Buried by History
Elias Veyne had the kind of face people passed on the street without a second glance. His hair, black and stubbornly untidy, curled at the ends from neglect. His frame was lean, more from skipped meals than exercise, and his clothes hung loosely on him—thrift-store finds with frayed collars and threadbare sleeves. Only his eyes defied the forgettable mask: pale gray, sharp and weary, the eyes of a man who carried wars inside him.
He sat in the same place he always did—the back corner of the city library. Dust layered the shelves like a funeral shroud, and the air smelled faintly of mildew and old paper. The overhead bulb buzzed with a weak, irritating hum, flickering every so often as if trying to die but never allowed to.
Elias's hand moved across the page, scrawling with a speed that bordered on frantic. Notebook after notebook surrounded him, each filled with cramped handwriting. Analyses of ancient campaigns. Hypotheses about why empires crumbled. Diagrams of battle formations copied from half-forgotten archives.
He wasn't a student. Not anymore. He wasn't a professor either—he'd never been given the chance. He was simply a man writing a history no one would ever read.
The rain outside tapped against the tall windows, steady and endless. Somewhere in the distance, thunder cracked. Or was it artillery fire? Elias had grown up in cities where the difference blurred.
His mind drifted as his pen paused.
He could still remember the day his childhood ended. Not the details—he had been too young—but the sound. The air raid sirens. The whistling descent. The explosion that ripped apart a neighborhood and left nothing but fire and rubble. He had been three years old, crying in the wreckage, when strangers pulled him out. His parents were never found.
After that came the state orphanages. Rows of cots. Rationed meals. Staff too overworked to care. Children who disappeared and were never spoken of again.
War had always been there. First as fire. Then as silence.
When other boys played with toy soldiers, Elias studied actual ones. When they dreamed of adventure, he memorized casualty numbers. History was his only refuge. Not because it was comforting—history was cruel, merciless—but because it was honest. It didn't lie to him the way people did.
And so he read. And wrote. And kept writing.
He lifted his head now, staring at the wall of books opposite his desk. So many titles. So many names. He had read them all. Consumed them. Devoured every page like a starving man. Yet the knowledge only deepened the hollow in his chest.
"What good is it?" he muttered, voice hoarse from hours of silence. "Knowing every war, every mistake… when no one listens?"
His reflection in the window offered no answer. Just a gaunt man with tired eyes and cracked lenses in his glasses.
He imagined, not for the first time, what it would have been like to live inside history rather than writing about it. To stand on a battlefield, not just analyze one. To command, to lead, to leave a mark that couldn't be erased by time.
But he wasn't a general. He wasn't a soldier. He wasn't anything.
Just Elias Veyne, the war orphan no one remembered.
The bulb above him flickered again. Once. Twice. He ignored it, scribbling another line about supply lines in the Second Punic War. But then came a sound he couldn't ignore.
Groooan.
Wood strained under weight. The shelf nearest him trembled, books shifting slightly, like restless sleepers. Elias frowned, looking up.
Another crack. Louder this time.
And then, before he could move, before he could think—
CRACK.
The towering shelf collapsed.
For a heartbeat, he just stared as the shadow fell over him. A wall of books, knowledge accumulated across centuries, came thundering down in an avalanche of paper and wood.
Instinct screamed at him to move, but there was no time. The edge of the shelf struck the table, shattering it. The notebooks he had poured his soul into scattered like leaves in a storm.
Then came the books themselves. Dozens. Hundreds. A tidal wave of history.
The first struck his shoulder, knocking him sideways. Another slammed against his chest, forcing the air from his lungs. He gasped, pain shooting through his ribs. And then they kept coming. Hardcovers. Tomes. Encyclopedias. The knowledge he had lived for became the weight crushing him into the floor.
He tried to push up, but the pressure mounted. His arms shook, then gave out. His glasses cracked against the floor, the world blurring.
Pages fluttered loose, raining down around him. Words he had memorized—wars, names, dates—spun before his fading eyes.
Elias coughed, tasting copper. His vision dimmed at the edges. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, slower now, weaker.
And in those final moments, a bitter laugh rattled from his chest.
"Figures," he whispered to the dark. "Buried… by history."
The weight pressed down harder, dragging him into silence.
His last thought, sharp and fleeting, burned in his mind before everything went black:
Always an observer. Never part of it