experience again, for this memory brought him no relief, no happiness. It only drenched him with a cold case of yearning and burned him from within as heartache.
After a while, his heart found its normal pace, and he breathed normally. Slowly, he got up and checked that he had everything with him. He checked if his legs and arms were still fine. He looked around and found the hill he had fallen down; it had been a sudden incline, hidden by the trees that grew on top of it. It was no wonder he had, in panic, stumbled down it.
He should get up that hill and scorch away the shadows that he saw; he should get out of this forest, for the shadows around him all loomed closer as beings that might at any time scream and strike at him, but... he felt much safer down here than up there.
He wiped the snow from his clothes and walked forth instead. The canopies would hide him from the shadows, and the road was always to the left of him if he were to get lost, or so he lied to himself, but what is one lie among a thousand?