Chapter 9
The Georgia heat seeped through the floorboards of Herschel's office, dense and heavy with the humidity of the woods. The air held a strange mixture of scents: the sweet aroma of stored apples, the acrid smell of old paper, and the fresh, resinous perfume of the newly cut pine that now formed our palisade. Outside, the rhythmic hammering of the savages served as a metronome for a civilization trying to be born from the ashes. Every strike was a reminder that we were alive—that we had reclaimed a piece of land from death.
I sat behind the oak desk, observing the two men who represented the past of this world. Rick sat before me, pen in hand, his face etched with a new seriousness; his eyes, now clearer and more focused, scanned the paper as if he were drafting the very destiny of humanity. Shane, true to his restless nature, remained on the periphery, leaning against the wall by the window with his arms crossed and a gaze heavy with piercing skepticism.
"We cannot govern solely by the fear of the dead, Rick," I began, letting my voice fill the space with the gravity of cold steel. "Fear is a fuel that runs dry. People need structure. They need to know that when the sun sets, there is more than just wood between them and the darkness. They need a foundation."
Rick nodded, resting the tip of the pen on the yellowish sheet. His thoughts were a whirlwind; I could see it in the way he clenched his jaw. As a former sheriff, Rick understood the value of law, but he feared we were creating something too rigid. However, as he looked out the window to where Carl and Sophia played under Torgad's watchful eye, his doubt dissipated. Whatever was necessary to keep them safe.
"Write down what will be the First Decree of the Sanctuary, Rick," I ordered. "These are frontier laws. Simple, but unbreakable."
I. The Voice of Order
In this place, there are no debates when danger lurks. The word of the Sovereign is the direction; that of his Captains is the execution. He who ignores command in times of crisis endangers everyone and shall be treated as a threat.
Rick wrote every word with a steady hand. I could feel his internal conflict: the democracy he knew had died in the streets of Atlanta, and what we were building here was something much older and more necessary.
II. Shared Sustenance
No one in the Sanctuary shall go hungry while there is grain in the storehouse, but no one shall eat from another's sweat. Everyone with strength has a task: to till, to watch, or to build. Idleness is an offense against the community and the well-being of the children.
As I dictated this rule, my mind drifted toward the women and the elders of the host. My concern was not cold productivity, but ensuring no one felt like a burden and no one was forgotten. In the North, winter killed the idle first; here, I wanted work to be the bond that held us together.
III. The Right to Tomorrow
He who works with loyalty shall see his effort rewarded. As the Sanctuary grows and we reclaim more territory from the dead, those who were here from the beginning shall receive the first lands and the honor of leading new settlements. Your position does not depend on who you were before, but on what you contribute now to the security of the people.
Rick finished writing and set the pen aside, looking relieved. It was a law of survival—something any man who had seen a walker could accept. However, from the corner, Shane let out a dry, bitter laugh that shattered the solemnity of the moment.
"New settlements? Lands?" Shane stepped away from the wall, walking into the light with a smile of disbelief that bordered on mockery. "Rick, the heat has fried this guy's brain. We're surrounded by corpses, eating what we can scratch from the dirt with our fingernails, and he's talking to us about expanding and handing out deeds like we're at a county fair."
Shane rapped his knuckle on the table, looking at Rick with a contempt he no longer tried to hide.
"Wake up, Rick. There are no 'territories' to reclaim. There's only a dead country full of things that want to eat us. Talking about expansion now is a fantasy—a dangerous distraction to keep us entertained while we play soldier on a farm that could fall at any second."
I stood up with a deliberate slowness that made the air in the room seem to freeze instantly. Shane did not back down; his alpha pride, wounded by not having been blessed with the enhancement Rick and Daryl now wore naturally, kept him anchored in his defiance.
"You believe this world is all that exists, Shane," I said, and my voice no longer came from my throat but seemed to emanate from the very beams of the house. "You think your eyes see the truth because they catch the light bouncing off rotting flesh. But you only see the surface of a dying husk. You worry about the farm, but you do not see the ocean in which you float."
I walked toward him. Shane clenched his fists, preparing for a physical fight he understood. But before he could blink, my hand was on his chest—right over the erratic beat of his heart—and my index finger rested with the weight of a mountain upon his brow.
"Look."
Herschel's office exploded into a billion shards of glass.
Shane felt his soul ripped from his body with the violence of a hurricane. Gravity ceased to exist. He was hurled backward, but he did not hit the wood; he fell through a void vibrating with colors the human eye has no name for. He saw threads of gold and violet light twisting into impossible geometries—fractals born and dead in the heartbeat of a second.
"Do you think your struggle for this piece of land is great?" My voice echoed in the very fabric of his consciousness—a vibration shaking his atoms. "It is but a grain of sand on an infinite beach you cannot even imagine."
Shane saw the Earth shrink. He saw the world of the dead as a small, silent gray sphere, wrapped in a web of silver threads connecting it to other orbs. He was dragged through the Omniverse, watching reality duplicate and fragment. He saw dimensions where light was solid and worlds where humanity had never left the caves.
Suddenly, the Georgia heat was replaced by a cold that stopped his heart. He found himself before the immensity of Westeros. He saw the Wall—a seven-hundred-foot mountain of ice groaning under the weight of centuries—and felt the wind of the Lands of Always Winter, a cold that made this world's winter look like a summer noon. He saw shadows of glass with eyes of stellar blue marching in absolute silence, and dragons whose wings blotted out the sun of a world that refused to die.
