1. — The War of Banners
Two empires raised black flags, each bearing the mark of Anor'Ven.
Each declared the immortal to be their patron, their shield against ruin.
One cast his image in gold,
lavish, blinding, decadent.
The other carved him in ash and bone,
a stark warning etched into the heart of their walls.
They clashed.
Not for him.
For themselves.
Armies collided under hollow cries of glory.
Thousands fell.
The ground turned to blood and mire.
Prayers became screams.
Faith rotted into madness.
And while they burned the world for his name…
He walked.
Unseeing.
Unhearing.
Unmoved.
2. — The Temple of Three Heads
A cult was born from silence.
They called him the One-Who-Speaks-Not.
The Keeper of Quiet.
They invented sacred gestures,
codified silences,
wove rituals around empty spaces and unfinished prayers.
Each night, they turned their faces northward,
toward the place where once — long ago —
someone claimed to have seen him.
And they waited.
They held their breath for hours,
until their bodies trembled,
until their minds frayed,
until some collapsed into the dust, weeping.
**
One day, Anor'Ven passed before their temple.
The disciples flung themselves to the ground, weeping, scratching at the earth.
An acolyte — a child, no more than ten — dared to raise his head.
He met Anor'Ven's eyes.
And he wept.
Not from awe.
Not from belief.
But from a dizzying, wordless terror —
the kind born only from facing something utterly, eternally empty.
3. — The Black Ring Faction
They called him "Variable."
Not a god.
Not a man.
A reaction.
A divine phenomenon to be studied, broken, understood.
They trailed him like shadows.
Measuring the cracks he left in the air.
Recording how the earth trembled —
less here,
more there,
sometimes in patterns no human eye could trace.
They built a city upon his path.
They chiseled equations into every stone,
drew maps over walls and skin.
And then, in one single night,
the city was devoured —
swallowed whole by a fault line that no scholar had ever charted.
No warning.
No scream.
Only silence.
**
They called it a lesson.
They learned nothing.
4. — General Oren'Va
He made a vow:
to slay the wandering god,
to drag Anor'Ven's name from myth into blood and dust.
For nine years, he pursued him.
He raised armies.
Gathered prophets who read omens in bones.
Hired engineers to build weapons for a war that had not yet begun.
He mapped every rumor, every shadow.
He dreamed of victory so fiercely that he forgot what peace had ever tasted like.
**
One evening, after nine years,
he found him.
Anor'Ven sat beneath a dead tree,
hands resting on his knees,
eyes lost in a horizon no one else could see.
No trap.
No miracle.
No weapon.
Only stillness.
**
Oren'Va lifted his sword.
The steel gleamed in the dying light.
His arms trembled.
Not from fear.
From something heavier.
Something older.
He dropped the blade.
It sank into the dust without a sound.
He knelt.
He pressed his forehead to the ground.
And then —
he rose without a word,
turned,
and left.
He never spoke of that night again.
5. — The Child
A little girl followed Anor'Ven once.
She did not know the myths.
She did not fear the silence.
She only knew her own curiosity.
She skipped behind him, laughing,
collecting stones and bones and bits of broken shells.
She held them up proudly, showing him each small treasure.
He never spoke.
He never smiled.
But he did not drive her away.
**
One evening, as the light failed and shadows swallowed the land,
she was gone.
Without sound.
Without trace.
And for the first time in a time beyond counting,
he stopped.
Just for one night.
Just one.
6. — Final Fragment
The world shifted.
Towers of glass and metal clawed at the clouds.
Machines howled through hollow streets.
New gods shouted from atop neon-lit temples.
All of them false.
All of them hungry.
All of them loud.
**
And he…
He walked still.
Unmoved by the noise.
Untouched by the new thrones.
**
In a cave so far away that maps had long abandoned it,
an old man, half-forgotten by time,
scratched one final message into the stone:
"He never spoke.
He never punished.
He never guided.
He only watched.
And that was enough.
To shatter everything."