Afternoon pressed down on Arinthal like a giant's hand.
Air trembled.
Light burned in one piece, swallowing shade.
Everything glared until colors lost memory of themselves.
At village edge stood a house too large for its own materials.
Wood cheap.
Nails crooked.
Paint uneven—orange heat stripping it flake by flake.
Still, no dust touched its walls.
Even ugliness was deliberate here, sculpted poverty.
Inside, no wind.
Only breath.
Bodies filled what space remained—stacked lives sealed inside the hall.
Children slept in clusters, skin against skin, lungs wheezing through drifted heat.
Walls sweated.
The smell of age and despair thickened them into one smell.
A boy's voice cracked it:
"Father! How long to get water? You shame us!"
The father stirred.
Eyes dim.
Voice smaller than the air.
"Aralan, I'll go now. I'm sorry."
He pushed through the crowd—limbs brushing beside fevered bodies.
Door opened.
White light hit him like iron rods.
He blinked once.
Walked into dust.
Twenty‑five kilometers to the Fen Well.
The only rumor that still breathed.
He measured steps in heat rather than distance.
Every footprint vanished before his next landed.
"Too far, too hot," he muttered.
"But dying waiting is still dying."
He walked.
Five kilometers in.
Still no ache.
Maybe hunger buried pain deeper until it forgot where to return.
A voice rose behind him.
"Hey!"
He turned.
An old man stood there.
Skin drawn tight.
White hair moving like threads on wind.
"Heading to Fen Well?"
"Yes."
"Don't. It's dry. Dried yesterday."
Silence followed.
Expectation confirmed.
When he looked back, the man was gone—as if heat had erased him.
He knelt beside the road.
Palms touched sand.
Burned.
Didn't move them.
A softer patch of dust near dying grass.
Enough pillow for surrender.
Eyes closing, thought emptied.
Memories surfaced half‑formed—his wife's hands, his son's laugh muted by time.
None bright enough to anchor him.
Then sound approached—boots, voices bending air.
He looked up.
Uniforms.
Guard shoulders gleaming through heat haze.
At center, a man under gold‑trimmed umbrella.
Mr. Jerry.
Richest in Noren's southern block.
Wrong place for a man like that.
Dust clinging to his shoes looked offended.
Crowd gathered fast.
Rage sharpened.
"Walking among us now?"
"May Jorn curse you!"
The heat shook more from noise than sun.
A man stepped forward, trembling but bold.
"Sir, build a school. For free. The children will serve you better, brighter. Help us, you'll profit."
Mr. Jerry lifted the umbrella higher—slow, studied—and swung.
Impact cracked.
The beggar fell, body folding sideways.
Dust replaced his voice.
Jerry whispered, almost bored.
"I hate cleverness spoken by hunger."
He stared down.
Children's god, Jorn—let him curse.
He'd abandoned curses long ago.
Then a smaller shout.
"You killed him! I'll kill you!"
A child rushed him.
The guard stepped forward.
Boot rose.
Kick landed under the boy's jaw.
Sound dry, final.
The body fell wrong side first.
Father screamed until breath broke.
Silence cut back through crowd.
Only the smell of heat and dust.
Jerry brushed off his sleeve.
Across faces, he found one still frozen—Aralan's father caught mid‑stare.
"Hopeless eyes," Jerry said softly. "Good. I like simple men. Take money."
A voice, young and crisp, interrupted.
"No, Father."
Sovey stood by his side.
Her gaze too steady.
"That man's the father of Aralan—the one I told you about."
"Oh?" Jerry turned slightly, smile faint but interest awake.
Anger flared behind him again.
"Devil's bloodline!"
"Jorn will drag both of you to flame!"
"Children like her ruin the soil!"
The air split with the sound of a single gunshot.
The loudest voice dropped first, hole through his mouth, teeth spilling dust.
Blood darkened the ground quietly.
Jerry looked around, tone calm.
"You all knew I'd shoot. Yet no one stopped him. Means no one cared."
No answer.
Just still faces.
He nodded once.
"Thought so."
Beside him, Sovey whispered, "Kill them all."
Panic cracked.
The crowd splintered like glass struck off center.
Jerry chuckled.
"No. Leave one alive—the one who wronged you. Let him carry the difference between mercy and extinction."
Gun lifted.
Shots cut into sunlight.
Each echo overrode the last.
Smoke curled lazy as thread.
When silence returned, twenty‑five bodies sprawled in unnatural postures.
Sixteen never moved again.
He examined his pistol.
"Three hits out of four. Discipline remains."
"Teach me," Sovey said quietly.
"I want to learn."
He smiled.
"Later. Sixteenth birthday gift."
"I can shoot now."
He handed her the gun.
Small hands around large metal.
A lesson easier than love.
She raised it toward Aralan's father.
The sun caught both the muzzle and her trembling fingers.
The shot cracked.
Force kicked her back.
Bullet knifed sideward—neck not skull.
He fell.
Stillness heavier than death.
Sovey screamed.
Raw sound tearing what humanity remained.
She dropped the weapon.
Jerry caught her shoulders.
She shook so hard even air seemed unsure to hold her.
Her voice came thin.
"Take it back."
He brushed her hair gently.
"No," he murmured, calm and cold and fatherly.
"This is yours."
Tears blurred everything.
"Drive, please," she whispered.
