Night fell heavy upon Dalewick, the kind of night where the air itself felt like a burial shroud. I lay upon my bed, the sheets damp with sweat, my breath shallow and uneven. The echo of my so-called friends' words still haunted the room. Their judgments clung to me like cobwebs, and no matter how I tore at them, they would not leave.
I stared into the darkness, and the darkness stared back.
"Why," I whispered into the emptiness, "where did it all go wrong?"
No answer came. Only the rasp of my own breathing, the distant hoot of an owl, and the creak of timbers in the house that was slowly rotting around me. My estate, once the envy of the county, now groaned like an old ship taking on water.
I asked again, louder this time. "Is there one who rules above? Or are we but playthings of chance, tossed upon waves that care not if we sink?"
The silence pressed tighter, suffocating. I tried to remember the days when I believed. I had spoken of Providence with confidence, telling my children that every sorrow and joy had purpose. But now, when I reached for that conviction, I found only ashes in my hands.
If a Higher Existence truly reigned, why did He remain hidden while my house burned? Why did He turn His face when my sons bled upon the earth? Why did He allow laughter to die from the lips of innocents?
I rose, though my body screamed against it, and staggered to the window. The moon shone pale over the fields, once golden with wheat, now blackened with ruin. I opened the shutters wide, as if daring the heavens themselves to look upon me.
"Show yourself!" I cried. "If you are there if you are anything at all answer me! Do not leave me to rot in this silence! Strike me dead if you must, but do not leave me unanswered!"
The night swallowed my challenge whole.
For a long time, I thought perhaps I had gone mad. I began to hear voices in the emptiness, sometimes my wife's, sometimes the laughter of my children. They called my name with such clarity that I would stumble through the halls, convinced they had returned. But each time, I found only shadows.
Once, I dreamt I stood in the marketplace again, healthy and strong, merchants bowing as I passed. My sons walked beside me, and my daughters sang in the distance. It was so vivid that I wept with joy, until I woke, and the dream dissolved like smoke.
Despair gnawed at me, but another feeling began to rise with it: defiance.
If there was no hand above, then I had been a fool to spend my years in reverence. If the world was governed only by chaos, then what loyalty did I owe to a void that neither heard nor cared? And if, perchance, there was some higher existence, then I would accuse Him, face to face, of cruelty beyond measure.
For days, I lingered in this storm of thought, pacing the halls, muttering like a madman. Servants avoided me. Neighbors whispered that grief had driven me insane. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps sanity had left me with my children.
Yet through the madness, one truth remained sharp as a blade: I had been stripped of all things, and still I lived. I was breath and bone, ragged though I was. My wealth was ash, my family dust, my friends betrayers, but my voice endured. And with that voice, I would not stop questioning.
On the seventh night, as thunder rolled far in the distance, I collapsed upon the floorboards of my chamber. My body could take no more. I pressed my face against the cold wood and whispered into the silence one last plea:
"If You are there, whoever You are, why hide? Why cloak Yourself in silence while the world breaks? Why let suffering devour the righteous, while the wicked feast and grow fat? Speak, or I shall believe You do not exist at all."
And then, faintly, I thought I heard something, not words, not a voice, but a stirring deep within the marrow of the night. A sound like the earth shifting, like the heavens breathing. It was gone as soon as it came, leaving me trembling, uncertain whether I had imagined it.
The silence returned, vast and unyielding. But now, I no longer feared it. I stared into that void and clenched my fists.
"If You remain silent," I said, "then I will fill the silence with my own cry. I will not yield to despair, nor bow to an unjust power. If there is meaning in this suffering, You will reveal it, or I shall carve meaning myself."
For the first time since the fire, I felt something stir within me. Not faith. Not hope. Something fiercer. A will that even ruin could not extinguish.
And though the night gave no answer, I knew the battle between me and the void had only begun.