Asef lay there, unmoving, the weight of his mother's body cradled in his arms.
He didn't want to rise.
Not now. Maybe not ever.
His breathing was shallow, uneven, as if every inhale tried to reject the reality before him.
His mind scread that this had to be a dream.
So twisted, cruel nightmare born from exhaustion or fever.
Efsa? Killing their mother?
No. It wasn't possible.
It had to be a mistake.
Asef shut his eyes tightly, pressing his forehead against the almost cold cheek of the woman who had raised him, protected him, and sacrificed everything for him.
Maybe, if he stayed like this long enough, he would wake up back in his bed.
He would open his eyes to sunlight through the window and the scent of breakfast wafting through the air.
His mother would be humming softly, and Efsa would be training outside.
But no matter how tightly he shut his eyes, the sll of blood didn't vanish.
He didn't feel the warmth of life. Only the cooling skin of soone who had just slipped away.
He hadn't seen Efsa do it. That was what made it worse.
There had been a blur, confusion, the mont he awoke. His brother was there. His mother was in his arms. A knife. Blood. And the silence.
He had acted on instinct.
Anger, confusion, heartbreak—all of it surged into a storm inside his chest.
He turned his head again, slowly, hesitantly, as if hoping that maybe the body in his arms had changed.
But no.
It was still her.
Still the sa peaceful expression on her face. Still a faint trace of her last smile.
His fingers trembled as he touched her hair, brushing it away from her eyes like he used to when he was younger.
Asef's eyes stung. His chest tightened. And a low, broken sound escaped from his throat.
He wanted to scream.
But he couldn't. There were no words. No sound big enough to carry what he felt.
He didn't rember much after that.
Just that he held her tighter.
And that the world, from that mont on, stopped feeling like ho.
---
Years passed.
And Arlon followed Asef this ti.
But there was no fire in Asef's eyes. No training, no ambition. He did nothing.
He didn't hold a sword. Didn't speak of justice. Didn't cry. He simply moved through the world like a drifting leaf, directionless and hollow.
When he found food, he ate. When he didn't, he let his stomach remain empty.
Sotis for days.
And he didn't complain. Not even to himself.
It wasn't a punishnt. It wasn't strength.
It was apathy.
Asef had beco a ghost long before his ti. Breathing, walking, living—but not really there.
He slept in alleyways. In old barns. In streets soaked with rain. Sotis he curled up under bridges, hiding from the wind, his tattered clothes clinging to a body that was rapidly wasting away.
People avoided him. His eyes were too sharp, his presence too quiet. He didn't look like a beggar. He looked like soone who had once lived, and then stopped.
He would sotis catch his reflection in broken windows or puddles after the rain. The tangled hair. The hollow cheeks. The bags under his eyes.
He didn't look like himself.
And every so often, the world reminded him of that.
"Hey… you look just like that soldier. That war hero—Efsa, was it?"
Whenever soone said that, a sharp pain shot through his chest. They ant it as a complint, but to Asef, it was a blade twisted between his ribs.
Efsa. His twin. The golden boy. The hero of the people.
There he was, on posters, on broadcasts, wearing a pressed uniform and polished boots. With perfectly grood hair and a clean, noble aura. They called him brave. Noble. A symbol of the future.
And Asef?
He was the shadow trailing behind that symbol. The part no one wanted to see.
Revenge?
He thought about it sotis. Killing Efsa. Ending everything.
But then what?
Would that bring their mother back?
Would that change the past?
No.
He wouldn't be able to kill Efsa anyway.
Still, if he ever saw Efsa again, if he had the chance—he didn't know what he would do. And maybe that was worse.
So he just kept walking.
He didn't count the years, but they moved all the sa.
Seasons changed. Snow fell. Leaves returned.
And through it all, Asef wandered. Watching from a distance as his brother climbed higher and higher. From soldier, to officer, to hero. The world cheered, and Asef watched.
Not with hatred.
Not even envy.
Just a quiet emptiness that never left.
And years passed once more.
***
Asef didn't look like his brother anymore.
He hadn't leveled up. Not even once.
So unlike Efsa, who grew stronger, faster, and more refined, Asef aged.
Slowly, unevenly, painfully.
His hair turned thin and dull. His skin sagged. His bones began to jut out against a fra that had long forgotten muscle or strength.
He stopped walking through cities. People made him uneasy. Their gazes scraped at sothing raw inside him, sothing he didn't want to feel.
So he wandered into the barren lands instead.
Plains that stretched into nothing. Deserts where the wind didn't howl, just whispered. Forests too quiet for birdsong. He kept walking.
He'd realized, so ti ago, that he didn't need to eat anymore.
He didn't feel hunger. He didn't feel thirst.
He didn't feel much of anything.
It wasn't a blessing. It wasn't freedom. It was... sothing else.
Sothing wrong.
Sothing unnatural.
He still aged. His joints ached more now. His steps grew slower.
But he didn't die.
Whatever was inside him, whatever had whispered to him through the well, wasn't letting him go.
So, he kept moving forward, not because he had a destination, but because stopping felt worse.
He didn't want to see Efsa's face ever again.
He didn't want to see anyone's.
The more faces he saw, the more he feared forgetting his mother's face.
And her face was the only one he still wanted to rember.
So he avoided people.
He lived as a shadow passing through the wilderness.
Until one day, after walking through cracked stone and wind-burned grass, he saw sothing he hadn't expected.
A house.
A small, simple house, sitting alone in the middle of the vast plains like it had been dropped from the sky.
There was no smoke from a chimney. No fence. No path.
But it was there.
And for so reason, Asef moved toward it.
He didn't hurry. He couldn't.
His body was slower now. Heavy.
He wasn't even sure he could run anymore.
But that was fine.
He had ti.
So for several days, he kept walking. Across uneven ground. Through cold wind and silence. Until the house grew close.
And then—
Soone appeared in front of him.
Not walked out. Not approached from a distance.
One mont, there was only open space.
The next, there was a man standing right in front of him.
Asef didn't react. Not outwardly.
Surprise no longer touched his face. Maybe his facial muscles had atrophied from disuse. Maybe he had just forgotten how to express anything.
But inside, a flicker of awareness.
The man was tall, wearing a cloak that fluttered too smoothly for the still air. His face was sharp, not in a cruel way, but in a way that looked carved—deliberate.
His eyes weren't hostile.
But they weren't kind either.
They simply observed.
He seed old. At least older than most.
Then, he spoke.
"Who are you?" the man asked, his voice calm but firm.
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