Kael's story wasn't the fairy-tale kind.
He was born in a house too small for its shadows.
His parents worked until their hands bled, yet the table always seemed empty.
As a boy, Kael couldn't understand.
He only saw the holes in his clothes, the hunger in his stomach, the way other children laughed at him.
So he grew selfish.
He thought his parents had failed him.
He blamed them for every shame, every hunger, every night he went to bed cold.
But Kael never truly left.
Even as his bitterness sharpened, he stayed under their roof.
And over time, the thorn began to soften.
He started to see their sacrifices, the calloused hands, the backs bent in labor, the silence they carried so he could eat at least a little.
One morning, he looked at his reflection and felt ashamed.
He was wrong.
They weren't weak.
They were strong enough to give him everything, even when they had nothing.
So Kael changed.
He began working, taking every job his hands could grasp, carrying, building, even cleaning, anything to bring home coins.
Not for himself.
For them.
To ease their burden, to fill their table.
He wanted to prove he could give back.
Then came the day he finally earned enough to buy gifts.
Small ones, but filled with meaning.
A scarf for his mother, soft against her weary shoulders.
Gloves for his father, to protect the hands that had always protected him.
He carried them home with pride, a smile he hadn't worn in years breaking across his face.
But when he reached the hill where their house stood—
Smoke.
Flames devouring wood.
The roof caving in under fire's hunger.
Kael dropped the gifts.
He ran, shouting, clawing at the burning door, trying to reach them.
But the fire roared louder.
The heat forced him back.
His parents' voices… if they had called, he could not hear them.
And in the end, all he held in his hands was ash.
For days after the fire, Kael wandered like a shadow.
The scarf and gloves, burned.
His home, nothing but blackened stone.
And his parents… gone.
But the guilt stayed.
It clung to him like smoke, suffocating.
He whispered to himself, again and again, "Why didn't I spend more time? Why didn't I see them?"
Coins, gifts, none of it mattered now.
He had worked so hard for a tomorrow that never came.
He thought the guilt would crush him forever.
Until one evening, in the forest, he found a wanderer.
Lost.
Starving.
The man had been circling the same paths for days, unable to find his way out.
Kael gave him food.
Then he drew a simple line in the dirt — a path back to the village.
The man followed it.
And with tears in his eyes, he called Kael his savior.
That night, Kael sat awake, staring at the stars.
And an idea came to him.
A way to carry his guilt into something greater.
A way to turn his failure into a gift for others.
He would map the world.
Not just villages, not just rivers.
Everything.
Every hidden path, every dangerous place, every forgotten corner.
So no one else would wander helpless.
So no one else would lose precious time the way he had.
Kael's guilt never vanished.
But step by step, line by line, he began to carry it in a different form.
The boy who once blamed his parents now vowed to guide others, across forests, mountains, deserts, seas.
His map would never truly end.
And neither would his journey.
Over days.
Over weeks.
Kael began to notice something.
Every map he drew —
every wanderer he guided back home —
every family reunited because of him —
…a little of the weight lifted.
He helped Mira's father.
Not just to heal his memory,
but to hold on to it.
To remember what mattered.
He helped the princess and the king.
Guiding them to the lake,
to the queen they thought was lost forever.
A family, broken by secrets,
made whole again.
And Kael stood there, watching.
Not with envy, not with sorrow.
But with a quiet kind of peace.
Maybe…
this was what his parents would have wanted.
For him to live not chasing coins,
not running from guilt,
but building something that lasts.
He still thought of them.
He always would.
But regret — he learned —
is not useless.
It is a lantern.
It shows the road you must not walk again.
And so Kael stopped letting guilt write every page of his life.
Instead, he wrote it himself.
Line by line.
Map by map.
Helping Mira.
Helping kings.
Helping strangers.
And in the silence of his heart,
he whispered once,
almost like a prayer:
"I've made mistakes.
But I won't waste what time I have left."