The first frost of the new season crawls across the hills when I reach the coast.It's colder than I remember, though maybe that's because the world is finally clean again.The sea stretches out endless — a dull gray mirror, patient, unjudging.It's been years since I've seen it.
I set my pack down beside a rusted buoy and sit, letting the tide reach my boots.No noise but water against rock.No hum of engines.No voices carried on machines.
I wonder how long it will stay this way.
The coastal villages trade quietly now.No tariffs, no paperwork, no flags — just trust built on memory.People here barely speak of the Accord anymore.They barter in food, in labor, in stories told around driftwood fires.
One evening, an old man offers me soup in exchange for tales from the mainland.I tell him the truth:that people argue less but think more,that the Accord still connects towns,that no one calls it peace anymore — just life.
He nods slowly. "That's better," he says. "Peace makes people lazy. Life makes them move."
I sleep that night in a hut that smells of salt and smoke.Outside, the waves talk to the shore in a language older than all our systems.It's good background for forgetting.
Weeks pass.I help repair nets, fix old engines, carry crates from the docks.The villagers don't ask questions.They accept me as another traveler passing through.
One afternoon, a young boy asks why my hands are scarred.I tell him they used to hold something heavier than tools.He laughs and runs off, uninterested.That's how you know a generation is free — when history sounds boring.
A messenger boat arrives one morning, its hull covered in symbols of the Accord.The captain, a woman maybe my age, steps off with a letter sealed in worn wax.
"They told me to deliver this to someone named Arashi," she says. "Old record said he might still be alive out here."
"You've found him," I say.
She looks surprised. "You don't look like a legend."
"That's the point."
She hands me the letter and leaves without waiting for a reply.The sea takes her ship, and soon there's only horizon again.
The letter is short.Rai's handwriting — sharp, deliberate, older.
If you're reading this, I'm gone. Don't grieve; I made it longer than either of us expected.The Accord endures. It's changed, but it breathes. We've built schools, trade lines, communities that remember without needing stories.They still tell yours, though. Not as truth — as reminder. They call you the last witness of the age that ended.You once said peace was movement. You were right. I see it now in the way people keep walking, even without us.Whatever name you live under, keep walking too.—R.
I fold the paper carefully and set it on the buoy beside me.The ink blurs slightly in the sea air.
"You always were better with words," I whisper.
Then I watch the tide take the letter, pulling it out toward the horizon until it vanishes.
The next morning, I walk along the beach, following the tracks left by fishing carts.In the distance, children chase kites made from torn sails.They shout names of heroes they'll never meet — not mine, not Rai's, not anyone real.And that's how it should be.
Stories aren't cages; they're bridges.If people cross them to reach a future we never could, then they've served their purpose.
By nightfall, I light a fire on the shore and sit beside it, warming my hands.The stars are sharp above the water, scattered like pieces of something once whole.Maybe that's what peace really is — not unity, but the willingness to stay near what's broken and call it beautiful anyway.
I close my eyes.The fire crackles.The sea breathes.The world goes on.
I was never the storm. I was only the witness.
And sometimes, that's enough.