For what had he done to deserve this fate?
He didn't know. He could never know.
What could a boy—no more than nine years old—not even a week past—have done to deserve a fate worse than death itself?
Sob
Sniffle
Sob
His world had ended.
The fire had burned everything he could call his own. His family. His friends. His neighbors. His toys. His stories. His happy memories—and even the sad ones shared with them—all had turned to ash.
Yet the fire left him with something unforgettable. One might even call it a gift of reality.
That everything is a toy in the hands of gods.
"Where are you!" he wailed, though tears no longer came.
He called out to his parents. He searched, but everything looked the same—completely carbonized. Houses, belongings, people… all reduced to identical blackened shapes. Everything looked the same once it had burned.
If not for the familiar shape and size of the human body, he wouldn't have been able to identify anything at all in this charred wasteland.
It had been two days since the incident. Two days of searching every nook and cranny for survivors. But there was nothing—only ash and burned corpses that even vultures would not touch.
"The gods are tyrants," Cail said, struggling to keep himself from breaking down.
Realizing there was nothing left to find, he turned back toward his home.
As he walked through the burned village, even though everything looked the same, he could still tell who was who and what was what. That realization made his legs tremble as his body followed them forward.
He was scared. Alone. Trying to stay strong—trying to cope. In truth, he had been avoiding this moment. Afraid to face the reality waiting for him in his own neighborhood.
"It is Eris'—"
He turned his head away, his voice shaking.
Step by shaky step, he moved deeper into the neighborhood. With every step, his legs trembled more than before. In his heart, he knew what was coming—but he hadn't accepted it yet.
"Sam—"
"Eric—"
"Ris—"
"Uncle—"
"Aunt—"
With each name, the shield around his heart cracked further, reality slamming into him harder every time. He had expected this—yet seeing the corpses of those he loved shattered him all the same. His eyes, long dried of tears, began to burn once more.
"Mom— Dad—"
He had returned home, but not to the welcome he wanted.
It was the truth that greeted him.
"Mom!"
"Dad!"
He fell to his knees before what should have been his front gate—if it still existed. Before him lay two charred corpses.
"Mom…"
"Dad…"
He wailed, screaming their names as if sound alone could undo what had happened. Tears finally fell again, pooling into the ash beneath him.
The tears came soundlessly at first—thick drops darkening the ground beneath his knees. His throat burned, raw from days of screaming at a sky that never answered. The world didn't even bother to echo him back.
"Mom… Dad…"
His fingers trembled as he reached forward. The heat was long gone, but the ground still felt wrong—too brittle, too light, as though it might crumble into nothing if he pressed too hard. He stopped just short of touching them.
Some small, terrified part of him still hoped that if he didn't, this could remain unreal.
A nightmare he could wake up from.
A cruel story told about someone else.
But the smell was real.
The silence was real.
And the shapes before him—twisted, blackened, unmistakably human—were real.
His chest hitched. Air went in but never seemed to reach his lungs.
"I'm here," he whispered hoarsely. "I came back. I… I looked everywhere."
As if they had only been waiting for him.
His hands clenched into fists, nails digging into his palms until it hurt—until it proved he was still alive. The pain anchored him to a body far too small to carry something this heavy.
Why them?
Why anyone?
The question had no answer. It floated uselessly in his mind.
Something inside him snapped—not loudly, not all at once, but like a rope fraying strand by strand.
"They didn't do anything," he said, his voice rising as anger bled into grief. "They were kind. They fed travelers. They fixed roofs. They laughed too loud and argued over stupid things and—"
His voice broke.
"They didn't deserve this."
The wind stirred—gentle and cruel—lifting ash into the air. It clung to his hair, his clothes, his skin, as if the village itself were trying to embrace him one last time.
Or curse him.
Slowly, shakily, his gaze lifted to the sky.
It was blue.
Perfect.
Untouched.
That was what broke him the most.
A thin, hysterical laugh escaped his throat. "Of course," he muttered. "Of course you're still beautiful."
His small hands dug into the dirt.
"Is this fun?" he shouted upward. "Is this a game to you? Burning us. Erasing us. Watching who crawls out of the ashes?"
No thunder answered.
No divine voice spoke.
Only silence.
His shoulders sagged.
"…Cowards," he whispered.
He stayed there a long time—long enough for the sun to shift, for shadows to stretch and thin. Long enough for the tears to stop again—not because the pain was gone, but because even grief runs out of strength.
When he finally stood, his legs shook so badly he nearly fell. He didn't look back. He couldn't. If he did, he knew he would never move again.
Inside what remained of his home, there was nothing. Collapsed walls. A missing roof. The wooden carving his father had made—ash. His mother's cooking pots—twisted metal. The corner where he used to curl up and listen to stories—empty.
Except for one thing.
Half-buried beneath rubble and soot lay a small object—untouched by flame.
He froze.
He looked at it but couldn't understand how a wooden soot was left completely untouched by the horrible flames he had saw from afar. Well, he didn't question that thought much and picked it up since it was something he could still call his.
***
My wsa entry yet again.