Fear had changed its shape.
Once, it was vertical.
It came from above, from a presence that spoke no words but passed judgment all the same.
From Anor'ven.
Now, it crawled.
It seeped into glances, into silences, into hands that moved just a bit too slow.
They no longer feared him.
They feared their neighbor.
Their brother.
The child who listened through tent walls.
The woman who lingered too long over the food.
The utopia was falling apart.
Not in fire, not in rebellion—
but in a long, slow crack.
Like a bone finally yielding under ancient pressure.
The first house burned by mistake.
Or perhaps out of revenge.
No one really knew.
The flames rose without screams, without a call for help.
Only glances turned away.
Shoulders turned cold.
And that silence, thick and heavy, settling like dust over the earth.
The next day, the markets were looted.
The wells, poisoned.
Then came the disappearances.
An old woman who never returned from her morning walk.
Two teenagers found strangled near the fields.
A newborn, gone—only a blanket left behind.
There were no accusations.
No trials.
Only a growing familiarity with death.
Anor'ven watched.
Standing, as always.
Mute.
Unmoving.
He had not fled.
He had not acted.
He simply watched the utopia he never asked for crumble beneath its own weight.
They no longer looked to him.
And if they did, it was with a kind of tired hatred.
Not because he was a god.
But because he did nothing.
Because he remained—useless, eternal, watching a world bleed.
And he knew it was too late.
Even him.
Even the immortal.
He could do nothing.
Their fear of him had built this place.
Their fear of each other destroyed it.
Night fell.
And with it, the last piece of order collapsed.
Screams erupted—not muffled, not secret, but open, wild.
Torches hurled. Blades drawn.
Houses torn down by bare hands.
Bodies hit the ground with no one counting.
Some ran, without direction.
Others killed, without reason.
The sky stayed still.
The earth did not tremble.
Only Anor'ven remained, unmoved, in the storm of men.
And then… silence.
Not true silence.
Not peace.
The silence that comes after.
After the screaming is spent,
after the killing exhausts itself,
after every hand is stained and every eye is empty.
A field of ruins.
The ground soaked in blood.
Wind brushing across the dead—
the dead who no longer dreamed.
Anor'ven walked among them, untouched.
His steps left no trace.
His presence drew no fear, no hope.
Only weight.
Only memory.
And then… he saw him.
He was not Anor'ven.
He had no memory.
No power.
No curse.
He was just a boy.
Almost a child.
Crushed by the indifference of a world too vast, too cruel.
He had not run.
He had not struck.
Even when swords cut him open,
even when spears shattered his bones,
he had stood.
Like a fire refusing to die.
His flesh torn.
His breath broken.
His blood spilled in silence.
But his eyes—
his eyes still burned.
He crawled among the corpses, dragging what remained of his mutilated body.
Not to survive.
Not to take revenge.
But to protect something greater than himself:
an idea—
absurd, fragile, impossible—
that this world, rotten to the bone, could still be saved.
He reached out.
And he saw Anor'ven.
Not a savior.
Not an answer.
Just a witness.
A frozen witness.
And in his shattered gaze burned a truth his lips could no longer shape:
"I know you once believed too."
Anor'ven stepped forward.
For a moment—
only one—
a low tremor stirred in his dead core.
He recognized that fire.
He remembered.
But he did not move.
He watched the boy with that implacable clarity—
the kind that judges nothing,
comforts nothing.
And in a voice of terrible softness, he said:
"Those who dream of a better world only feed the beast that will devour them."
The boy smiled.
A smile of defiance.
Of light.
Of madness.
And in a final breath, almost joyful, he whispered:
"Then I'll feed it. Again. And again… until it chokes."
His gaze emptied.
His body collapsed.
A silence vast as a grave spread.
Anor'ven stood still.
Not a word.
Not a gesture.
Just a fracture inside him, ancient—
one that no longer bled.
He thought, without emotion:
"He wasn't me. He was what I abandoned."
Then he turned away,
and vanished into the mist,
leaving behind another dead dream—
without even remembering his name.