My wanderings through the world yielded scant reward. With each passing hour, boredom and vague restlessness mounted.
Yet the passage of time delivered its own share of events.
Primordial species and demons reacted with Originium and grew explosively. Admittedly, even on the scale of decades the changes were minute—but rapid nonetheless. They now divide themselves, staking out territories and forming distinct groups.
A river’s course shifted, Behemoths settled into long slumbers, and demons first kindled flame and began forging civilization over an immense span.
As time wore on, a mind once obsessively sharp dulled, and even the smallest changes passed unnoticed.
So it was with weather, landscape—and humankind itself.
Now Terra’s sky had become an absolute no-man’s land, barring all passage, its very polarisation warped.
Beyond the horizon, only crags and canyons punctured the expanse. The plain itself had been filled with traces of villages and lives—not buildings, but crude caverns woven from dry branches, rags, and stretched hides.
The primordials and demons have now shed their purely bestial forms and grown strangely human. Though in many aspects still feral, they distinguish individual from pack and group from group.
“At last, finally. Call it what you will, but the fact remains: they have established the most basic social contract.”
The Preserver observed them with a weary voice. Her exhaustion was plain for anyone to see.
“Yes. Already. Does even this long passage amount to but an instant?”
The emotions I felt through our bond differed from the terror I once sensed in Doctor. This feeling was viscous, heavy—and yet it crumbled like dust: a crushing misery.
She clung to those burdensome emotions, diving inward and refusing to resurface.
The long silence and stillness were less welcome than I had anticipated.
When at last the silence shattered, it was by an event as catastrophic as a colossal meteor crashing down.
But could I truly call it a meteor?
Terra lies ensconced behind a barrier, utterly severed from the cosmos.
“Is that… Originium? Yet if it flared so fiercely, then surely—”
The Preserver recognized the flaming object hurtling earthward and was seized by dread.
If she still had a body, her fingertips would have trembled with a chill, her throat seized in a cough, as she projected her fear toward me in frozen temperature.
“You knew, didn’t you? You must have known. What is that? Why call down such a calamity? To build civilization? Or to raze it? This is madness—this is downright lunacy.”
Her whirlwind of emotions and thoughts surged into my consciousness, demanding empathy.
Demons cannot grow to form society. A catastrophe will drown them in a sea of information, dissolving them to fundamental particles. Meanwhile, Originium will grow without end, quietly suffusing this land. Within that, we will endure—always evading that sky, in silence.
“And you call this preservation? This is annihilation. What do you think this is—some sci-fi spectacle?”
Her notional heart squeezed in agony, and she felt a phantom choking in the void of her lungs.
For the first time, she pressed me to hurry toward the impact site. A newfound urgency crackled between us, and she unconsciously swallowed as she spoke.
As expected, the impact site was choked with flames, dust, and the rasping groan of growing Originium ore.
A deep crater gaped in the ground. Within it, fires blazed among shattered bedrock jutting like tusks, overturned sand and gravel scattered around. Heat curled at the quills of feather, acrid smoke stained the air, and massive Originium spikes thrust upward, still grinding with metallic rasp as they grew.
“This is insane. I can think of nothing else. What were you thinking… Could the design of civilization, the end we’ve waited for, truly conclude like this?”
Lost in her reverie, she remained silent even as I turned to leave the ruin. She was not the only one whose sense of time had dulled; it would be nearly ten days before she emerged from her thoughts to speak.
“I must observe this world more closely. If this is truly the outcome you desire… I will—”
She left her sentence unfinished, but through Law’s empathy I heard her unspoken words: she retained a kernel of resistance. The very incident that drew her gaze from my memories and past had been so small.
And so too, her complete turning away from the world was born of a similarly modest event.
Incidentally, these days they call the world Kazdel.
*
When riverbanks and ground freeze then thaw, mud fills the voids.
When poverty and hunger drive villagers away, their children fill the gaps they leave behind.
A fragile child endures torments even most adults cannot, and when grown may stay or depart.
If they stay, they multiply children and toil the land for a pittance or a plot of earth.
If they depart, they leave behind a child and leave the village never to return.
This has become common knowledge even among girls who have passed seven years of age.
What some children did not know was that a child could be exchanged for the wages of an adult.
“Stop right there, you damned brat!”
Few in the village had enough flesh on their bones to spare. Fewer still would chase a child at this hour. Even as breath seared his lungs and his throat scorched, the child lashed out, driving her legs as fast as they could carry her.
The man pursued her small frame into the underbrush. He had received the child as payment from the village chief when he ceded some land. His parents, hunters eking out a living even here, had been close to the chief—and so the chief resented them and coveted even their untamed acres.
He preferred trading for a child, easier to manage than land that required tilling and sweat.
The deal had been simple: among the children left behind, the unluckiest one was seized and entrusted to him.
He lived off his parents’ wisdom and his own hunting skill, but in tracking the child he found only the sensation of insects pecking at his flesh.
“Damn it! You little—”
“Calm yourself, take a deep breath. Do you plan to wake the entire village at this hour? Shouting won’t make her run any slower. For your own sake, steady yourself.”
The man glared at the old hunter, spat on the ground, and curses slipped from his lips only to trample empty dirt.
“Your parents left you a hidden trail—one the chief kept from me. To flee the village, I must cross the river or thread that forest. But the brat is cunning—she won’t take the path used for beasts.”
“So you mean to cut her off in the woods ahead? Don’t flatter yourself. If you think I’ll tip you off, you’re mistaken, old man.”
The chief said no more and strode back to the village. The man spat again, gauged the direction she’d fled, and set off. After all, she was only a child. Lost in these woods, she’d fall exhausted soon enough—there was no need to hurry. With a twist of his knife, he vanished among the trees.
The child sprinted deeper into the forest, ducking beneath branches and heading in any direction away from his shouts. Stones struck her ankles, and sharp leaves tore her thin skin, but she forced her legs onward until she collapsed, then crawled on.
“Not yet, Semi… I will—”
Her breath came in rattling gasps, eyes rolling with oxygen debt as she swallowed dust. At the sound of rustling grass, her body stiffened. She propped herself against a tree, focusing on the trembling foliage.
She gripped the small dagger she and her friend had found and cherished. Hands shaking, she held it out before her.
The shadow that fell among the ferns was vast. But it was not the man.
“Who are you?”
It was a form neither seen in her village nor among wandering Outsiders.
Wings had erupted from its back like a Foulbeast, yet, unlike the Banshees of the canyons, they sprouted not from its head but from its spine. Its hair was white like the chief’s, but its face bore neither wrinkles nor the lethal glint of his gaze.
“Ah, a child? It’s been ages—I almost forgot what true humanity looked like.”
Its voice brushed her ear like a breeze. It seemed to test sounds on its lips and spoke again.
“Ah, so that was how you spoke? What are you doing, child?”
“Answer me! Who are you?”
It spoke in an ancient tongue, one the chief himself might only barely recall.
“Fear, anxiety, tension… not caused by me, perhaps you were fleeing? These fellows have passed millennia yet still practice kin-cannibalism?”
Semi heard its words, lowered her blade, and slipped away. She knew one must not turn one’s back on a wild beast, but now—perhaps—she could risk it.
More urgent was to escape the village for good.
The forest path was fraught with peril.
The man was a hunter, and she was frail compared to the wild creatures of these woods—she would be easy prey.
She must reach the river. Having played in its muddy banks with Semi before, she knew the way. She would go there.
As she turned to leave, it seized her by the wing.
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