"I feel sick."
They left the corpses behind—wheels peeling dust into a long white wake.
The clinic appeared through shimmering air.
White walls cleaner than the village ever was.
Inside, light steadier, smell of disinfectant replacing blood.
The doctor spoke.
She didn't hear him.
Her pulse raced with memory of recoil.
On the drive home, her eyes traced the bruise forming along her palm.
She didn't speak.
Jerry didn't ask.
He knew fear fades faster under gold ceilings than guilt in soil.
By dusk, stars surfaced—low, faint, distant.
He parked.
Neither looked back.
The same evening, the village darkened into a single shape—grief stuck between heat and silence.
People called it sunset only because it would rise again to hurt them later.
The too‑large house stayed full.
Thirty could fit; three hundred still hid inside.
Even air had body now, its weight pressing above exhaustion.
Aralan woke in corner shadow.
Sweat covered his skin like cracked clay.
No breeze.
No voice but his own.
He turned.
"Mother. Father's still gone."
Her eyes opened slowly, brown fading toward empty yellow in the dim light.
"He's fetching food—or water."
Her words moved like ritual, worn smooth by repetition.
"Forgive us, son. What happens next is yours alone to decide."
He nodded once.
Left.
Heat outside felt alive.
Dust bit at his tongue as he ran east.
Fen Well—twenty‑five kilometers.
Maybe less.
Maybe last.
Thoughts darted like flies around fever.
If I were him, I'd go there.
Or to food stalls.
What if he went wrong way?
Still, I'll check Fen first.
He ran faster.
Fields turned gray, earth breaking apart like burned paper.
The smell reached him before sight—sweet rot and iron.
Then noise.
Wet chewing.
Hissing shuffle.
Gornets.
Dozens.
Dog‑small bodies, black hide slick with blood.
Four legs.
Seven tails.
Three heads sharing one throat.
Each gnawed at corpses floating in heat.
He slowed.
"They're too weak to kill so many," he whispered.
"Something else did."
Shops on the roadside half‑collapsed.
Signs scorched.
He called through the nearest doorway.
"Sir? What happened here?"
An old man leaned out, half face hidden in shadow.
"Mr. Jerry. His daughter."
Names hit harder than wind.
Breath broke sharp.
He walked.
Then ran.
Ground dry under his steps.
Every sound buried quick.
Then he saw it—familiar shape lying by the road.
Human.
Unmoving.
He already knew.
He ran.
The Gornets looked up.
Three faces pulling off flesh.
Teeth slick.
Eyes red.
Ribs visible between motions.
He kicked one.
It flew sideways, cracked mid‑spin.
Others scattered, tails dragging slime trails.
What remained wasn't a man anymore.
Hollowed ribs.
Face melted into unrecognizable pattern.
Only his boots and their position remembered him.
Aralan knelt.
Mouth opened.
Closed.
Opened again.
No sound came.
Tears did.
Two thin lines cutting through dust crusted on skin.
He stood and stumbled backward.
"Can't," he whispered.
"Can't stay."
Mount Wellin flashed in his memory—a cliff cutting horizon.
Escape point.
End point.
He ran.
Each step throbbed in sync with heart's confusion.
I accepted weakness—thought peace made it smaller.
It didn't.
Acceptance was useless.
Happiness—just another lie to choke on.
Now rage moved instead—clean, precise, needed.
Forty‑nine minutes later, mountain shadow swallowed him.
Light dimmed.
Each breath a scrape.
He slowed.
Foot struck metal.
Clink.
He looked down.
A device half‑buried in sand, glinting cold under dusk.
Whistle‑shaped.
Heavy.
Letters along its edge.
He wiped dirt with sleeve.
"Malric," he murmured.
"Some rich fool's gadget."
He turned it in his hand.
Engraving deep.
Polish unbroken.
Weight wrong for its size.
Curiosity replaced despair for one fragile second.
"If it's valuable, I'll sell it.
Maybe buy bread.
Maybe bombs."
He pressed the small ridge button.
Air shrieked.
Light tore forward, pure white—a beam thinner than a scream.
It vanished toward horizon.
Then the skyline erupted.
A bloom devoured distance—three times brighter than sun, wider than mansions.
Roar followed late, pressure kissing his skin without push or heat.
Stillness re‑formed afterward, too big for his lungs.
He didn't move.
"No recoil," he whispered.
"No heat."
The thing remained cold in his palm.
"Not a gun," he said.
"Something worse."
Smile cut briefly across his face.
Not joy—just meaning newly born.
"Whatever this is," he said, echo hollow, "it's mine now."
He turned toward the west.
Toward the shadowed estate hidden behind haze.
Dust lines trembled under the faint wind.
"I'm coming," he said softly.
"For you.
And your house.
And everything you built on us."
Wind answered with low rustle.
Sand curled around his feet like kneeling shadows.
The boy who had buried his voice beside a corpse no longer moved like one.
He walked through heat dropping into night.
Devil's mansion waited beyond the flat horizon.
His silhouette followed the glow still burning out there—light born of a button, promise forged in a single push.
Night spread across Arinthal.
Fires from distance clung to the ground like stars that forgot where sky used to be.
Each flicker cast shape against the ash road.
And a six‑year‑old boy carrying loss heavier than memory kept walking
into a darkness that finally looked like home.