The rain whispered down in fine, endless threads as Aki stepped through the broken gate.The familiar arch, once carved with ivy and songbirds, was now worn and cracked, but it still stood, stubborn against the years.Aki lifted his hood, letting the cool rain wash over his face.
He moved slowly down the old path, his boots sinking into the softened earth.The village lay before him, smaller somehow, the colors of it muted under the gray sky.Houses leaned together for support, roofs patched hastily or caved in, gardens run wild with tall grasses and faded flowers.
No laughter echoed from the square, no smell of bread baking on the air.The friends he had once known, the boy who had raced him down this very lane, the old woman who sold ribbons, they were gone now, lost to time's steady hand.
Aki paused beside the ancient oak tree at the heart of the village.It had grown gnarled and heavy with age, but it still lived, its broad branches catching the rain like cupped hands.He rested a hand against its trunk, feeling the pulse of life under the bark, slow but strong.
His heart ached for all he had missed, for all that would never return.Yet as he stood there, he realized he was not only mourning.He was remembering.Every road he had walked, every sunrise on foreign shores, every friend made and lost along the way, they had all shaped him.The village might of been his beginning, but his journey had given him so much more.
He smiled, a slow, quiet smile that felt new on his face.He had lived.He had became.
He Had achieved his dreams.
As he turned to leave the square, something caught his eye.A thin column of smoke rising in the distance, beyond the cluster of fallen houses.Aki narrowed his eyes.Someone was out there.A family, maybe. New settlers, finding their own beginnings among old bones.The thought warmed him more than any fire could.
Home, he realized, wasn't a place frozen in memory.It was something that grew and changed, just like the people who carried it inside them.
With a final glance at the old oak, Aki slung his pack over his shoulder and set off toward the hills, the rain washing the dust of the past from his boots.Ahead of him, the world waited, wide, open and alive.