"This is what belongs to me by right," I whispered in his mind as I hurled him through nebulas of pure energy. "And this world where you crawl is but the foundation of my return. I do not seek to expand a farm for its own sake, Shane. I seek to protect my people here so they may be the army that claims infinity."
Shane saw suns born and die; he saw the terrifying beauty of creation and the absolute nothingness lurking at the edges. He saw that his life, his rifle, and his police badge were nothing but ash in the cosmic wind.
The return was a brutal impact. Shane landed on his back on the office floor, the sound of wood creaking under his weight bringing him back to reality. He lay there, gasping, hands scratching the floorboards as if trying to catch hold of existence itself. His pupils were dilated to the max, his eyes bloodshot, moving erratically as his brain tried to process the impossible. Sweat soaked his clothes, and his face was pale—almost translucent.
"I… I don't…" Shane tried to speak, but his vocal cords only emitted a broken whimper. He looked at Rick, but he no longer saw his friend; he saw a speck of dust in a universe too vast for his sanity.
The silence following Shane's collapse was absolute, until Rick stood up abruptly. His chair screeched against the floor, but he didn't seem to notice. He tilted his head to one side with an expression of concentration so intense it looked painful.
"Something's coming," Rick said, with a certainty that left Shane mute on the floor.
"What are you saying, Rick? I hear nothing but the wind," Herschel said from the doorway, worried about Shane's state.
"I hear the gallop," Rick replied. His ears, boosted to the limits of human capacity, filtered the whisper of the forest and the snapping of branches. He could distinguish the steady rhythm of shod hooves hitting old asphalt and the murmur of human conversation from a distance where a normal man would hear only silence. "They're living. Moving slow… carrying weight."
In the watchtower, Daryl experienced a similar shock. His eyes, now capable of focusing with the precision of a hawk, caught a glint on the northern road, beyond the fields we had not yet explored. He didn't need binoculars; his vision locked onto the movement between the trees.
"Wagon in sight!" Daryl shouted from above, his voice charged with a strange adrenaline. "Coming down the old road! It's a wagon… I see horses. They're living, Rick! I don't see long guns; they look like… farmers!"
We stepped out into the yard, leaving Shane to catch his breath on the office floor. At the main gate, the tension was palpable. The Northern savages gripped their axes, forming a defensive semicircle, while the Atlanta survivors gathered behind, seeking protection.
I ordered the wooden gate opened. Outside, a small group of six people waited under the scorching sun. They were farmers, led by a woman in her fifties with a tired but firm gaze.
"We come in peace," said the woman, who introduced herself as Martha. "We're from Vickery, a small community to the north. We saw your smoke… and we've seen that the dead no longer come down this road."
The process was cautious. There was no invasion, no shouting. Rick supervised the unloading under my gaze, while Carol and Dale approached to evaluate what they had brought. Martha unloaded baskets of fresh apples gleaming in the sun, carrots still dusted with earth, and winter seeds they had managed to preserve in cool cellars.
But the most valuable thing to me were the three crates of books Martha had brought as an extra, hoping they held some trade value.
"We didn't know if these would interest you," Martha said, looking in awe at the discipline of the savages, working tirelessly under the heat. "But it seems you're building something here we haven't seen in a long time. Something that feels… solid."
"The Sanctuary values knowledge as much as steel, Martha," I replied, running my hand over the spine of a rescued medical book. "We are not interested in looting you. We are interested in your people thriving so that we may continue to trade."
We handed over refined salt from our pantry, iron tools my smiths had reinforced with steel from abandoned cars, and a small box of basic medical supplies Glenn had recovered from Atlanta. Upon receiving the medicine, Martha was on the verge of tears.
"Thank you," she whispered. "We'll be back in two weeks. If the road stays safe, we'll bring more seeds."
Valthor's POV
As the Vickery wagon pulled away down the road, the Sanctuary courtyard fell into a contemplative silence. My Northern warriors observed the books with a mixture of respect and bewilderment, while Rick's group looked at the fresh apples as if they were treasures from another world.
I approached the table where the baskets sat. I took one of the apples and handed it to Sophia, who took it with bright eyes. Then, I looked around. I saw the weariness in their faces, but I also saw the spark of hope.
My people, I thought.
I felt a pang of genuine concern in my chest. I knew that by opening the gates to trade, we were also opening the door for other groups to learn of our existence. The world outside these walls was a nest of hungry serpents. My task was not just to conquer; it was to ensure that every one of these people—from the giant Torgad to little Sophia—had a place where death was not the only option. Every law I dictated, every enhancement I granted, was a shield to protect this small flame in the middle of the storm.
Shane stepped out of the main house at that moment. He walked with the caution of someone who knows the ground is an illusion and the universe is infinite. He stopped before me in the center of the yard, under the gaze of everyone. There was no rage left in him—only a terrifying understanding of what stood before him. With a solemn slowness, Shane dropped both knees to the dirt, bowing his head before the astonished group.
"Teach me," Shane whispered, his voice cracking. "I don't want to be blind anymore. If the world is what you say… I want to be by your side to defend our own."
Rick and Daryl watched in silence. The foundation of the law was laid, trade had begun, and the man who once challenged every word had become the first believer of infinity. The Sanctuary was no longer a farm; it was the beginning of something this world was not prepared to face.