Silence Filled with Questions

Gratitude is a heavy stone, especially when offered to a god who does not wish to be worshipped.

Silence descended upon Cinderfall, a thick, unnatural blanket that smothered the last of the flames and the whimpers of the wounded. The battle was over. We had survived. But as I looked around at the ruin of my home, at the bodies of my neighbors being gently covered with blankets, the feeling was not one of victory. It was one of profound, hollow shock.

The villagers emerged slowly from the cellars and ruined homes where they had hidden, their faces pale masks of disbelief, relief, and a new, creeping fear. Their eyes were all fixed on one spot.

He stood at the edge of the village, a solitary, still figure amidst the carnage he had wrought. He was not helping, not speaking. He was simply watching the smoke curl into the grey morning sky, his expression as blank and empty as the dead eyes of the bandits impaled on the stone spikes he had created. His passive presence was somehow more unsettling than the violent explosion of his power had been. He had saved us, but he was not one of us. He was something other, a force of nature that had passed through and now stood indifferent to the wreckage it had left in its wake.

A new conflict began to simmer amongst the survivors. A group of men, their faces hard with grief and rage, gathered around the bandits who were still trapped, frozen to their knees in the magically hardened earth.

"We should end them," one of them, a farmer named Kaelen whose son had been one of the first to fall, spat on the ground. "A quick death is more than they deserve."

"No!" I found myself saying, my voice hoarse. "We can't. We're not them. We'll hand them over to the Knights... when they return."

Kaelen laughed, a bitter, broken sound. "The Knights? They abandoned us, boy. There is no justice left but the one we make ourselves."

The debate grew heated, a microcosm of a world that had lost its moral compass. They argued over vengeance and mercy, but their voices felt distant to me. My attention was fixed on the boy at the edge of the village. I had to understand. Driven by a desperate need for answers, a need to put a name to the force that had just saved and terrified us, I walked towards him.

He did not turn as I approached, but I knew he was aware of me. The air around him felt different, heavy and still.

"Thank you," I began, my voice clumsy and small. "You... you saved us. All of us."

He remained silent for a long moment, his gaze fixed on the horizon. When he finally spoke, his voice was a low, weary monotone, devoid of any emotion. "I was merely passing through."

"But... who are you?" I pressed, emboldened by his lack of aggression. "Are you a mage from the Order? A sellsword?"

He finally turned his head to look at me. His dead grey eye saw nothing. But the other one, the one with the strange, unnatural pattern, seemed to pierce right through me. "Names are irrelevant," he said.

"But what you did... that magic..." I stammered, gesturing vaguely at the stone spikes. "I've never seen anything like it."

A faint, almost imperceptible sigh escaped his lips. "Sloppy," a different voice seemed to whisper on the wind, sharp and critical, though I knew it came from him. "You used too much raw power. The earth has a language. Command it, don't just break it." He seemed to be chiding himself, or something I could not see. He then looked back at me. "It was a simple application."

The argument behind me grew louder. Kaelen had drawn a knife. I saw the boy’s strange eye flicker towards the commotion, a flicker of what looked like... annoyance. He seemed bored by our petty, human squabbles.

He raised a hand, and with a lazy flick of his fingers, the stone encasing the bandits dissolved into dust. They were free. Before anyone, villager or bandit, could react, he flicked his fingers again. A wave of invisible force, a silent, concussive blast, struck the freed men. They were not torn apart or burned. They were simply... thrown. They flew backwards into the forest like discarded dolls, their screams fading as they disappeared into the trees.

He had not killed them. He had dismissed them. He had swept them away like a man brushing crumbs from a table. The sheer, casual indifference of the act was more shocking than the brutal executions had been. It was not the act of a hero, nor of a villain. It was the act of a power so absolute that our concepts of right and wrong were beneath its notice.

Silence fell once more upon the village. Everyone stared, first at the empty space where the bandits had been, and then at the boy.

Without another word, he turned his back on us, on the village he had saved, on the chaos he had created, and began to walk away, heading towards the deep woods. He didn't ask for payment. He didn't offer a farewell. He was simply leaving.

"Wait!" I called out, my voice desperate.

He did not stop. He did not slow down. He just kept walking, a solitary figure about to be swallowed by the trees.

I looked back at Cinderfall. At the smoke, the bodies, the faces of my friends filled with fear and confusion. There was nothing for me here but ash and ghosts. Then I looked at the boy's retreating back. He was a monster, a mystery, a walking catastrophe. But he was the only thing in this broken world that felt real, the only force I had seen that could impose its will upon the chaos.

I made my choice. With a final, sorrowful look at Viru, who simply nodded with sad understanding, I turned my back on the ashes of my home and ran, following the quiet monster into the woods.