The smell hit him first.
Not fire or blood but something worse: that damp, heavy stench of charred rice and bone. The kind that didn't fade with wind or time. The kind that lingered in teeth and throat and memory. Nameless walked through the blackened remnants of what had once been a village.
No name left on its gate.
No gate left, for that matter — only scorched timber, brittle as ash.
A dead wind rattled the ruins. Frost still clung to the edges of stone. Snow had fallen here too, but it hadn't hidden the truth. It had only frozen it in place.
He passed a burned wheelbarrow. A collapsed hut. A child's doll with half its head missing, lying facedown in the dirt.
No bodies.
Not because there hadn't been any but because someone had made sure there wouldn't be enough left to bury. He stopped in the center of what might've been a square. There, among the scattered bones, stood a single post — blackened at the base, but still upright. A sign had once hung from it, charred fragments now clinging like regrets.
He crouched.
Traced the edges with gloved fingers.
No words left but something had been written here once. Not law. Not decree.
A warning.
Maybe even a plea and no one had listened.
Nameless stood.
Snow crunched behind him.
He didn't turn.
"I thought you might follow," he said.
A figure emerged from the trees. Young. Wrapped in coarse brown robes, a hunting knife at his belt, mud up to his knees. His breath steamed, but his face was calm.
"I watched you in the last village," the boy said.
Nameless finally looked at him.
Thin. Probably sixteen. Scar along his cheek. Eyes too old.
"I didn't see you."
"That was the point."
Nameless nodded once.
"Name?"
The boy hesitated. "People used to call me Hanzi."
"Still alive, aren't you?"
Hanzi didn't answer.
Nameless gestured to the ruins. "What happened?"
"Imperial purge," Hanzi said. "Same as everywhere else. They accused this village of hiding rebel grain. Said one family had fed a swordsman in the night."
Nameless said nothing.
"They came at dawn. Dragged everyone to the square. Then they burned it."
Nameless stared at the bones in the snow.
"They find the swordsman?"
"I don't think so."
Nameless tilted his head. "Was it you?"
The boy's jaw tightened. "No. But I watched."
There was silence between them. Wind kicked up ash.
Nameless turned away. "Why follow me?"
"You saved that man," Hanzi said. "The one the inspector beat."
"I didn't save him. I made an example."
"Same thing."
"No," Nameless said softly. "It's not."
He crouched by the scorched ground, drew his blade slightly — just enough to scrape the earth then he began to carve.
"What are you doing?" Hanzi asked.
"Marking the dead."
"With what?"
Nameless finished the first stroke then the second.
The symbol wasn't a word. It wasn't a name.
Just a curve, an angle, a line.
But it meant something.
It was remembrance — the same mark he'd etched into the shrine wall days ago.
When he finished, he pressed two fingers against the hilt and whispered:
"Let those forgotten remain unburied in memory."
The snow fell quietly around them.
Hanzi stared. "You're… not like the others."
Nameless stood. "You haven't met many rebels."
"I've met killers."
Nameless didn't correct him.
"Do you want revenge?" he asked.
Hanzi looked down. "I want to matter."
"That's not the same thing."
"Isn't it?"
Nameless looked at the ruins again.
Then at the boy.
"No," he said. "Revenge dies with your enemy. Meaning… that takes longer."
A silence stretched between them.
Then Hanzi said, "Teach me."
Nameless blinked.
"Teach you what?"
"How to become… like you."
Nameless let out a soft, humorless sound. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a sigh.
"You don't want to be like me."
"I want to stand," Hanzi said. "When others kneel."
Nameless studied him a long moment.
Then nodded, once.
"Then kneel now."
Hanzi blinked. "What?"
"You want to stand against the Empire? Then start on your knees. Remember what it feels like to have nothing. That way, you'll know what not to become."
The boy hesitated then knelt in the snow.
No words.
Just a cold, quiet obedience.
Nameless turned and walked away.
He didn't tell the boy to follow but he did.
That night, they camped beside a dead river.
Nameless didn't sleep. The fire crackled low. Hanzi lay nearby, curled in a threadbare cloak, shivering but not complaining. Nameless stared into the flames and thought of the first time he had asked to be taught.
Not to rule. Not to reclaim.
But to survive.
He hadn't known then what that meant.
He still didn't but he could teach this boy something simpler.
What not to become.
And maybe, just maybe—
What it meant to carry a name no one could erase, because it was never written to begin with.
He reached into the fire.
Pulled a half-burned branch from the coals and let it sear a line into the dirt beside them. One clean stroke. Then another. The same mark he'd left behind in the village. In the shrine. In the grave.
Hanzi stirred.
"Is that a word?" the boy asked sleepily.
"No," Nameless said. "It's a promise."
"To who?"
Nameless didn't answer right away.
He watched the embers rise, drift, and vanish into the cold.
Then said, "Anyone who's still alive."