Time moves differently after the noise ends.Not faster, not slower — just… quieter in ways that have nothing to do with silence.
Years have passed since Citadel's final broadcast.The world kept its promise: no more heroes, no more councils, no more orders pretending to be mercy.The Accord held — reshaped, reinterpreted, fractured, and rebuilt again, the way living things do when no one tells them how to grow.
They say history runs in circles.I think it breathes.
The road that once led to Citadel is now lined with settlements.Children walk where soldiers used to stand.Old towers are gardens; old propaganda walls are libraries.
The world learned to recycle everything — even fear.
I travel under another name now.To most, I'm just a tradesman who fixes old machines and leaves before the next sunrise.Sometimes I'm asked where I'm from.I always answer the same way.
"Somewhere that learned too late what freedom costs."
No one ever presses further.
In the village of Iroha, I find a classroom built inside a former power station.The roof leaks, but the laughter inside is loud enough to cover it.The teacher — a woman in her thirties — is reading from a digital tablet patched with tape.
Her students listen in uneven attention, as all children do.She speaks of the old world, of how people once feared the air itself, how one day it stopped obeying.
I linger by the doorway.The story is familiar, reshaped again.In her version, there was no Directorate, no Commission — just a world that forgot to listen until the wind itself reminded them.
She doesn't say my name.Good.
When the class ends, she notices me."Traveler," she says, smiling. "You look like you've seen more of this world than most. Are the Archives still running?"
"They are," I say. "Though they remember less each year."
"That's enough," she answers. "People forget facts, not lessons."
I stay the night in a room above the station.Outside, the children play among the old relay dishes — climbing rusted metal like monuments to things they don't need to understand.Their voices drift through the open window.They argue about who gets to be the one who freed the air in their game.None of them pronounce the name right.It doesn't matter.
In the morning, I leave before the village wakes.The road is overgrown, the air heavy with mist.Every few miles, I pass memorial stones — not graves, just names etched into rock by people who wanted to remember something, even if they weren't sure what.
The stones make no mention of heroes or villains, only phrases like We kept walking or We chose again.It's the most honest history I've seen.
A month later, I reach what used to be the northern relay fields.The towers are gone, replaced by forests.Nature reclaimed everything the Accord once monitored.
For a while, I sit on a fallen trunk and watch the sunlight filter through the branches.It feels different here — not sacred, just ordinary.The kind of peace no one writes about because it doesn't sell stories.
I close my eyes and think of Rai.Of Uraraka.Of the day we stopped pretending that unity was anything but temporary.
They're probably still out there — teaching, building, living.I don't need to know for sure.Knowing was always overrated.
At dusk, I find a traveler's camp.Two merchants and a pair of students sit around a small fire, passing a metal flask between them.They're talking about the old days again — everyone does eventually.
"…and they say he vanished into the horizon," one of them says. "No one ever found a body."
"Maybe he never existed," another laughs. "Maybe he was just what people needed to believe in."
I sit down beside them, wordless.They don't recognize me.That's good.
One of the students, curious, asks, "Do you think he was real?"
I shrug.
"Does it matter?"
The boy tilts his head. "If he wasn't, then who fixed the world?"
"No one fixed it," I say. "It learned to fix itself once people stopped waiting for someone else to do it."
They go quiet at that.Then one of the merchants smiles. "I like that version better."
So do I.
After they fall asleep, I stay awake a while longer, staring at the stars through a break in the canopy.They look the same as they did the night Citadel burned.Maybe that's the point — the universe keeps its own pace, indifferent to the small wars we fight beneath it.
Peace isn't an ending, I think. It's the space between mistakes long enough to let something grow.
When dawn comes, I walk north.The road narrows until it becomes a path, then nothing but grass.Each step feels lighter, easier, almost forgettable.
And maybe that's right.Maybe forgetting isn't loss — it's release.
Years from now, someone will stumble upon an old file buried deep in the Archives.No name, no date, just a short note in an unmarked folder.
To whoever finds this:Don't remember me.Remember why you started walking.
They'll read it, close it, and keep moving.That will be enough.